Privileged access to natural resources has allowed Latin America and the Caribbean to become a world leader in food production. This advantage, however, is not reflected in the diet of its inhabitants. While some do not even consume the minimum amount of calories to survive, a significant number of people have access mainly to ultra-processed foods that are high in salt, fat and sugar, with disastrous consequences for public health in terms of overweight and obesity.

As mentioned in other issues in this series, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated some of the weaknesses and deficiencies of our societies. It has also shown that agriculture is an indispensable activity, producing essential goods. In that sense, the pandemic represents a huge opportunity to change, to start taking actions that will allow us to build a more modern, resilient and environmentally and people-friendly agriculture in rural areas. Nations have given this aspiration a name: rebuild and transform. 

Fostering a reconstruction process that seeks to transform structures, habits and dynamics threatening the sustainability of the planet requires action to be taken as soon as possible, since the situation in which we will find ourselves in the post-pandemic world will undoubtedly be very different from the one we had by the end of 2019, posing even greater challenges than those we had at the end of last year.

Therefore, in this issue, we wanted to make a preliminary overview of the effects of this crisis on the regional agrifood system and list some initiatives and ideas on what to do to recover and transform the regional agrifood systems, with the aim of improving the social and economic conditions of the people living in the region, in complete harmony with nature.