FOOD COLONIALITY VIOLATION OF FOOD AND NUTRITIONAL SECURITY IN BRAZIL

Abstract

This article aims to investigate how food coloniality violates the right to food and nutrition in Brazil. Although moderate or severe food insecurity is a historical phenomenon in the country, its discussion as a social and political issue is relatively recent. Even after the constitutionalization of the right to food and the implementation of the Zero Hunger Program in 2003, food insecurity in the country persists. In 2023, around 2.5 million Brazilians experienced severe food insecurity, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). This situation results from the deep social inequalities inherited from coloniality, representing the reconfiguration of the colonial modus operandi. In Brazil and the Global South as a whole, the descendants of colonizers, who form the elites, enjoy privileges, while the descendants of the colonized face exploitation and socioeconomic exclusion. This inequality also manifests in food, a phenomenon known as food coloniality. In this context, eating habits, food production, manipulation, and the value attributed to foods are hierarchized according to their proximity or distance from the European standard. Thus, the question arises: does food coloniality compromise the right to food, perpetuating food insecurity in Brazil? To analyze this issue, a review of specialized literature and documents on food security and its relationship with coloniality was undertaken.