Recent efforts by the United States aimed at tackling the root causes of migration from the Northern Triangle have heartened many in the development community who have long sought to address those causes at their source.
People fleeing the region — many driven by food insecurity and crop failure due to years of devastating drought — often endure pain, suffering, and victimization while trying to reach the U.S. border.
The U.S. remains a prime destination. A model developed at the University of Texas at Austin estimated that between fiscal years 2014 to 2020, an average of 311,000 people left the Northern Triangle each year, with most of them headed to the U.S. Approximately 34,000 of the 226,000 Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans that U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered at the border as of April this year have been unaccompanied minors.
But now there is reason for hope. The governments of the U.S. and Mexico signed a memorandum of understanding on June 8 aimed at addressing the root causes driving migration from the Northern Triangle.
U.S. contributions to the effort include task forces targeting corruption, human smuggling, and trafficking. The U.S. Agency for International Development will also lead projects designed to encourage entrepreneurship, particularly among women, youth, and Indigenous people; while the U.S. International Development Finance Corp. will invest in agribusiness and micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises.
The focus on agribusiness and agriculture is especially critical because such efforts address multiple root causes of migration — including poverty, food insecurity, and a lack of economic opportunity, especially among women, youths, and other marginalized groups.
Targeted agricultural aid programs can help mitigate food insecurity and economic hardships by introducing rural smallholders to farming techniques, access to credit, mechanization, and technologies designed to address the adverse effects of changing weather patterns.
In the week following the signing of the memorandum, USAID announced a $10.1 million initiative aimed at increasing sustainable farming practices in Honduras to bolster food security. The memorandum could be the gateway to a wide range of other possible agricultural remedies to help ease the outflow of migration.
International agricultural development programs, for example, can improve the economic trajectory of populations by facilitating relationships among various agricultural stakeholders in the private sector. These connections can improve market systems and create an enabling environment that generates a variety of new economic opportunities, capable of enhancing training, workforce participation, and earning capacity of many rural and Indigenous populations who may otherwise only see grim prospects.
Agriculture-focused initiatives also can help communities maximize specific market opportunities. The increased demand for coffee and horticultural products produced in the Northern Triangle, for instance, has much potential for job creation and access to new markets among related agricultural businesses.
Additionally, foreign aid can be used to implement projects related to agricultural diversification. Technical assistance provided to farmers in other coffee-growing regions of the world has helped producers diversify into complementary, high-value crops, such as honey and avocado, as well as various other types of produce, thereby improving farmers’ livelihoods, bolstering their incomes, and building resilience by reducing their reliance on a single agricultural product.
[Agribusiness and agriculture] efforts address multiple root causes of migration — including poverty, food insecurity, and a lack of economic opportunity.
—We recognize that none of these potential programs is a silver bullet and that the U.S. also needs to ramp up efforts to address the rampant violence and corruption in the triangle. But it is also clear that agricultural and entrepreneurial development efforts supported by the U.S. — those outlined under the recent rapprochement and perhaps others yet to come — have the potential to spur incremental changes at the most fundamental level and lay the groundwork for safer, more equitable societies over time.
But perhaps the most important point is this: It is far more logical and effective to address humanitarian crises at their point of origin through engagement and targeted aid, rather than attempt to deal with the victims of those crises when they are at our nation’s door.
About the authors
John Block
John R. Block currently serves as a senior policy adviser at Olsson Frank Weeda Terman Matz PC. He was director of agriculture in Illinois from 1977 to 1981 and secretary of the U.S. Agriculture Department from 1981 to 1985, playing a key role in the development of the 1985 farm bill. He was president and chief executive officer at Food Distributors International, formerly known as the National-American Wholesale Grocers’ Association, from 1986 to 2003.
Michael Espy
A. Michael Espy currently works as a private sector attorney, counselor, and agricultural adviser, running his own law and consulting firms Mike Espy PLLC and AE Agritrade Inc. He was formerly U.S. agriculture secretary and a U.S. representative from Mississippi, serving on the budget and agriculture committees. He was also Mississippi’s assistant attorney general, consumer protection director, and assistant secretary of state.
