A report jointly released by the Inter-American Development Bank and the Global Harvest Initiative, a group of private sector companies, has documented the agricultural advantages of Latin America and the Caribbean and the challenges they face in further development and modernization.

Latin America has a lot of potential to attract investment and produce more food as the world population expands, the report says.

Here are some of the highlights:

The advantages

• One third of the world’s fresh water.
• One quarter of the world’s medium to high potential farmland.
• Farmers with extensive experience and the capacity to innovate
• Relatively strong institutions and markets.
• A foundation of exports from Brazil and Argentina to build on.
• A global leader in no-till farming, particularly in Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina.
• Uruguay as a leader in traceability for animal agriculture.
• Untapped market potential in native varieties of potatoes in Peru and other Andean countries.
• Chile as a model fruit exporter.

The challenges

• A quarter of the region’s rural people living on less than $2 per day, with a “strong concentration” of landless farmers, indigenous peoples, women and children earning only $1.25 per day.
• 53 percent of the rural population — about 53 million people — undernourished.
• Dependence on food imports in the Caribbean and Mexico
• Agriculture responsible for most deforestation.
• Central American countries, in a narrow strip of land between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, vulnerable to hurricanes and climate change.
• About 54 percent of government expenditures on farms for direct and credit subsidies, with only 45 percent on public goods such as technology transfer, research and public roads.
• Public agricultural research and extension below that of developed countries.
• Poor quality of rural transportation and other infrastructure.
• Only 15 percent of land equipped for irrigation.
• Providing modernization assistance for smallholder farming that accounts for 80 percent of farms, 35 percent of farmland and 64 percent of agricultural employment.
• Poor land title records in some countries.
• Weak intellectual property protection.
• Topography and affordable labor that discourage mechanization.
• Lack of available repairs and maintenance for equipment.
• High import taxes on foreign products.
• Sanitary and phytosanitary trade barriers.
• High interest rates for farm loans.
• Lack of cooperatives to help farmers and work with agribusiness.
• High post-harvest losses in some countries.