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How Brazil conquered hunger - and why it is coming back now

2021-08-15T20:22:50.226Z


The corona pandemic has made hunger a major problem in Brazil again. Fighting it doesn't just mean giving everyone more calories. 


The corona pandemic has made hunger a major problem in Brazil again.

Fighting it doesn't just mean giving everyone more calories. 

  • As a result of the corona pandemic, more and more people in Brazil are suffering from hunger.


  • This will continue to have an impact in the years to come.


  • Fighting hunger has also become more difficult because it no longer looks like it used to.

Brazil - Whole families sifting through rubbish for leftover food or items that can be sold and long queues at the entrances to soup kitchens - this is what

hunger

looks like

on the streets

of

Brazil

. At the beginning of the 2000s, Brazil was the land of hope - economic upswing and intelligent social policy lifted almost 50 million Brazilians out of

extreme poverty

.

Brazil took a major milestone in 2014 - for the first time, the country was no longer on the hunger map of the United Nations World Food Program.

This meant that less than five percent of the population suffered from malnutrition at the time.

In just ten years, the country had cut the number of

undernourished people

by 80 percent.

Brazil celebrated this victory over hunger.

The successful campaign against hunger quickly became a showcase project around the world. 

Brazil in the corona crisis: hunger is back

However, since the pandemic * at the latest, the situation has not been so rosy - more than half of Brazilians do not have secure access to

sufficient food.

"Hunger has returned to Brazil," says ex-President Dilma Rouseff.

Around nine percent of the people, that is 19 million, are currently seriously suffering from hunger - this means that Brazil will probably appear on the next world hunger map again.

"We see that the numbers continue to rise and that the safety nets are increasingly used," says Thiago Lima.

He is researching hunger at the University of Paraíba in the north of the country.

This fact is particularly sad given that Brazil exports huge amounts of food at the same time. 

"The cost of hunger is much greater than the investment needed to avoid it."

- Daniel Balaban, @WFP Brazil.

https://t.co/YiDDjzlgP0

- The New Humanitarian (@newhumanitarian) August 2, 2021

In science, hunger is measured in three stages.

People are affected

by slight

food

insecurity when they have doubts about whether they can buy enough food.

If people had to adjust their eating habits by switching to cheaper alternatives or by skipping some meals, this is called

moderate hunger

.

“For example, mothers let their children sleep a little longer so that their first meal is lunch rather than breakfast,” explains the political scientist Lima.

When people actually have nothing to eat, it is called

extreme hunger

Brazil: Economic recession and little public money

The north and northeast of Brazil are hardest hit by hunger. Many regions are much more rural here, in the past droughts and crop failures have repeatedly led to food shortages. After the progress made in the early 2000s, there has

been an increase in hunger

since the start of the

economic recession in

2014.

The economic downturn and the pandemic * are not solely to blame for the fact that hunger is rising again in the Latin American country. Many researchers and NGOs have also criticized the country for scaling back its financial efforts to fight hunger. At the beginning of the 2000s, around 500 million reais were spent annually on Brazil's national nutrition program, the Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos, but in 2019 it was only 50 million.

The right-wing extremist

President Jair Bolsonaro *

has repeatedly denied in the past few years that hunger is a challenge in Brazil and described the relevant investigations as a "lie". Added to this is the current high inflation - the price of staple foods in particular has recently risen in Brazil.

The

closed schools

are also problematic for poor people in Brazil

: Thanks to the large-scale campaigns in the early 2000s, pupils in most schools in the country normally get two meals.

"For many children these are the only real meals," says Thiago Lima.

Some schools delivered meals during the pandemic or offered the option for parents to pick up groceries there.

In many places, however, the meals were simply canceled without replacement.

"The pandemic is not the cause of hunger, but it has made it worse," Lima summarizes.

Expert: "There is a lot of hidden hunger in Brazil"

There

has been a lot of progress

in the

fight against hunger around

the world in recent years - fewer and fewer people are suffering from extreme hunger.

Thiago Lima also emphasizes that the way in which hunger is measured is very limited: In many studies, hunger is only measured in terms of the intake of too few calories.

However, that does not go far enough.

“There is a

lot of hidden hunger

in Brazil,

” he says.

"People cannot afford nutrient-rich foods".

Instead of healthy foods, they therefore resort to sugary or fatty foods.

In the fight against hunger, according to Lima, access to sufficient nutrients, such as vitamins and minerals, must be considered.

Hunger, in this broader sense, has never disappeared in Brazil and is a huge problem.

One thing that poses major challenges for NGOs and political decision-makers: In many parts of the world, starving people are no longer children with bloated bellies and thin legs, but people who are overweight who have no access to

high-quality food

.

“That does not fulfill the human right to food,” says scientist Lima.

But it is much more difficult to convey that fat people who have no opportunity to buy fresh and healthy food suffer from hunger than children whose bones are sticking out.

Immediate measures against hunger in Brazil: just treating symptoms

As an immediate measure

, more so-called “Cestas Basicas” (baskets with basic food)

are currently being distributed in

Brazil

. In the long term, however, this is not an efficient measure in the fight against hunger, says scientist Thiago Lima. From his point of view, it is more important to increase the household income of affected families as a first step, for example through immediate payments. Then it would have to be ensured that more people get formal employment.

"On average, a formally employed person ensures that a family of four does not go hungry," explains Lima. In addition, small food producers and farmers need to be strengthened - this on the one hand safeguards food production, but at the same time protects farmers from

hunger and poverty

. For many of these points there are actually initiatives and institutions in Brazil, but they need to be strengthened again.

Failure to do so could result in serious, long-term consequences for hunger.

On the one hand, this has psychological and health consequences.

But that's not all: "The rise in hunger increases the formation of slums," says Lima.

When more people are hungry, they tend to move to the big cities more often to find work of some kind.

Often, however, this does not succeed and people end up on the street or in

slums

instead

.

 Global Hunger Index: Countries with the highest proportion of undernourished populations worldwide in 2020

  • 1. Chad


    2. Timor-Leste


    3. Madagascar


    4. Haiti


    5. Mozambique


    6. Liberia


    7. Sierra Leone


    8. Lesotho


    9. Afghanistan


    10. Nigeria

  • * Source: The index is compiled annually by Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide.

    The hunger index includes malnutrition, child underweight and child mortality.  

Lisa Kuner

* Merkur.de

is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2021-08-15

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