Guatemala to provide food aid as El Nino causes severe drought

Guatemala will provide food assistance to more than one million families living through drought due to the powerful El Nino weather pattern, the government announced Wednesday.

El Nino raises surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean and causes global changes in winds and rainfall as well as erratic weather conditions.

This year's iteration, billed as the strongest since comparable records began four decades ago, has already caused severe drought in Central America's Dry Corridor.

Crops and livestock are dying out due to the extreme weather in this arid region that includes parts of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

Government aid will initially reach around 134,000 families in Guatemala, Social Development Minister Abelardo Pinto told a press conference.

He estimated that maize, beans and rice distributions supported by the United Nations World Food Programme would reach 1.2 million families by the end of the year.

The food supplies were worth around $62.5 million, he added.

Sixty percent of Guatemala's 18-million-strong population lives in poverty, and the entrenched issue of child malnutrition is expected to worsen with the drought.

El Nino is predicted to peak at the end of the year, but experts say the consequences will stretch far into 2027.