Education and Food Security: Policies in the US and Brazil

 

Food insecurity in Brazil: Policy Considerations for the United States

Food insecurity affects millions of women and children living in extreme poverty in northern Brazil. This problem affects women who labor on industrial farms, resulting in malnutrition and high infant death rates. The population is predicted to be 213.4 million. It is an industrial economy with rising deforestation rates and substantial income disparity. Its main agricultural products include sugar cane, soybeans, maize, milk, cassava, oranges, poultry, rice, beef, and cotton, with a total export value of $239 billion. The government is a federal presidential republic, with women holding 27% of the seats. The country's inflation rate is 7.7%, with only 48% of adult females employed. As of 2020, the per capita GDP is $16,170, making it the world's ninth largest.

Sociopolitical context: Food insecurity.

In the 1990s, the Brazilian government launched the National Program to Strengthen Family Farming (PRONAF) to boost agricultural production by offering financial services to "family farmers" in northern Brazil. The Program provided low-income $2,000 loans with defined payback and reinvestment plans, as well as the option to reapply for funding every two months. Today, Brazil invests over $8 billion in agriculture, with $2 billion set aside for family farms. Despite accounting for 38% of the country's agricultural gross value, farmers continue to face food insecurity. In fact, prior to the pandemic, 135 million Brazilians were food insecure, with family farmers accounting for 50% of the total.

There are several variables that make family farmers vulnerable. For example, while all agricultural exports are governed by price matching, the calculations used assume that industrial farmer prices are the standard for small-scale farmers. Smaller growers earn less and lose money on this strategy than industrial-scale farms. It is estimated that they will only get $30 from selling their produce, pushing them further into debt. Furthermore, the effects of climate change have resulted in low-quality crops or crop failures, increasing their burden.

Climate Concerns

Brazil is home to the renowned Amazon Rainforest. The rainforest encompasses over two million square miles and plays an important role by absorbing high quantities of carbon dioxide. However, widespread deforestation caused by agriculture and ranching has converted the forest from one of the world's wettest areas to one that is warmer and dryer, with repeated drought cycles. Given that the Amazon accounts for half of the world's tropical forests, these changes will be damaging to local biodiversity. Droughts have an influence on the Brazilian economy, notably the agricultural sector, and disproportionately afflict the poorest members of society. In this sense, indigenous women from Caru have emerged as "Forest Guardians". Unfortunately, they are frequently threatened, assaulted, and assassinated for their advocacy.

Gender

The city of Alto in Northeast Brazil has a life expectancy of barely forty years due to high neonatal and child mortality rates. One million children under the age of five die each year. These rates are greater for children born in remote shanty settlements in the Northeast, where single moms live on the margins of the economy. They often work on plantations for one dollar per day. These single women wash their clothes in a parasite-infested river, causing disease in their children. Infants are frequently imprisoned inside straw huts while their moms go to work, resulting in more mortality. Feudalism, exploitation, and institutionalized reliance have all contributed to the plight of these women and their children throughout history. The ladies frequently follow "lifeboat ethics," in which children are labeled as either "survivors" or "too weak to live." The children in the latter category are purposely neglected, resulting in passive infanticide. The average woman in Alto has had "9.5 pregnancies, 3.5 child deaths, and 1.5 stillbirths." There is a superstition in the community that children with acute malnutrition who foam at the mouth are infected with rabies and hence "feared and highly stigmatized."

The COVID-19 pandemic

In 2021, Brazil ranked second globally in terms of total COVID-19 deaths. Because to the severity of the epidemic and the limits it imposed on the Brazilian economy, GDP fell by 4.1% in 2020. In response, Brazil increased the number of people getting financial assistance under the Bolsa Familia Cash Transfer Program (CCT) to 66 million.

Poverty

The mayor of Alto provides coffin coupons to moms of deceased babies, knowing that the women cannot afford even a simple funeral. During the year's drought season, demand for these infant coffins increases significantly. The local clinic is claimed to provide free vitamins or sleeping medications to soothe newborns who are wailing because of hunger, as well as faulty record-keeping techniques to check their health.

Religion

For years, the Catholic Church in Brazil has prevented women from accessing abortions or practicing family planning, which contributes to the country's extraordinarily high infant death rate. Ironically, they have been accused of refusing to baptize unwell newborns, pushing mothers to let them die by claiming that baptism is not an anointing of the dying. As a result of the high volume of deaths, the Church is unable to hold dignified funerals for the babies.

Identified human security concerns.

There is a proven pattern of state exploitation and marginalization of women in northeast Brazil. Women working in industrial and agricultural projects, whether indigenous or migrant, face significant food insecurity, which contributes to high infant death rates. Government incentives for industrial farming outweigh any potential advantage to small-scale farmers from this scheme, and poverty continues to rise alongside rising inflation following the pandemic. Poverty can be described as a slow genocide, but in the case of Alto, it is anything but slow. Systemic marginalization by the state and private enterprises is definitely to blame for the devastation of indigenous women and children.