With the overall aim of reducing hunger at the household level, the EC-FAO Programme has contributed to organizing a regional workshop in Mexico. The workshop aimed at harmonizing the scale used to measure and monitor household food insecurity in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

It is important to have tools for measuring household food insecurity accurately at a low cost. In Latin America, the Latin American and Caribbean Household Food Security Scale (ELCSA) is being promoted. The validity of ELCSA is being evaluated based on results from its use in national surveys and research projects. The results have shown consistency at different levels and comparison between countries suggests the validity on a regional scale.