The results of a survey carried out in December 2020 by the Rede Brasileira em Soberania e Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional (Rede PENSSAN – Brazilian Research Network on Food and Nutrition Sovereignty and Security), with support from ActionAid, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Ibirapitanga and Oxfam, were recently published. This survey, titled “Inquérito Nacional sobre Insegurança Alimentar no Contexto da Pandemia da Covid-19 no Brasil” (National Survey on Food Insecurity in the Context of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Brazil), presents a new map of hunger in Brazil. The country’s economic, political and health crisis has brought us to alarming numbers.

Food security, in short, is broad, regular and permanent access to food in adequate quantity and quality; it is when an individual does not need to give up other things in order to buy food for their family’s daily needs. There is also the opposite concept: food insecurity, which can be classified as mild, moderate or severe. The latter characterizes the condition of hunger, as established by EBIA – Escala Brasileira de Insegurança Alimentar (Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale). This scale has been applied by the Brazilian Government since 2004.

To measure food insecurity in the midst of the pandemic, Rede PENSSAN applied the EBIA in December 2020, asking families about their food consumption in the 3 months prior to the interview. The results show that the degree of food insecurity increased sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 2,180 households were interviewed across the country’s five regions, in both urban and rural areas – which constitutes a representative probability sample of the Brazilian population, thus allowing the results to be compared with previous surveys. Of these households, only 44.8% are food secure. This means that 55.2%, about 117 million Brazilians, are food insecure, without full and permanent access to food. Among them, 19 million Brazilians (9%) are in a severe situation – characterizing hunger. In other words, 1 in every 10 Brazilians is going hungry!

Since 2004, many social actions and policies were implemented to reduce food insecurity in Brazil, culminating in 2014 with Brazil’s removal from the UN (United Nations) World Hunger Map, a fact much celebrated by CONSEA – Conselho Nacional de Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional (National Council for Food and Nutrition Security). At the time, the Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD – National Household Sample Survey) carried out in 2013 identified the lowest level of severe food insecurity in Brazil since the EBIA was first applied: about 4% of the population. Later, in 2018, the Pesquisa de Orçamento Familiar (POF – Household Budget Survey) found that 36% of households had some degree of food insecurity. What we see is that, in just over 2 years, there has been a significant increase in the number of Brazilians going hungry; the 2020 figures exceed those recorded at the beginning of the previous decade. The current result shows the acceleration of food insecurity in Brazil, which had already been rising even before the pandemic took hold, due to economic instability and the dismantling of food security public policies, such as the abolition and later re-creation of CONSEA.

In terms of regions, the North of the country has the highest rate of severe food insecurity: 18.1%; practically 1 in every 5 people is going hungry. Next is the Northeast, with 13.8%. The Center-West has 6.9%. The South and Southeast have the lowest rate, 6%. The family composition of respondents was also analyzed: households headed by women are more likely to be food insecure. The same occurs with ethnic issues: households inhabited by citizens who self-identify as Black (preto) and brown (pardo) are also in a more vulnerable situation. In addition, aspects related to educational attainment also strongly affect the food security rate. Families whose per capita income is at least 1 minimum wage do not show either moderate or severe food insecurity. This, however, does not exclude them from mild food insecurity: these are families/citizens who, due to the crisis caused by the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic, lost their jobs or no longer have a guaranteed income, and may have ended up opting for cheaper, easily accessible foods of low nutritional quality, which nonetheless leads to some degree of malnutrition, since in the future they will be more prone to obesity and diabetes, among other diseases directly related to nutrition, known as Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases.

Access to water, so-called water insecurity, was also measured in the survey. In 2020, 40.2% of households in the Northeast and 38.4% in the North region lack access to drinking water, directly affecting these families’ diets as well as their sanitary conditions, which are so important to reinforce in times of Coronavirus spread.

Government actions such as emergency aid are essential to ensure that a large share of Brazilian families remain food secure. Ordinary citizens are sometimes moved by these numbers but do not know how to contribute. Seeking out support actions organized by civil society (NGOs, residents’ associations, activist collectives, among others) is a first way to help, even without relying on your own income. There are, for example, “solidarity apps” that convert small actions and/or clicks into food donations. Instituto Fome Zero, an initiative founded in October 2020 by Professor José Graziano da Silva, former Director-General of FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), addresses this deplorable situation in which Brazilian society finds itself. We at Instituto Comida do Amanhã are partners of Instituto Fome Zero and believe that food and nutrition security in Brazil must be tackled seriously. With the end of emergency aid, the numbers are likely to worsen, and more families will be affected by hunger. We hope that the presentation of these alarming data will result in more robust initiatives to reduce food insecurity in Brazil.

References

VIGISAN 2021. Inquérito Nacional sobre Insegurança Alimentar no Contexto da Pandemia da Covid-19 no Brasil. Survey carried out by Rede Brasileira em Soberania e Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional. Available at: olheparaafome.com.br PNAD 2014. Pesquisa Nacional de Amostra de Domicílios: síntese de indicadores 2013, carried out by Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE). Available at: biblioteca.ibge.gov.br POF 2018. Pesquisa de Orçamentos Familiares 2017-2018: primeiros resultados, carried out by Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE). Available at: biblioteca.ibge.gov.br

About the author

Alexia Hoppe is a Food Engineer and holds a PhD in Business Administration. She is an independent researcher and works as a collaborator on projects related to the food industry and agribusiness in Brazil; her main research areas are global value chains, marketing, innovation and certifications, food waste and sustainability.