Brazil reinstates National Food Security Council

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Tuesday (Feb. 28) reinstated the National Council on Food Security and Nutrition—CONSEA in the original Portuguese acronym, which had been deactivated early in the previous administration, in 2019.

Its board should serve as an advisory body to the president and an institutional space for participation and social control in the creation, monitoring, and evaluation of public policies on food and nutritional security and the fight against hunger.

“Fighting hunger is no joke. It’s true that, if we produce too much food in this country and people are hungry, it means someone’s eating more than they should, and the others have little to eat. It means we’re wasting food somewhere between production and consumption. It means there’s something wrong, and the worst is that people don’t have money to buy anything to eat,” the president said during a ceremony at the Planalto presidential palace.

Council head Elisabetta Recine, officially brought back to her post Tuesday, advocated news policies to fight hunger, poverty, obesity, and the climate crisis, generating income and jobs for the people, increasing the minimum wage, and guaranteeing land for more egalitarian human development in Brazil.

In addition, President Lula reported he asked the Ministry of Agricultural Development to discuss programs to boost food production and the return of the minimum price policy to avoid losses to workers in the field.

Council members are expected to start their work this week. Among the first actions is a conference, which should be scheduled to take place sometime this year.

Recine pledged to give special attention to the situation facing the Yanomami indigenous, with her team taking charge of ongoing efforts and helping find answers to their plight.

Illegal mining in the Yanomami territory, in Roraima state, has caused a humanitarian crisis in the region, made conspicuous by the delicate state of health of children and the elderly, who suffer from malnutrition and other preventable diseases.