By centering family farmers and food access in its hunger policies, Brazil has lifted 40 million people out of food insecurity in two years, representing one of the fastest recorded improvements in the world, the new State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report reveals. IPES-Food panel experts say the achievement offers a blueprint for the bold government action needed to end global hunger and proof that a future free from hunger is within reach.
The SOFI report, released annually by five United Nations agencies, shows that Brazil’s undernourishment rate fell below 2.5 percent between 2022 and 2024. This prompted the country’s removal from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Hunger Map, an interactive tool presenting the latest global estimates on the prevalence of undernourishment, and moderate or severe food insecurity.
The 2025 SOFI report notes that the world is far from eradicating hunger and food insecurity, and not on track to end malnutrition, by 2030, citing persistent food price inflation as a major barrier. But Brazil is making rapid progress in reducing hunger.
After national food insecurity spiked between 2020 and 2022, the Brazilian government launched an initiative to eradicate hunger in 2023 called Brazil Sem Fome (BSF), which translates to Brazil without hunger. BSF’s approach emphasizes coordinated public action and civil society engagement, and centers access to nutritious foods over agricultural productivity.
Policies include school meals sourced from local and agroecological producers, higher minimum wages, support for smallholder and Indigenous farmers, expanded food banks, and legal recognition of the right to food.
The number of people in Brazil experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity fell from 70.3 million in 2022 to 28.5 million in 2024, SOFI data indicate. The number of people unable to afford a healthy diet dropped 20 percent, while the portion of the Brazilian population facing severe food insecurity has been reduced by two-thirds—from 21.1 million to 7.1 million.
The latest SOFI report also confirms that Brazil has achieved BSF’s first goal of getting the country off the FAO Hunger Map.
Elisabetta Recine, head of Brazil’s National Food and Nutrition Security Council and IPES-Food expert, credits the country’s success to concerted political action and policies that put “people, family farmers, Indigenous and traditional communities, and access to good local food at the centre—and by including those most affected.”
Brazil’s progress shows that effective solutions to hunger are neither new nor out of reach. What’s missing, according to Jennifer Clapp, a Professor, IPES-Food expert, and Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability, is the political will to confront its root causes.
Policies that work—like supporting family farmers rather than agribusiness and investing in public programs like school meals—are effective, proven, and widely available, says Raj Patel, an IPES-Food member and research professor at the University of Texas. The only question that remains, according to Patel, is whether other governments will act with the same courage as the Brazilians and make the choice to implement those proven tools.
Despite gains, the SOFI report and public health experts caution that rising food prices, new tariffs, and further looming tariff threats continue to threaten food access, including in Brazil. “We must stay the course,” Recine says, “because the cost of inaction is measured in lives.”
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Photo courtesy of Carlos Felipe Ramirez Mesa, Unsplash
