Domingo Tamupsis works on a Guatemalan sugar plantation for a company that exports bioethanol to fill the fuel tanks of U.S. cars. He has a job as a harvester, six days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day, in a country that is a major producer of food for global markets. His settlement in the fertile Pacific coastal area is surrounded by industrial farms, but he earns so little that his family can't afford to eat every day. Some days he survives his shift of hard physical labor on nothing but the mangoes that drop from trees by the roadside.

His wife, Marina, is 23-years-old, but is so slight she might be mistaken for a young teenager. She has two daughters, Yeimi aged six and Jessica aged two. Jessica is the size of the average European one-year-old, her distended stomach a sign of chronic malnutrition. When she tries to smile, hollow creases form in her cheeks, betraying her semi-permanent state of hunger.

Last year, Marina gave birth in the eighth month of pregnancy to a stillborn child. She had been ill and hungry throughout, but then felt severe pains one day while making a breakfast of a small corn tortilla for Domingo before he went out to work. She carried on, knowing that if they miss a day on the plantation the men often get fired.

When she finally reached the nearest medical help, a hospital a 45-minute bus ride away, staff told her the baby was dead. They operated and returned the baby's body to her, but she and Domingo had no money for the return bus fare. A compassionate doctor gave them the price of a fare, and a friend in town lent the money for a coffin. So it was that their third child, Marvin Orlando, a brother for their two little girls, came home to be buried.

Guatemala is a prime example, according to a new report by Oxfam, of how the global food system is failing. It predicts that the average price of staple foods will double by 2030. "Spiraling food prices, climate chaos, rising demand on top of a collapsing resource base, and markets rigged against the many in favour of the few" are taking us into a new era of crisis in which more and more people are going hungry, the charity warns.