Fome Zero completes 20 years with a setback in indicators – 01/28/2023 – Market

It’s been 20 years since President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) launched Fome Zero, the starting point of the social policies of the PT era and which promised to end food insecurity in the country. The continuous improvement observed since then has been on a reversal trajectory in recent years, which now challenges the legacy of the program and reinforces the need for changes in current policies.

Zero Hunger was launched in Belém (PA), in a ceremony with Lula, and its first beneficiary was Veida Maria Monteiro, 54. Sheet.

When he started to receive the money, Veida said he was able to buy more and better quality food for the family. The house, according to her, is the same as it was 20 years ago, but is in better condition.

“In the beginning, things were cheaper. The basic basket, for example. Nowadays, everything is expensive. My daughter was born prematurely and had a lack of oxygen. And today her benefit [o BPC, pago para pessoas com deficiência de famílias carentes] goes to her expenses”, he says.

“Therefore [pelo BPC], I no longer receive Bolsa Família, but my husband is self-employed. We have food, but before we could buy more. Nowadays, with R$500, we can’t make it through the month”, said Veida.

The initial focus of Fome Zero was on transferring income so that families could buy food, but this structure is now being questioned by specialists —who demand an integrated set of policies.

“What puts an end to hunger is to create structured programs”, says Adriana Aranha, a researcher at USP (University of São Paulo) who worked on the transformation of Fome Zero into Bolsa Família.

“Hunger does not come alone. It is accompanied by other factors, such as school dropout, domestic violence, drug use, precarious housing, lack of sanitation. It is necessary to combat this whole cycle.”

Less than a year into the program, Lula’s team had already decided that the program needed to be expanded and integrated with other measures so that the fight against poverty in Brazil would generate more results.

The model has been weakened in recent years. One of the main criticisms of specialists in the social field is that the then president Jair Bolsonaro (PL), when creating Auxílio Brasil, transformed Bolsa Família into a program essentially focused on income transfer.

The Ministry of Social Development and Fight against Hunger, recreated by Lula, wants to review this model and recreate Bolsa Família —inspired by the previous model.

The government’s objective is to strengthen policies created in the past, such as the so-called conditionalities —demands made to families so that they continue to receive aid. They involve school attendance of children and adolescents, in addition to up-to-date vaccination.

“This is one of the main changes needed to have a more effective program. On the side of income transfer programs, we moved backwards in terms of design in relation to Bolsa Família”, said economist Marcelo Neri, director of FGV Social .

“There have been advances in Brazil in these 20 years, but in food security there has been a setback. Since 2014, Brazil has been reducing social programs. On the one hand, there is the economic situation, Brazil has grown little, we have inflation and the pandemic more recently. On the other hand, there was also neglect in this area of ​​initiatives to combat food safety.”

The setback is seen in numbers. In 2001 (oldest data in the FAO series), 10.7% of the population lived in a condition of malnutrition —a concept used by the FAO (Food and Agriculture arm of the United Nations) to assemble its Hunger Map and which represents when a person habitually consumes less food than enough to maintain a normal, active and healthy life.

The number successively decreased over the years in the FAO series until it reached 2.5% in 2014. Then, it remained at a lower level between 2015 and 2018 (below this, the exact percentages are not even considered due to the margin of error) .

The situation reversed in 2019, and the series recorded growth for the first time in 18 years — to 2.6% of the population in a situation of malnutrition. In 2020 (most recent data available), there was a new worsening, and the percentage jumped to 4%.

Data from the Penssan Network (Brazilian Research Network on Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security) over recent years, based on another methodology, also point to the seriousness of the situation.

At the beginning of the first Lula administration, 9.5% of the population lived in a condition of severe food insecurity —which Rede Penssan classifies as hunger, as the family claims to eat only one meal a day or reports not eating for a whole day. This rate had dropped to 4.2% in 2013, according to the entity.

The most recent figures, referring to 2021 and 2022, point to 15.5% of the population experiencing severe food insecurity. This represents about 33 million hungry people in the country who say they don’t eat enough in the country.

The Penssan Network data are based on a questionnaire with eight questions, which seek to verify whether the food in the house ended before there was money to buy more or whether a meal had to be skipped due to lack of food.

Based on the answers, families can be mildly, moderately or severely food insecure — the latter indicates that there was not enough food on the table.

Considering the three degrees of food insecurity, the survey indicated that more than half (58.7%) live with the risk of not having enough food.

Statistics were collected between November 2021 and April 2022, from interviews in 12,745 households, in urban and rural areas of 577 municipalities, distributed in 26 states and the Federal District.

FGV also carried out a study on the situation of hunger in Brazil based on information from the Gallup World Poll. According to the data, the share of the population that declares not having money to buy food increased from 20% in 2006 to 36% in 2021.

The survey says that this is the range of the population that said they did not have money to feed themselves or their family at some point in the last 12 months (of each year in which the study was carried out).

Food Security and Food Insecurity were measured by the Ebia (Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale), which is also used by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics).

At the time, then Minister Paulo Guedes (Economy) contested the data. But surveys using different methodologies show an increase in food insecurity in the country.

In addition to surveys that seek to verify the level of food consumption by the population, researchers also tend to use factors linked to income to check the size of the problem. One of the methods used, for example, is to know how much is needed to buy the equivalent of the necessary calories and, from there, verify the percentage of the population below that line.

Lula highlighted the return of the problem in his inauguration speech, when he highlighted the need for all Brazilians to have breakfast, lunch and dinner.

“Having to repeat this commitment today — in view of the increase in poverty and the return of hunger, which we had overcome — is the most serious symptom of the devastation that has imposed on the country in recent years”, he said on January 1, 2023 .

What is it?

Hunger: uncomfortable or painful feeling caused by insufficient calorie consumption. Food deprivation. In the UN report on food security, the term hunger is synonymous with chronic undernourishment.

poor nutrition: abnormal physiological condition caused by inadequate, unbalanced or excessive intake of macronutrients and/or micronutrients. Malnutrition includes malnutrition (chronic and acute childhood malnutrition and vitamin and mineral deficiencies) as well as overweight and obesity.

food insecurity: when people do not have regular and permanent access to food in sufficient quantity and quality.

severe food insecurity: a level of food insecurity severity where, at some point in the year, people have run out of food, gone hungry, and, at the most extreme, gone without food for a day or more. Measured based on the International Food Insecurity Scale (Fies).

underfeeding: condition in which an individual’s usual food intake is insufficient to provide the amount of calories needed to maintain a normal, active and healthy life. The prevalence of undernourishment is used to measure hunger (SDG indicator 2.1.1).

Acute food insecurity: food insecurity found in a specific area at a specific time and of a severity that threatens lives or livelihoods, or both, regardless of causes, context or duration.

moderate food insecurity: a level of severity of food insecurity where people face uncertainty about their ability to obtain food and have been forced to reduce, at certain times of the year, the quality and/or quantity of food they consume due to lack of money or other resources . It refers to the lack of consistent access to food, which decreases the quality of the diet and disrupts normal eating patterns. Measured based on the Fies (International Food Insecurity Scale).

malnutrition: in the definition of the FAO (UN food and agriculture agency), when the usual food consumption is insufficient to provide the energy levels necessary to maintain an active, healthy and normal life.

Hunger Map: tool used by UN agencies, such as FAO and WFP (world food program), to monitor adequate access to food.

Zero Hunger: program created in Lula’s first term and which became Bolsa Família

Sources: Unicef; FAO, federal government