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Every visit to the supermarket has become frustrating for Maritza Ortega. Reducing purchases was no longer an option. When you fill your cart, you end up taking out products while checking prices so you can take the essentials with you. That practice became routine. “When I go to the supermarket I stick to the bare minimum. It’s frustrating walking down the aisles, seeing what I need and having to take things out of the cart,” she says. “Sometimes I think: I can’t pay for this now.”
Ortega, 53, adjusted his budget after the pandemic. With a recent cancer diagnosis, you need to follow a specific diet that includes snacks and fruits that you can’t always afford. You had to choose cheaper, lower quality foods.
What Maritza experiences is repeated in many homes in Puerto Rico: families who stop buying certain foods or depend on low-quality products. Since 2020, the cost of living has steadily increased. In the month of June alone, food products increased by 3.4% compared to the previous year. This translates into precariousness for those who already lived with few resources. A recent study by community feminist organization Taller Salud warns that more than half of adults on the island eat just two meals a day.
The influence of historical policies and the colonial context on Puerto Rico’s food structure has favored imports, which today cover approximately 85% of local consumption. This dependency represents significant vulnerability, leaving the island exposed to supply chain disruptions and climate change.
The origin of imports, inflation and natural disasters motivated Taller Salud to carry out the study Food and Dignity: Community Analysis of Food Insecurity in Puerto Ricostarting from the concrete experiences of hunger. Not just for major disasters like hurricanes Marybut also due to rain, blackouts or low water levels that affect daily life.
“Everything disproportionately affects children, young people and the elderly,” says Tania Rosario, the organization’s executive director. “Before, there was no political awareness of hunger as a public health issue; it emerged after the hurricane Mary and the period of austerity we are experiencing.”
The organization, with more than four decades of experience, collected data through surveys in Loíza and listening sessions in San Germán and Salinas, in the west and south, respectively. While the findings are not representative of all of Puerto Rico, they warn of a particularly vulnerable profile: older women of Afro descent and heads of households.
During the investigation something became clear: the language to talk about hunger was missing. “The majority associate it with extreme malnutrition and do not recognize it in their daily lives,” says Rosario. “There is a taboo, a feeling of shame.” According to economist José Caraballo-Cueto, the Taller Salud study highlights a key point: agricultural self-sufficiency can help the island in times of global crisis.
After the pandemic, a “bottleneck” economy emerged, characterized by delays in global production. “Added to this is the war in Ukraine, a major exporter of agricultural raw materials,” he explains. “All this has reduced global supply and caused prices to skyrocket.”
This increase has been hard for José Cátala, 53 years old and resident of Bayamón. “When eggs increased, I stopped buying them,” he recalls. “I used to buy two packs of meat; now I only buy one. I’ve also cut back on juice and sweets so I can prioritize the essentials.”
In an emergency, she turned to Klarna, an online financing service, to buy food and then pay for it in installments. His experience coincides with a NielsenIQ analysis that found consumer prices rose 1.9%, forcing Puerto Rican families to change their consumption habits due to inflation and import tariffs.
But, according to labor lawyer Rosa Seguí, the urban reality is not comparable to the rural one. “Many people travel from their cities to the metropolitan area to work, facing a lack of public transport and planning,” he warns. “You can’t talk about food insecurity without talking about economic inequality and energy instability. People survive by buying what they can, often of inferior quality.”
Collective work as a response to hunger
Given the need, initiatives are born from and for the territory. One of them is Super Solidario, a community supermarket that opens once a month in Caguas, a town in the center of the island. The project, led by activist Giovanni Roberto, focuses on local production and distribution. “We supplement the food. We receive groceries in supermarkets and from people in the community who donate them ‘as gifts’ to those who need them most,” he explains.
One challenge of the project, in addition to inflation, is the inability to process Nutrition Assistance Program (PAN) card payments, which they see as an obstacle they hope to resolve. “It’s a simple model, but it requires a lot of human hands and investment,” he adds.
Platforms like AgroRecursos have also emerged, which connects local farmers with food buyers and suppliers directly and fairly. Its food safety analyst, Crystal Díaz, explains that the lack of coordination between producers and consumers generates waste and lost opportunities. “AgroRecursos allows you to conclude deals without intermediaries. It is a collaborative space where information on availability, prices and market needs is shared,” he says.
Both projects agree on one point: the lack of coordination and support from the government. The Taller Salud study recommends updating official data on hunger – the latest is from 2013 – and checking the prices of the basic basket. “It is irresponsible to legislate with such obsolete data,” warns Rosario.
At Super Solidario, community surveys reveal that people seek quality in their products and the project works to maintain affordable prices. Next year they plan to publish a book documenting their model for replication in other cities.
AgroRecursos’ goal is to strengthen the local value chain, a critical aspect in the face of global inflation and import dependence. “We have capable farmers, fertile lands and interested consumers. What is missing is coordination, infrastructure and the will to invest,” emphasizes Díaz.
Meanwhile, Maritza continues to adjust her purchases to the food-damaging blackouts. “I bought a freezer small and gas for cooking. Either that, or we kept throwing away food every time the power went out,” he says. “This isn’t about living comfortably, it’s about adjusting every expense so that it’s sufficient.”
