Hunger in Brazil Part 2

Solidarity against hunger

Brazil has hundreds of entities to fight hunger, of all kinds. From income generation program to the adoption of poor families by paying an allowance. An invisible network of solidarity waiting for accessions.

But why are people not in the habit of helping those who live close to home? You don’t have to go very far. The Citizenship Action Against Hunger alone has more than 1,000 committees spread across the country. In addition to accessing the website, you can also call 0800-202000.

The United Nations Children’s Fund, Unicef, has a list of entities in need of permanent assistance. You can call Unicef ​​in Brazil: 0800-618407.

The Pastoral of the Child, a partner of UNICEF and Globo Network in the project Child Hope, has been coordinated by Zilda Arns, a Brazilian nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Ministry is already working in more than 30,000 communities, saving children from malnutrition.

“The Brazilian is extremely supportive, having seen the Pastoral da Criança, which achieved a human solidarity of 150 thousand volunteers”, celebrates Zilda. The telephone number of the national headquarters of Pastoral da Criança, in Curitiba, is (41) 336-0250.

The Aval, the UN arm for Food and Agriculture says that the performance of the company is key, but eradicating hunger, only if we improve the distribution of wealth.

Brazil is the runner-up in the world in terms of income concentration, we are second only to Sierra Leone, an African country. The Institute of Applied Economic Research, linked to the Ministry of Planning, says that there are still less hungry people.

Doctor Flávio Valente coordinates 87 units that fight hunger and are dedicated to overcoming common behavior. “The acceptance that exists on the part of society that children still die of hunger in our country and that this is considered natural, we are all responsible for helping this situation. Only when we no longer accept this will we have the courage to make the necessary political decisions to solve a problem that is not that difficult to solve ”.

The size of hunger in Brazil

Calculating the number of people subject to hunger in Brazil is a very complicated problem. There is no consensus on the size of the affected population. It all depends on the measures and criteria used to define who makes up this contingent.

The last comprehensive and quality survey of the population’s access to food and other consumer goods was the 1974/75 National Study on Family Expenditure (Endef). From their data, it was possible to assess that 42% of Brazilian families (8 million families), or about 50% of the population at the time, equivalent to 46.5 million people, consumed fewer calories than necessary.

Several surveys were conducted based on income indicators – an indirect way of inferring the needy population. The assumption, in these cases, is that insufficient income is the main factor that leads people to not eat adequate food. Thus, a poverty line is defined below which income would be inadequate to meet basic needs – including food – and the number of people below it is calculated.

Evidently, even with an income below their consumption needs, people are able to feed themselves. In large cities, there is an immense number of indigents who, although they cannot afford to buy food, are able to feed themselves thanks to the charity of others. Ignoring this situation could result in an overestimation of hunger data. However, it appears that these individuals live in a risky situation, as they do not eat regularly and, more importantly, do not eat in a dignified manner.

In view of the difficulties in measuring indigence or poverty in Brazil, the Zero Hunger Program, a synthesis of the Lula government’s policy to fight hunger, sought to estimate the number of people who are hungry in the country based on the micro-data of the National Sample Survey of Households (PNAD), from IBGE, 1999, later updated by the 2001 edition.

What is the Zero Hunger Program?

The Zero Hunger Program is a set of actions that were and are still being implemented by the Federal Government. The objective is to promote actions to ensure food and nutritional security for Brazilians. The initiatives involve all ministries, the three spheres of government (federal, state and municipal) and society.

Ensuring food and nutritional security for the population of a country means providing all citizens with access to decent food with sufficient regularity, quality and quantity. The Extraordinary Ministry of Food Security and Fight against Hunger (MESA), directly linked to the Presidency of the Republic, was created to articulate and implement the various actions provided for in the Program.

Zero Hunger tries to fight hunger and ensure food and nutrition security by tackling the structural causes of poverty. This requires another model of development, one that creates conditions for overcoming poverty and does not just compensate for its problems. To achieve this goal, Zero Hunger has three axes:

Combating hunger and poverty requires a combination of structural, specific and local policies.

Structural policies are understood to be the implementation of actions that tackle the causes of hunger and poverty. Programs to generate jobs and income, increase the minimum wage, incentive for the first job, recovery of housing policy, incentive to family farming and intensification of agrarian reform are some of the actions planned to be implemented.

• Elaboration of the National Agrarian Reform Plan;
• Emergency plan for the settlement of encamped families;
• Recovery of precarious settlements.
• Expansion of rural credit services for family farmers;
• Financing for family farming in the off-season;
• Advance purchase of production.

Expansion of access and quality of education

• Literacy of young adults;
• Scholarship Program
• Employment generation program
• Financing for housing and sanitation for low-income families;
• Microcredit expansion programs;
• First job;
• Encouraging rural tourism.