UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations on Tuesday rang alarm over a food crisis in the Central American Dry Corridor, a tropical dry forest region on the Pacific Coast.

Subsistence farmers and some larger-scale farming operations in the Dry Corridor have lost as much as half to three-quarters of their crops because of irregular weather conditions, including high temperatures, below-average rainfall and long dry spells, said Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Humanitarian partners are concerned that these significant losses may severely affect people's access to food and increase the risk of malnutrition, he said.

To make things worse, it is the second year in a row that farmers in this region experience poor first-season harvests.

Last year's drought led to the loss of 280,000 hectares of bean and maize in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua and affected food security for more than 2 million people, he noted.

The Central American Dry Corridor extends from southern Mexico to Panama. El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua have been the hardest-hit in recent years. Enditem

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