The 2024 edition of the United Nations Report on the State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI 2024), launched this Wednesday (24) in Rio de Janeiro, showed that severe food insecurity in Brasil dropped by 85% in 2023
In absolute numbers, severe food insecurity affected 17.2 million Brazilians in 2022 and has now been reduced to 2.5 million. When compared to 2022, the 2023 numbers have dropped from 8% to 1.2% of the population.
"The United Nations data have come to show that we are on the right path. In one year alone under the current administration, we reduced severe food insecurity by 85%, lifting 14.7 million Brazilians from this condition," stated the Minister of Social Development and Assistance, Family, and Fight against Hunger, Wellington Dias.
According to the FAO methodology, severe food insecurity occurs when a person actually has no access to food and has gone an entire day or more without eating. It represents concrete and current hunger, which, if sustained regularly, leads to severe physical and mental health damage, especially in early childhood, affecting development and cognitive formation.
Advances in the fight against hunger
Produced jointly by the United Nations agencies FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO, the report provides an annual update to the "Hunger Map." It is released on the same day and at the same location as the G20 Task Force Ministerial Meeting on Establishing a Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty.
The SOFI Report highlights important advances in the fight against hunger. Brasil, which had exited the "Hunger Map" in 2014 and maintained this status until 2018, saw a troubling rise in poverty, extreme poverty, and food insecurity from 2019 to 2022. The country re-entered the Hunger Map in the 2019-2021 period and remained there through 2022, with socioeconomic indicators showing a consistent increase in poverty.
Looking only at the year 2023 compared to 2022, severe food insecurity dropped from 8% to 1.2% of the population. In absolute numbers, from 17.2 million Brazilians affected in 2022, the number of people in this condition was reduced to 2.5 million, representing an 85% decrease in just one year.
The new SOFI report indicates that severe food insecurity decreased from 8.5% in the 2020-2022 triennium to 6.6% in the 2021-2023 triennium. This corresponds to a reduction from 18.3 million to 14.3 million Brazilians experiencing severe food insecurity. In absolute terms, this means 4 million people were lifted out of severe food insecurity when comparing the two triennia.
However, since the FAO indicator is a triennial average-a combined average of three years-it does not clearly reflect the impact of the most recent year, 2023, on the country's progress in overcoming hunger, as the results still include data from 2021 and 2022.
Looking only at the year 2023 compared to 2022, severe food insecurity dropped from 8% to 1.2% of the population. In absolute numbers, from 17.2 million Brazilians affected in 2022, the number of people in this condition was reduced to 2.5 million, representing an 85% decrease in just one year.
The individual data for 2023 shows that, despite some differences between the FAO's scale and the one used by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the FAO's measurement of severe food insecurity is consistent with the reduction observed using the EBIA (Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale). This reduction was around 24 million people between 2022 and 2023. If adjustments are made to align the PNADc-IBGE results with the scale used by the Rede PENSSAN in 2022 (since IBGE did not measure the scale in 2022), the reduction would be about 20 million people between 2022 and 2023.
The report, which for individual countries only provides the average data for the most recent triennium, states that food insecurity decreased from 18.3 million to 14.3 million Brazilians between the 2020-2022 and 2021-2023 triennia. In absolute numbers, 4 million people were lifted out of severe food insecurity when comparing the two triennia.
Prevalence of Undernourishment and the "Hunger Map"
In the indicator for prevalence of undernourishment (PoU), a second metric used by SOFI that relies on macroeconomic data like food production, consumption, and distribution relative to income rather than survey sampling, Brasil has also reversed the upward trend in hunger seen during former President Jair Bolsonaro's administration.
If the year 2023 is considered individually compared to the 2020-2022 triennium, the prevalence of undernourishment in Brasil fell from 4.2% to 2.8%, representing a one-third reduction. According to FAO data (available in the FAOSTAT database, which is updated along with the report), when comparing the 2020-2022 triennium with the year 2023, 3 million people moved out of chronic undernourishment in 2023 (from 9 million to 6 million Brazilians experiencing chronic undernourishment).
The PoU is the indicator used to determine a country's presence or absence on the Hunger Map. A country is removed from this map when the indicator for the average of the most recent triennium falls below 2.5%.
In the three-year average used in the SOFI report, the prevalence of undernourishment in Brasil decreased from 4.2% in the 2020-2022 triennium to 3.9% in the 2021-2023 triennium. This indicator is still heavily influenced by the high levels observed in 2021 and 2022.
However, similar to the food insecurity scale, the SOFI-reported trend of decreasing hunger is "diluted" in the triennial average, with the 2023 results being offset by those from 2021 and 2022.
The PoU is the indicator used to determine a country's presence or absence on the Hunger Map. A country is removed from this map when the indicator for the average of the most recent triennium falls below 2.5%.
"The data from this edition strengthen our confidence that we will remove Brazil from the Hunger Map in the 2023-2025 triennium," celebrated Minister Wellington Dias. "For 2023 alone, we reduced food insecurity from 4.2% to 2.8% in just one year. This increases the likelihood of achieving a triennial average below 2.5%, which would set a new global record," added the head of the MDS.
Minister Dias concluded: "We will keep working with an even greater commitment to ensure that no one is excluded from the social protection network, as President Lula has directed. Our goal is to ensure that no Brazilian has to endure this hardship any longer. This will also mean delivering on the President's promise to provide the conditions for people to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day."
Global Alliance: hope for advances
With the release of SOFI 2024, global hunger data has also been updated. Unfortunately, there has been little progress at the global level: it is estimated that 733 million people worldwide were experiencing hunger in 2023, nearly the same number as reported in the 2022 edition, which was 735 million people.
According to the report's projections, if current trends continue, 582 million people will still be chronically malnourished by 2030.
"Even with the end of the pandemic, the world in general has not been able to resume measures to fight hunger," stated Minister Wellington Dias.
The report shows that hunger continues to grow in Africa and has maintained relatively stable in Asia; Latin America, however, has registered notable progress. Africa continues to be the region with the largest proportion of the population suffering from hunger: 20.4%, compared to 8.1% in Asia, 6.2% in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 7.3% in Oceania. Nonetheless, Asia still houses more than half of all people going hungry in the world.
The minister highlighted the importance of the symbolism of the international report being launched, for the first time in history, outside of Rome or New York. "The choice of launching it in Brasil has a clear reason: today we are taking the first steps in constituting a new Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty in the world, a proposal put forward by President Lula. [The Alliance] is expected to work to reverse this trajectory and fulfill the promises of Sustainable Development Goals 1 and 2, eliminating extreme poverty and achieving zero hunger by 2030," stated Dias.
The prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity remained virtually unchanged in Africa, Asia, North America, and Europe between 2022 and 2023, while it worsened in Oceania. In contrast, the report also noted significant progress in Latin America on this indicator, partly due to improvements in Brasil.
The minister highlighted the importance of the symbolism of the international report being launched, for the first time in history, outside of Rome or New York. "The choice of launching it in Brasil has a clear reason: today we are taking the first steps in constituting a new Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty in the world, a proposal put forward by President Lula. [The Alliance] is expected to work to reverse this trajectory and fulfill the promises of Sustainable Development Goals 1 and 2, eliminating extreme poverty and achieving zero hunger by 2030," stated Dias.
"If everything goes well, we want to reach 2030 being able to state that hunger is a problem of the past. And if the advances in Brasil can demonstrate that it is, then it really is possible to rapidly reduce hunger when there is political will and knowledge to implement public policies that will bring results. This is the proposal of the Alliance," he added.
