Hunger in Brazil decreases from 33 million people to 20 million in one year

“SWe went from 33 million people on the Hunger Map in 2022 to 20 million in 2023. Although there is still a long way to go, the right measures to increase the value of the minimum wage and transfers from the Bolsa Família program, as well as the reduction of food inflation, demonstrate that we are on the right path to remove Brazil from the Hunger Map again”, said, in a statement, the general director of the IFZ, José Graziano.

According to the study commissioned by the Brazilian Government from the IFZ, the number of people with moderate and severe food insecurity fell from 65 million to 45 million people, while the number of people with severe food insecurity decreased from 33 million to 20 million people, between 1st quarter of 2022 and the 4th quarter of 2023, in a country with around 200 million inhabitants.

The reasons for the improvement in statistics in 2023 were the significant increase in the minimum wage and the expansion of Bolsa Família, the main program for distributing subsidies to the poorest.

This improvement allowed food insecurity in Brazil to return to levels seen at the beginning of the 2020s, before the economic crisis generated by the Covid-19 pandemic caused the number of hungry people to soar.

The anti-poverty programs implemented by Lula da Silva in his first term (2003-2010) and by his successor, Dilma Rousseff, allowed the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to remove Brazil from the so-called Map of Hunger in 2014, when it was estimated that only 0.7% of the population was chronically malnourished.

However, the FAO put Brazil back on the map in 2022, after finding that around 10.1 million people, according to its criteria, were starving in the country, equivalent to 4.7% of the population.

To get off the negative list again, Brazil needs to reduce the number of hungry people to less than 5.5 million (less than 2.5% of the population) for three consecutive years, which will only be possible in 2026 or 2027 if the current rate of reduction continues.

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