The Fight against Hunger in Brazil: From Politicization to Indifference

• Author: Lourrene Maffra,Heather Hayes
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X231152905
• Published date: 01 January 2023
• Date: 01 January 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X231152905

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 248, Vol. 50 No. 1, January 2023, 149–164

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X231152905

© 2023 Latin American Perspectives

149

The Fight against Hunger in Brazil

From Politicization to Indifference

by

Lourrene Maffra

Translated by

Heather Hayes

Federal administrations have been addressing the problem of hunger in Brazil since the

days of Lula da Silva. An extensive review of the literature shows that the fight against

hunger reached its highest level of priority during the Lula da Silva administrations (2003–

2010), where it was organized with an institutional structure and seen as an international

model for public policy. Every subsequent government since then has given less attention

to it, ending in the complete neglect of the issue under the Bolsonaro administration.

Governos federais têm abordado o problema da fome no Brasil desde a época de Lula da

Silva. Uma revista exhaustiva da literatura aponta que a luta contra a fome atingiu o seu

apogeu quando lhe foi atribuída máxima proridade na agenda política federal durante os

governos Lula da Silva (2003–2010) onde era organizada com base numa estrutura insti-

tucional que é hoje celebrada como modelo internacional de política pública. Desde então,

cada governo sucessivo prestou cada vez menos atenção à fome, acabando no descaso com-

pleto do assunto sob o governo Bolsonaro.

Keywords: Hunger, Brazil, Policy, Lula, Bolsonaro

Hunger is nothing new in Brazil and is perhaps one of the clearest products

of the country's underdevelopment. However, over the years successive admin-

istrations have given hunger varying levels of priority. Hunger in Brazil has

been addressed by public policy since the 1940s but has long been treated as a

problem the solution to which was increasing food production, and the policies

for dealing with it have had a welfare focus such as donating food baskets. It

was not until 2003, with Lula da Silva, that hunger was recognized as a political

problem. This led to progress in confronting the matter, since it had an impact

on the type of policy envisioned at the federal level.

This article addresses the position that hunger occupied on the federal gov-

ernment's agenda from 2003 to 2020, a period covering the administrations of

Lula da Silva (2003–2010), Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016), Michel Temer (2016–

2018), and Jair Bolsonaro (2019–). I have performed a bibliographic review of

public policies relating to food and nutrition security, looking at the programs

that were implemented or reestablished and the roles of the parties involved. I

Lourrene Maffra is a doctoral student at the University of Seville and an assistant professor of

international relations at the Universidade Federal de Amapá. Heather Hayes is a translator living

in Quito, Ecuador.

1152905LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X231152905Latin American PerspectivesMaffra/THE FIGHT AGAINST HUNGER IN BRAZIL

research-article2023

150 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

have also used data provided by ministries, government statistical research

agencies, and reports from international organizations on the subject. The arti-

cle has three sections. In the first section, I address the Lula da Silva administra-

tion, in the second section what I have called the “transitional governments,”

the administrations of Dilma Rousseff and Michel Temer, and in the third the

current Jair Bolsonaro administration.

LULA DA SILVA'S FOME ZERO: THE POLITICIZATION OF THE FIGHT

AGAINST HUNGER IN BRAZIL

In his speech launching the Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) program and reestab-

lishing the Conselho Nacional de Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional (National

Council of Food and Nutrition Security—CONSEA), on January 30, 2003, the

newly elected president of Brazil, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, set the tone for the

way hunger would be addressed by his government: as a political problem and

as something given priority. Assigning a political character to hunger in Brazil

was part of the strategy for combating it. The idea was to include the structural

and causal aspects of the problem, including poverty and inequality, in addi-

tion to working on its immediate aspects. With the inauguration of his govern-

ment on January 1, 2003, legal, institutional, and political structures were

created that resulted in the Fome Zero program.

The first of these structures was the Extraordinary Ministry of Food Security

and the Fight against Hunger.1 During its 20 months of existence, it was under

the leadership of the agronomy engineer José Graziano da Silva, who is consid-

ered the intellectual father of Fome Zero because, together with other profes-

sors at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas including Walter Belik and

Maya Takagi, he participated in the development of the program, establishing

its methods, evaluation measures, and budget. Fome Zero had a substantial

legal structure covering everything from the target audience to the operation-

alization of the program in Brazilian municipalities. Law 10,683 of May 28,

2003, recreated the CONSEA; Law 10,696 of July 2, 2003, created the Programa

de Aquisição de Alimentos (Food Acquisition Program—PAA); Law 10,836 of

2004 combined all the previous income transfer programs in the country into a

single benefit, creating the Bolsa Família (Family Allowance Program); Law

11,346 of 2006 regulated food and nutrition security; Law 11,947 of 2009 speci-

fied that 30 percent of the funding for the Programa Nacional de Alimentação

Escolar (National School Feeding Program—PNAE) would be purchased from

family farmers; and Constitutional Amendment 64 of February 4, 2010, incor-

porated the human right to food into the list of Brazilians' social rights. The

CONSEA was responsible for articulating the demands of civil society and aca-

demics with those of policy makers and actively participated in the negotia-

tions to implement several programs that accompanied or followed it, including

the PAA, the Bolsa Família program (which made payments to families with

school-age children), and the PNAE.

The institutionalization process also involved structural changes in the

ministries and special secretariats of the federal government. When the

Extraordinary Ministry of Food Security and Fight against Hunger was