Hunger is not a new challenge for many Brazilians. But the problem has been heightened during the COVID pandemic. In Heliópolis, São Paulo’s largest favela, pre-pandemic food lines might have attracted three hundred people; now, that number has more than tripled. Brazil has re-entered the World Food Programme’s Hunger Map this year after a seven year reprieve. About nineteen million Brazilians currently face food insecurity, according to the WFP’s Center of Excellence Against Hunger in Brazil.
Inflation is also squeezing the poor. A recent article in Revista de Nutrição concluded “Thirteen of the seventeen Brazilian capitals [saw…] a rise in the prices of natural and minimally processed foods…. a situation that is further aggravated by the restrictions in circulation, which limit the available labor force, but mostly by protectionist policies …that also contribute to rising prices of food items.”
Brazilians were shocked last month by reports of Brazilians scavenging through piles of animal carcasses at a pet food and soap factory. Journalists interviewed a truck driver at the plant, who said, “Before people would come and ask for a piece of bone for their dogs. These days they beg for bones to make food”. The front-page headline of Extra (image above) was “Brazil 2021: The Pain of Hunger.”
With presidential elections approaching, the issue of hunger will be front and center. The Bolsonaro administration has tried to find a way to curb the worst impacts of the crisis. During the first wave of the virus in March of 2020, the government stumbled into a financial emergency relief program that was dubbed “coronavouchers,” distributing an additional R$150 (US$27) to R$375 (US$68) in emergency aid to more than fourteen million families covered by the Bolsa Família conditional cash transfer program nationwide. It is now considering an extension of cash transfers for 17 million families. This has sparked a loud public debate about Brazil’s dire fiscal situation, the possibility of amending the constitutional fiscal cap, the inflation that might result, and the sustainability of a system that pays huge dividends to elites while failing to provide basic sustenance to the most vulnerable. Discussion of the implied tradeoffs between these competing priorities will be central to the coming presidential campaign.
