According to the government, inflation hit nearly 17% in 2007, the highest in the region. The prices of many basic foodstuffs increased more than that last year. The country imports about 40% of its rice, a staple that has soared to record highs on world markets.
Poor families are spending three-quarters of their incomes on food, according to official estimates. More than a quarter of the population is undernourished, many of them children. More are going hungry every day.
"It's a time bomb," said sociologist Cirilo Otero, a food security expert and president of the Center for Research on Environmental Policy in Managua. "It's an explosive situation."
Leftist President Daniel Ortega has blamed "the tyranny of global capitalism" for the world's food woes. His ire is directed particularly at the United States. He said America's thirst for ethanol has driven up international prices for corn and other grains, while U.S. trade policy has discouraged food production in developing countries by flooding them with subsidized farm commodities.
Nicaragua last month hosted farm ministers from Central America, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela to talk about boosting production of grains and animal feed. Ortega is pushing those discussions to the highest level with this week's meeting of the region's presidents.
Whether those talks amount to more than political grandstanding remains to be seen. Battered by years of civil war, natural disasters and emigration, Nicaragua has hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land available for cultivation. Ortega has vowed to use the current crisis as a springboard to turn his nation into Central America's breadbasket. His administration last year launched a program known as Zero Hunger that is giving low-income rural families cows, pigs, chickens and seed.
Otero said that effort, while laudable, was progressing slowly and had been criticized for aiding only sympathizers of Ortega's Sandinista National Liberation Front.
He said reviving agriculture would require the investment of billions of dollars in roads, farm credits and technical assistance that the country doesn't have. Then there's the need for transparency and a long-term commitment that's at odds with Nicaragua's bitter partisan politics.
Otero said that external shocks undoubtedly worsened Nicaragua's food and fuel troubles. Still, he said, the current crisis had been years in the making and was grounded in unwise energy and agricultural policies.
