Feature ArticleFrom Hunger to Climate: Interlinked Priorities By Fernanda Martinelli Luís Inácio Lula da Silva takes office on Sunday, January 1, 2023 with the main commitment to end hunger in Brazil once again. In his first speech on October 30, 2022 as president-elect, Lula reiterated the centrality of the fight against hunger and the commitment to ensure that all Brazilians are able to eat at least three meals a day. This was also the priority in his first two terms as president between 2003 and 2010. In his inauguration speech 20 years ago, on January 1, 2003, Lula made a statement that became famous, saying that if at the end of his mandate all Brazilians had the possibility to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, he would have fulfilled his life's mission. Brazil was briefly off the so-called hunger map as a result of his policies. Currently, the re-articulation of this commitment as a government priority means even more than twenty years ago and connects the end of hunger in Brazil to the future of the climate around the world. Historically, Brazil has always dealt with the tragedy of having a large part of its population at risk of food and nutritional insecurity, defined as the lack of regular access to quality food in sufficient quantity, based on health-promoting eating practices. During the first two terms of the Lula government, this was the priority. The success of programs such as Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) and public food security policies were recognized by the United Nations, and the Brazilian approach became recognized worldwide. In 2014, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) released a report indicating that Brazil had left the World Hunger Map. From 2002 to 2013, the population of Brazilians considered to be undernourished fell by 82%. In the Bolsonaro government, hunger returned. In June 2022, the Brazilian Research Network on Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security (PENSSAN Network) announced that 33.1 million people faced hunger, 14 million more in comparison to 2020, representing more than 15 percent of the population. This situation constitutes a picture equivalent to what the country experienced during the period of its military dictatorship between 1964-1985. Currently, in 37.8 percent of households with children there is a lack of food, and many people go days without having anything to eat. In July 2022, FAO also released a new survey, according to which more than 60 million Brazilians suffer from food insecurity. In the Brazilian context, the return of the aggravated situation of hunger means a profound failure of specific public policies and the degeneration of the socioeconomic situation. It is important to note that this is not the result of food shortages. In the same period, Brazil set a record for agricultural production, mainly soybeans and corn for export, but this production is not aimed at feeding people, but at producing commodities, especially for animal feed. Moreover, the Bolsonaro government did not ignore this sector of the economy, but rather acted against international standards for the quality of food production by releasing the use of more than 1,800 new pesticides, almost half of which are banned in the European Union. This represents a reversal of the integrated strategy of improving the quality of agricultural production and actively combating hunger adopted by the Lula da Silva (2003-2010) and Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016) governments. The Bolsonaro administration, continuing policies set down by the interim term of President Temer (2017-2018), dismantled the network of programs built in the previous decade and a half. The main federal body on the subject, the National Council for Food and Nutritional Security (CONSEA), was extinguished in 2019. CONSEA was responsible for controlling and acting in the formulation, monitoring, and evaluation of the National Food Security Policy and S Nutritional System, which articulated at the three levels of government (municipal, state and federal) in conjunction with civil society organizations, such as social movements and NGOs, in the review of federal programs to prepare the Plan to Combat Hunger and Misery. Substantial cuts in the budget also made it impossible for programs such as the Food Acquisition Program (PAA) and the National School Feeding Program (PNAE) to function effectively, which encouraged the production of millions of tons of food by sectors of family agriculture and the acquisition of food produced through sustainable agricultural for inclusion in school lunches at thousands of Brazilian schools. Providing meals at school plays a central role in the food security of children and adolescents and in preventing school dropouts in Brazil, so that budget cuts for these programs have a structural and long-term impact. In addition, the deactivation of public policies that maintained key food stocks, such as rice, to prevent inflation caused by international market volatility also seriously affected the country’s lower and middle classes. The disappearance of such policies has not only affected people living in cities, but also created more food insecurity in the countryside. The economic incentives of the Bolsonaro government, the deregulation of pesticides, the disappearance of food acquisition policies, and the disappearance of credit for family farming generated hunger in the countryside, and concentrated wealth in large agribusiness, which relied on the export of their products using low-labor intensive production and was largely ideologically allied with Bolsonarism. Above all, it is a sector highly involved in the deforestation of the Amazon and other central biomes and is against measures that can prevent and mitigate climate change. The challenge, apparently already perceived by Lula, involves these multiple levels and approaches. Food and nutritional security are based on a productive design that can represent a sustainable alternative to large-scale agribusiness and, at the same time, demand short-term solutions aimed at stabilizing prices and access to healthy, good-quality food. President Lula's first political nods after his electoral victory indicate this direction, namely, his trip to COP-27 to address climate change and the fight against hunger. Fighting for the end of hunger in Brazil in a sustainable and lasting way means a new alignment of incentives for balanced and healthy food production, access policies, and a reorganized labor market that gradually provides social autonomy to populations chronically at risk of falling back into food insecurity. This means including labor markets and forms of production that are environmentally sustainable and immediately replacing the current pattern of environmental irresponsibility, as well as starting a race to mitigate the effects already produced by acute poverty, malnutrition, and hunger, as well as the dismantling social policies in education and health by the Bolsonaro government. Four years may not be enough for the size of these challenges, and, therefore acting quickly is essential. In response to this situation, the transitional team of the government has already promoted intense, successful political articulations for the approval of a constitutional amendment that made the continuity of social policies possible, announced the recreation of the Ministry of Social Development, and sought an arrangement that reflects the need for full integration among productive policies, the fight against hunger, and climate change. In conclusion, the presidential priority to fight hunger is not just a reform, a political adjustment, or a government priority, but the great national cause that links this fundamental issue with that of those fighting for the same goals around the world, all in the pursuit of a better shared future. Fernanda Martinelli is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Brasília (UnB) and a WBO Research Fellow.
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