(In)food safety: Brazil’s new/old reality

Abstract

The objective of the work is to present the panorama of food and nutritional insecurity in Brazil, taking into account the hunger situations experienced by the Brazilian population between 2020 and 2022. That is why we bring the discussion of food insecurity worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic, the return of Brazil on the hunger map, the “social issue” and its expressions. For the construction of descriptive and quantitative information, the database used was published in the I and II National Survey on Food Insecurity in the Context of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Brazil in 2021 and 2022. It was found that around 125.2 million Brazilians suffered from some type of foodinsecurity. As a result of this research, it was found that women who called themselves black or brown, with little education, informal workers, mothers of children under the age of ten were those who suffered most from the impact caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, as they ended up assuming the role of responsibility for supporting their homes and caring for sick victims of the pandemic. Despite the efforts of the government and civil society to mitigate hunger during the pandemic period, direct income transfer programs were not effective, as a large portion of the population was unable to access the benefits due to bureaucracy and lack of information to these people