Association “Sovereignty”, addressed, in a new conversation, a fundamental issue: Hunger and Sovereignty.
Enrique Refoyo, who, on the occasion, led the discussion, highlighted the importance of the central theme of the debate, maintaining the need for researchers, specialists, communicators and the general public to deal with “the new hunger games”.
And, certainly, these “new hunger developments” are being studied by the Association “Sovereignty” staff of analysts. Indeed, and far from adhering to commonplaces or expressing hackneyed discourses, our experts, André Soares -originally from the Federative Republic of Brazil- and Alejandro Valenzuela -from the Argentine Republic-, offered their own perspectives on this common file.
It is important to remember that Brazil and Argentina are among the largest producers and exporters of food in the global economy, but they also have serious problems of poverty or deterioration in the quality of life of millions of their inhabitants.
André Soares, putting black and white, reported, among other facts and situations, of a Brazilian particularity, which is this: “Brazil is one of the largest agricultural producers in the world, however, the so-called food deserts persist, regions where the population has little or no access to fresh and healthy food, that we can talk about hunger or we can talk about another problem that is food insecurity,” arguing that certain areas and populations of the country receive, preferably, foods with high fat components and that, obviously, they are unhealthy since they end up impacting, sooner or later, and in a negative way, on people’s health.
What Soares assured that exists in Brazil is a fact that can also be verified in other countries of the Ibero-American region where a large part of the population with meager or low incomes consume, to a large extent, foods that are harmful to their health since they cannot buy – due to the factor of a depressing purchasing power – proteins and products that are optimal for human health since, According to the evidence, the popular masses of the region do not have enough money to feed themselves in the same way that the upper socio-economic strata would be doing.
Returning to Soares’ own formulations, this expert said that “Between 2023 and 2024, approximately 25 million Brazilians resided in these areas, of which 6.7 million live in poverty. The lack of adequate infrastructure and the absence of the State in the most distant regions of the country and the South American subcontinent, which is a problem that affects all of us, aggravated this problem that is not the shortage of food itself but the logistical and political inability to take it to those who need it.”
He questioned that the policies of the state of his country are not correctly oriented towards the maintenance of family farming (which is responsible for 62% of vegetable production) because they prioritize large exports.
Soares was emphatic in saying that, although it is generally believed that “Brazil left the hunger map”, little is said about the low quality of food in the domestic consumption market. He denied that there is a “prospect of investing, in Brazil, for regional food production.”
Meanwhile, Alejandro Valenzuela, in direct dissonance with the narratives of governments that are anchored in the system of “globalist financialism,” said that the region has the capacity to feed more than 1.3 billion people around the planet, but that it suffers from the adequate distribution of food for its own inhabitants. consolidating food insecurity.
For example, this analyst argued that Argentina is considered a “breadbasket of the world,” but that, in reality, governments – and especially the current one, presided over by Javier Milei – have preserved a structure of food insecurity because “there is a complete disconnection between access, in the domestic market, of good food with the export of the productive matrix and the wealth that is being generated in the wealthy sectors.”
He remarked that a significant percentage of exportable agricultural products, for example, soybeans, have a final destination in the diet of animals in other countries, which means that the food production circuit does not prioritize human consumption by Argentine citizens. The diet is generally based on processed products and flours, he said.
For example, this analyst argued that Argentina is considered a “breadbasket of the world,” but that, in reality, governments – and especially the current one, presided over by Javier Milei – have preserved a structure of food insecurity because “there is a complete disconnection between access, in the domestic market, of good food with the export of the productive matrix and the wealth that is being generated in the wealthy sectors.”
He remarked that a significant percentage of exportable agricultural products, for example, soybeans, have a final destination in the diet of animals in other countries, which means that the food production circuit does not prioritize human consumption by Argentine citizens.
The diet is generally based on processed products and flours, he said.
Asked by the host of the series what can be done about this painful situation, Soares said that “the structural issue of Latin America must be improved. There are many productions that are wasted, precisely because they are unable to take food from point A to point B due to logistical and high-cost problems,” also suggesting that the state should invest essential resources to improve the production map and the distribution circuit and that what Association “Sovereignty” is doing, of informing and linking the academic and practical dimensions, is also necessary to try to change the panorama for the better.
Valenzuela said that one of the practical solutions to the Argentine situation is to reduce the gap between local producers and large national producers, and to promote the paradigm shift by influencing the perception of public opinion so that it exerts pressure on the country’s decision-making.
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