RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The national survey on ‘Food insecurity in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil’, conducted by the Brazilian Research Network on Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security (Rede Penssan), indicates that in the last months of last year, 19 million Brazilians went hungry and more than half of the households in the country faced some degree of food insecurity.
The unprecedented survey estimates that 55.2% of Brazilian households, or the corresponding 116.8 million people, lived with some degree of food insecurity at the end of 2020, and 9% of them experienced severe food insecurity, i.e., went hungry, in the three months before the collection period, made in December 2020, in 2,180 households.
According to the researchers, the number of 19 million Brazilians who went hungry in the pandemic of the new coronavirus is double what was recorded in 2009 and corresponds to the 2004 level.
The survey was made in partnership with Action Aid Brazil, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Brazil (FES Brazil), and Oxfam Brazil, with support from the Ibirapitanga Institute.
Data collection took place between December 5 and 24, 2020, in all five Brazilian regions, covering both rural and urban areas, in the period when the emergency aid granted by the federal government to 68 million Brazilians, initially worth R$600 per month, had been reduced to R$300 per month.
Restitution
The survey brings some indications and suggestions of actions to be taken by public authorities. According to what the president of Rede Penssan, Renato Maluf, told Agência Brasil today (6), the most obvious one is to restore the emergency aid, “at least with the same value as last year, that is, R$600.”
Maluf said he believes that if the survey were done now, the data could be worse. “It is crucial that the emergency aid is resumed at a significant value. For Renato Maluf, the amount being given this week cannot be considered a public policy. The amounts vary from R$375 (for families headed by women) to R$150 (for those living alone).
In the evaluation of the president of Rede Penssan, the picture revealed by the survey is the result of the pandemic and the lack of policies to improve the situation. “It is necessary to ensure that school meals are offered at the same standard and with the same amplitude as when schools were functioning regularly,” he suggested. For this, the federal, state, and municipal governments should not back down on the supply of school meals; as has been happening in several places, he pointed out.
In this same topic, he said of the need to resume the support program for the acquisition of food from family agriculture, as well as the programs that were directed to the country’s semi-arid region, especially to the populations of the northeastern semi-arid region, with the construction of cisterns and other initiatives to support those families.
The study makes it clear that hunger rates are higher in rural than in urban areas. Serious food insecurity reached 12% of households in rural areas, against 8.5% in urban areas, with greater vulnerability for less access to drinking water. The proportion of households classified as severely food insecure in rural areas doubles when there is no adequate water availability for food production, increasing from 21.1% to 44.2%.
The face of hunger
Renato Maluf pointed out that the survey “puts a face to hunger”. For example, the households where the person in charge is a woman present severe food insecurity, that is, hunger, much higher than the national average.
He argued that this insecurity is even greater if this responsible person is a woman of black or brown color and low education. “Therefore, gender, skin color, and schooling are determinants of the occurrence of hunger in households.”
According to the survey, there is hunger in 11.1% of households headed by women, and another 15.9% face moderate food insecurity. When a reference person is a man, the numbers are lower: hunger reaches 7.7% of the households, and another 7.7% are in the situation of moderate food insecurity.
Regarding skin color, it was verified that black or brown people face severe food insecurity in 10.7% of the households. The percentage is 7.5% in homes of people of white skin color. Moderate food insecurity also reveals the same imbalance: 13.7% for black or brown skin color and 8.9% for people of white skin color.
In the North and Northeast, hunger reaches 18.1% and 13.8% of households, respectively, against less than 7% in the other regions of the country, exceeding the average of 9% for the whole country.
Renato Maluf called attention to the fact that, in absolute numbers, people who live with hunger in the Southeast are the same as in the Northeast. “It is the same 7 million people. The rich Southeast has the same number of hungry people as the Northeast. Only, it’s smaller as a percentage of the population.”
During the pandemic, food insecurity also affected the non-poor, with per capita family income (per individual) higher than one minimum wage, the research found.
The proportion of households experiencing mild food insecurity rose from 20.7 percent in 2018 to 34.7 percent two years later, showing that the middle class was not spared from the pandemic’s effects. “We are talking about informal work, precarious work, low-paid work. It is a worsening situation that is not synonymous with hunger, but is synonymous with compromised nutrition.”
In Maluf’s evaluation, Brazil needs this kind of survey to be done with agility and frequency. He intends to propose to supporters a new round in the second half of this year to monitor the country’s hunger situation and how it has evolved.
ActionAid
Partner of Rede Penssan in the research, ActionAid, alerted to the seriousness of the data disclosed and to the urgency of the immediate implementation of essential measures to overcome hunger in the country.
The non-governmental organization (NGO) Policy and Programs analyst Francisco Menezes, stressed that a process of intense acceleration of hunger was revealed, with growth now at 27.6% per year between 2018 and 2020, compared to 8% per year between 2013 and 2018.
“We reach the end of 2020 with 19 million people in a situation of severe food insecurity, but we can assume that now in the first quarter of this year, the situation has already worsened even more. It is urgent to contain this escalation. This issue cannot be naturalized as a fatality on which one cannot intervene,” he said.
Francisco Menezes reiterated that an emergency requires immediate action from the public powers, with equal engagement from society. He also mentioned that after significant advances in 2004, 2009, and 2013, research by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) for 2018 already revealed a rapid regression, when 10.3 million people went hungry in the country.
Ministry
Sought by Agência Brasil, the Ministry of Citizenship informed that the federal government has been working “systematically” to strengthen social programs and establish a protection network for the most vulnerable population through its press office.
In 2020 alone, more than R$365 billion were invested in social assistance policies, ranging from early childhood to senior citizens, executed by the portfolio. According to the ministry, initiatives such as the Bolsa Família Program (PBF), the Continuous Cash Benefit (BPC), and the Emergency Aid have reduced extreme poverty in Brazil by 80%.
He also revealed that the central government estimates to reach around 40 million families with emergency aid this year. “It is the commitment of this administration to meet the largest number of citizens, ensuring a minimum income for this portion of the population, while, with fiscal responsibility, respecting the budget limit established by Constitutional Amendment No. 109/2021, amounting to R$44 billion,” the note said.
In 2020, 68.2 million families were directly supported by emergency aid, or the equivalent of 118.7 million people, representing 56.1% of the Brazilian population. The investment made between April and December 2020 reached R$295 (US$51) billion. “This is the largest benefit ever created in Brazil, equivalent to more than ten years of investment in Bolsa Família,” the ministry pointed out.
Aiming to reduce the economic impacts of covid-19, the ministry has also structured a system for donating food baskets to vulnerable families and those living in places in a state of emergency or public calamity under the Food Distribution Action (ADA).
Source: Agência Brasil