January 25, 2021
According to a food security researcher in Brazil, the scenario for combating hunger changed in 2015, just as the coup against President Dilma Rousseff was brewing.
This trend has escalated under at the hands of Jair Bolsonaro’s government. According to one of the creators of Fome Zero and one of Brazil’s leading researchers in food security, retired professor of the Institute of Economics at Unicamp, Walter Belik, documents how the current federal administration is carrying out a deliberate policy of dismantling initiatives against hunger in the country.
Public policies implemented under the PT governments, such as Fome Zero and Bolsa Família, according to Belik, paved the way for Brazil to exit the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Hunger Map in 2014.
In 2015, however, when political forces – internal and external – were already forming to hit former Rousseff administration the scenario changed. Inflation soared, social benefits were abandoned and food security policies were dismantled, especially under the Bolsonaro government.
According to the Penssan Network survey in 2018, the country returned to the FAO Hunger Map and, in 2020, registered 55.2 percent of the population was living in food insecurity, according to Penssan Network survey.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano