The rainy season has watered crops in Guatemala, but relief workers and food experts say the rainfall has done little to help the country recover from a major drought that's aggravated malnutrition rates and already claimed dozens of lives this year.

``It's not a hurricane, but it is an emergency -- a slow-moving emergency,'' said Alejandro Lopez-Chicheri, a spokesman for the World Food Program. ``The harvest season is happening now, but the crops aren't going to be good for sustenance farmers, and that reduces the amount of food they have.''

Concerns over worsening malnutrition rates in the Central American nation come as nutrition experts and others meet to commemorate World Food Day on Friday, a day aimed at raising awareness of hunger around the globe.

Those same experts are using the annual event to highlight just how much the combination of high food prices and the global economic crisis have pushed the number of hungry people worldwide to historic levels. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, more than one billion people are undernourished. A slowdown in remittances has also aggravated hunger.

Just as Haiti experienced food-related riots last year, Guatemala is seeing hunger problems of its own. Already a perennial concern in Guatemala, malnutrition has been especially visible in the country's southeastern region on the Pacific Coast -- also known as the dry corridor. With El Niño warming the Pacific waters, Guatemala has seen the worst drought in 30 years, which destroyed staple crops, exacerbated hunger, and claimed the lives of more than a dozen children in July alone.

More than 460 people have died of malnutrition so far this year, government officials say. UNICEF reports that almost half of Guatemala's children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition, among the highest rate in the world.

The drought also is affecting other parts of Central America. The heart of Honduras and the Pacific coast of Nicaragua are suffering from below-average rainfall, causing insufficient soil moisture.

`PUBLIC CALAMITY'

After the children's deaths in July, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom declared the problem a ``public calamity'' and joined the United Nations in an urgent appeal for food aid. Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador and others responded by shipping in food supplies.

U.S. businesses have also done their part.

On Wednesday, the Walmart Foundation announced it had given $100,000 to the World Food Program to stem acute and chronic malnutrition. The donation targets 31,000 people.

But as much as relief agencies and others try to help, they still worry that sustenance farmers won't see their crops grow enough in the coming harvest season.

``We are facing a worse-case scenario in two, three months time,'' said Carlos Cardenas, country director for Guatemala for Save the Children, an international agency that supports children.

Cardenas and others say that Guatemala has seen significantly less rainfall than normal since July. In July 2008, Guatemala experienced excess rainfall of 94 percent, compared to a deficit of 17 percent in July, meteorologists say. In August of last year, an unusually wet rainy season, the country saw excess rainfall of 118 percent, compared to a 13 percent deficit this year.

September was no better.

``It was the worst month of rain for September that we have ever experienced,'' said Cesar George, Guatemala's director of meteorology.

Aid agencies expect the sparse showers to last through November -- a few months after the harvest season for maize and beans is supposed to begin and sustenance farmers start sowing. With less rainfall, farmers are certain to see smaller crops and that means smaller reserves until the hunger season begins in April.

The United States Agency for International Development says that if the conditions are not properly addressed, the food crisis could spread to other regions and last until August or September 2010.

``We re getting close to where the worse-case scenario could be a reality,'' Cardenas said.

Food experts say the outcome could turn dire. ``The options are: People riot, as we saw in Haiti, migrate as we see daily, or die as we've seen in parts of Guatemala,'' said Lopez-Chicheri of World Food Program. ``We need help now.''

Miami Herald special correspondent Ezra Fieser contributed reporting.

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