Analysis: Brazil is three-time champion in grain, hunger and deforestation

The recent surge in inflation, which mainly hit the price of food in the basic basket, triggered the alarm. There are those who blame the Covid-19 pandemic, weather phenomena or their combination for the lack of rice and beans on Brazilian plates and their high prices.

There were even those who blamed the poor for not making a “rational” substitution, exchanging rice for pasta, in a clear affront to Brazilian food culture and a profound lack of knowledge of basic principles of healthy eating.

This scenario, simultaneously dark, avoidable and predictable, may not be fleeting. A structural analysis of food production reveals a dangerous trend, with deleterious impacts on the economy, access to healthy food and the environment.

In the last three decades, the planted area of ​​rice, beans and cassava, common foods on the plate of Brazilians, has shrunk. There was a reduction of about 73% for rice, 54% for beans and 33% for cassava.

The three food crops —rice, beans and cassava— kept their production volume practically unchanged, with variations between 1988 and 2020 of -6% for rice, 8% for beans and -16% for cassava, which indicates that the gains of productivity were barely able to compensate for the decrease in their cultivated area.

Considering the population increase in this period, the per capita availability of these three products was drastically reduced and plummeted, on average, 35%.

Meanwhile, crops that are mainly aimed at export, the production of animal feed or the transformation into biofuels have advanced enormously. In the same period (1988 to 2020), the volume of soybeans produced increased by 576%, corn, 320%, and sugarcane, 193%, in a combination of significant productivity gains with an also expressive expansion of planted area. .

Soybean expanded 27 million hectares, an increase of about 250%. Sugarcane and corn crops followed the same trend of area expansion, 140% and 36% respectively, totaling around 37 million hectares for the three commodities.

Although there was an increase in productivity and technological intensification in soybean, corn and sugarcane crops, these were not enough to guarantee the stability or reduction of cultivated areas (land-saving effect).

As investments in productive technologies and logistical infrastructure for production advanced, increasing the efficiency and competitiveness of Brazilian products, these crops demanded more and more areas — part of them, directly or indirectly linked to deforestation, characterizing the rebound effect or paradox. from Jevons. That is, there is an environmental account to be computed in this process.

Part of the deforestation of the Cerrado and the Amazon and the consequent loss of biodiversity and increase in greenhouse gas emissions are part of the consequences of the enormous expansion of these crops.

It is worth remembering that such progress is largely due to public investments in productive technology, in the availability of large-scale logistics infrastructure, such as silos, warehouses, highways, ports, among others, linking producers to markets.

In addition to these investments, we must also account for production promotion and financing credits, in addition to the articulation of producers, industries and the government in the constant expansion of the market for these products. That is, several actions coordinated by these actors and implemented consistently and constantly over time with strong participation of public investments and political support from the government.

The benefits of this dynamic reverted mainly to large producers and large financial conglomerates, leading to the consolidation of productive concentration.

The prioritization of crops such as soybeans, corn and sugarcane by the federal government is linked to the short-sighted choice of the economic agenda that bets on a strategy centered on the Brazilian agro-export model, sending us back to the primary exporting past.

Meanwhile, there is a negligence with key foods for Brazilians, who, if this trend continues, it is possible that they will have to say goodbye to the famous rice and beans duo, crops that are part of the population’s diet, mainly social segments in situations of vulnerability.

These numbers reflect the low investment in the entire production chain and in the formation of markets for these crops that are strategic for the population’s food security.

The limited increase in productivity results from lower public investments in productive technology and technical assistance to producers. Family farming is the traditional producer of rice, beans and manioc, but over this period it has been losing a relative share of its production, and in more recent years, it has seen the public policies that supported it being dismantled.

The constant volume, despite the population increase, indicates failures in investments in logistics infrastructure, credits and market expansion. It also reveals the weight of the food transition that has determined changes in the population’s habits, in general exchanging healthy and in natura products for ultra-processed foods.

Brazil is currently faced, on a daily basis, with the paradox of seeing three headlines printed in the newspapers: record grain production, record hunger and record deforestation.

They are not isolated phenomena, they are faces of the same hegemonic model of food production and consumption that privileges commodities and neglects Brazilian food; which privileges the economic interests of agribusiness and takes precedence over interests in the country’s food and nutrition sovereignty and security, leading to relevant social and environmental distortions.

In this case, in addition to disregarding our culture, social justice, the guarantee of the human right to adequate food and the country’s food sovereignty, it is an error in the economic model that despises a powerful internal market of 213 million Brazilians and opts for a backward place, subservient on the international stage and unsustainable from a social and environmental point of view.