Pandemics and the specter of hunger in Brazil: a multidimensional crisis and a negationist president

The COVID-19 pandemic arrives in Brazil at a time of political and economic crisis, deepened by the fact that the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro is one of the few remaining world negationist leaders – frequently minimizing the gravity of the pandemic and urging for the end of social isolation measures so that economic activity may resume to “normality”. As of April 19th, the National Executive Branch had not yet released any money to guarantee food security and income transfer, despite the fact that: i) more than two weeks ago, the National Congress authorized the payment of an emergency basic income for families in a situation of socioeconomic vulnerability; ii) many federal states have been in social isolation for over a month; iii) 40.7% of working population in Brazil is in the informal sector.

The pandemic aggravates the multidimensional crisis and its consequences vary depending on the social group and the region of the country analyzed. In general, great unemployment (11.9 million people), as well as cuts in health expenditure, the dismantling of labor rights and social programs is making even more dramatic the daily lives of families that already had to live with the worsening of living conditions, as a consequence of the intensification of neoliberal policies. As a result, urban populations, especially women-led households in slums and urban peripheries – the majority of which are composed of black families – are the most vulnerable to lack of access to food. Homeless people in major cities face the most dramatic situation and some analysts anticipate possible food riots. Women (both in rural and urban areas) suffer from an even greater burden due to increased social reproduction work. The COVID-19 crisis, policies of social isolation, closed schools and childcare, as well as saturation of health systems tend to put a disproportionately bigger toll on women as tasks such as cleaning and organizing the house, cooking and caring for children, the elderly and the sick are roles socially attributed to them. The period of confinement also escalates women’s exposure to domestic violence and imposes more obstacles to achieving coping measures to situations of aggression.

Activist networks that have strong connections with rural communities share a perception that these are more resilient to food supply problems than urban households because of production for self-consumption. However, they have also been suffering in diverse ways. Indigenous and traditional communities (i.e. “quilombolas”, fisherfolk, babassu coconut breakers) in Cerrado and Amazon regions have been subjected to intense harassment by gold diggers, illegal loggers and land grabbers. The situation of indigenous peoples is especially worrisome given that their immune system is more vulnerable to pathogens, a major source of genocide in the country’s history since colonial times. Furthermore, mining corporations are not respecting isolation policies and workers continue to maintain the cycle of commodities’ extraction and export. Agribusiness agents take advantage of the moment of crisis and continue its expansion towards the lands of such communities, at times when institutions that could be called upon (such as Public Prosecutors Offices) are not functioning properly. Many communities have adopted the strategy of closing access roads to prevent contact with outsiders while others are more vulnerable because they are too close-by to roads.

Several members of these communities that were engaged in migrant labour in other regions were dismissed and are returning home. Some communities claim this might lead to food shortages earlier than anticipated. Moreover, even communities which have strong and diverse production due to agroecological practices usually depend on selling their surplus at least in local markets as they rely on monetary income for purchasing what they do not produce. However, as a result of social isolation measures, local markets have been closed or substantially diminished, leading to cuts in access to markets for peasants. This, in turn, puts greater pressure over food supply to urban populations.

All of this also comes after years of dismantling of policies for peasant farming and agrarian reform. Programs such as the Food Procurement Program (PAA for its Portuguese acronym) – that generated a market for peasant agriculture products as well assisted socially vulnerable population, as it bought from the former and donated to the later – had its budget cut to extreme low levels since 2016. Furthermore, food stock and price regulation policies – through the Minimum Price Guarantee Policy (PGPM for its Portuguese acronym) –, though always had limitations, had been basically neglected from 2012 onwards. As a result, public food stocks are at insignificant levels, which puts the country in a vulnerable situation in the current conjuncture.

Moreover, even though Brazil is a major agro commodities producer and exporter, agrarian transformations especially in the last 40 years for the country to become a commodity powerhouse, implied the vulnerabilization of internal food supply. The expansion of the area of pastures and ​​monocultures (especially soybean) involved the expulsion of indigenous and traditional communities, taking over and geographically displacing the cultivated area of rice and beans, food staples for Brazilian families. As a structural result of the process, logistical distance for food supply has increased. There are major cities (such as Rio de Janeiro) or even rural areas where agribusiness dominates, where food supply depends on long trade circuits, each time more concentrated within corporate chains.

To reverse the situation of lack of public stocks and state support, as well as food supply problems, social movements are developing programs to sell food baskets. In Rio de Janeiro, the movements created measures to guarantee the continuity of supply even before the federal, municipal and state governments gave their opinion on it. The Small Farmers Movement (MPA), for example, developed specific rules for the delivery of their food baskets to urban consumers, which involve, among others, delivery directly at home and payment via bank transfer. On the other hand, the social movements of the Campo Popular, including the MPA itself, the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST), the Popular Youth Uprising (LEVANTE) and the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB) organized a solidarity campaign to take basic food and hygiene items for residents of the municipality’s slums. These solidarity campaigns are being built from north to south of the country. The MST has donated around 500 ton of organic food in the past two weeks.

Although production continues, social movements worry about possible impacts of social isolation on food transport and trade. During last weeks, a law to deliver products originally destined for school lunch (through PNAE – National School Feeding Program) directly to vulnerable families was approved. Social movements and other civil organizations, such as the National Agroecology Articulation (ANA – Articulação Nacional de Agroecologia), demand the resumption of PAA as well as other stimulus of short circuits of commercialization of healthy and agroecological food National Agroecology Articulation (ANA – Articulação Nacional de Agroecologia), demand the resumption of PAA as well as other stimulus of short circuits of commercialization of healthy and agroecological food. The Ministry of Agriculture, Cattle-Farming and Food Supply (MAPA for its Portuguese acronym) set specific credit facilities to small-scale family farming, and the Federal Government has finally released the budget it promised to the PAA (around US$ 95 million – roughly half of what social movements claim to be necessary). Peasant agriculturalists and artisanal fisherfolk also wait to be included on the list of beneficiaries of the basic income aid that the federal government has launched to mitigate the impacts of the pandemics in the lives of Brazilian workers.

In a country with high rates of land concentration and historic land grabbing, indigenous, peasant and traditional communities are many times forsaken and struggle to find possibilities to face this critical moment. The problems highlighted only demonstrate that due to Brazilian agrarian structure and current political crisis, some of the most important actions – beyond the struggle for State policies to face this crisis –  might be in actions at local and regional scale that social movements and traditional communities have been carrying out.

Contributed by Dibe Ayoub, Debora Lima, Ísis Táboas and Diana Aguiar

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