In Brazil, the levels of hunger have been increasing | Image: Luís Gustavo Moreira Carmo / Global Voices Despite being one of the world's largest food producers, Brazil has now returned to the United Nations’ (UN) Hunger Map, eight years after reducing food insecurity enough to be removed from the list. The study categorizes a country as lacking food when more than 2.5 percent of the population faces a chronic lack of food — in Brazil, with 214 million inhabitants, the estimated rate is 4.1 percent. Released in early July, the report states that between 702 and 828 million people around the world went hungry in 2021. In Brazil, the debate on food insecurity and hunger intensified with the COVID-19 pandemic, but it had already been worsening in recent years: between 2019 and 2021, more than 15 million Brazilians were affected, according to the UN. Over 61 million Brazilians live in some type of food insecurity, according to a recent survey by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). More than 15 million face serious food insecurity, as highlighted by the website G1. The national report “Olhe para a fome” [Look at the Hunger], produced by Rede Penssan (The Brazilian Network of Research on Sovereignty and Food and Nutritional Security) in partnership with Oxfam Brasil and other organizations, which collected data between November 2021 and April 2022, also describes a worrying situation. The country is facing a setback that resembles the situation in the 1990s when hunger often appeared in the news. In 2022, according to the study, 15.5 percent (33.1 million people) of the population are facing serious food insecurity. Chart showing statistics on hunger in Brazil | Image: From the report “Olhe para a fome”. Translation: “33.1 million Brazilians are facing hunger. Over half the country’s population – 125.2 million people – faces some kind of food insecurity”. The second National Study on Food Insecurity in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Brazil, which was based on the “Look at the Hunger” report, was launched in early June and showed that 58.7 percent of the Brazilian population lives with some degree of food insecurity. The Penssan study states that food insecurity occurs when the availability of food is irregular and is classified into three levels of seriousness: low (uncertainty about food access in the near future), moderate (insufficient amount of food), and severe (lack of food consumption, and hunger). The report also found that women and Black people suffer disproportionately from hunger. During the pandemic and economic crisis, Brazilian supermarkets, in aiming to lower costs and push sales, began to sell even animal bones and carcasses, which was not previously common in the country. In Santa Catarina state, PROCON — a consumer rights agency — issued a recommendation that these leftovers should continue to be donated to people in vulnerable circumstances, and not sold. It said these sales are an infringement of the Consumer Defence Code. Supermercado no Pará vende restos de peixes e imagem repercute nas redes. Em meio a avanço da fome no país, brasileiros recorrem a alimentos como ossos, carcaças de peixes e legumes descartados https://t.co/XqGHSC4EUL#Belem #Para #Peixe #Fome #ossos #Supermercado pic.twitter.com/3FGjowRh63 — Mídia Informal (@MidiaInformal) October 7, 2021 Supermarket in Pará [state] sells leftovers of fish and the image is reacted to widely on social media. Amid the rise of hunger in the country, Brazilians resort to food such as bones, fish remains and discarded vegetables In Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais state, also in the second half of 2021, people were seen gathering around supermarkets’ rubbish in search of food. Rubbish collector Leandro dos Santos Jesus then told the website G1: Dói ver né? A gente chega a selecionar lá dentro o que dá para deixar eles pegarem. A situação está difícil para todo mundo e a gente tem que entender a situação. It hurts to see, right? We even sort through what is usable in there to let them take it. The situation is difficult for everybody and we have to understand the situation. Similar scenes are reported in other regions of the country: in Fortaleza, Ceará state, Sandra Maria de Freitas told BBC News Brazil: Meus pés ardem como pimenta. Os calos inflamam, eu raspo com uma lâmina e sigo a vida. Acordo às 4 horas da manhã todos os dias, pego o meu carrinho de mão e venho esperar o caminhão do lixo nesse mesmo ponto, perto da Comunidade dos Trilhos, onde moro. My feet burn like chilli. The calluses get inflamed, I scrape them with a blade and get on with life. I wake up at 4 a.m. every day, take my handcart and come to wait for the rubbish truck at this same place, near Comunidade dos Trilhos, where I live.