Mixing food with politics: how COVID-19 exposed inequalities in Brazil’s food supply chain

The impact of the coronavirus crisis on livelihoods and prices has limited access to food in Brazil, particularly for those on lower incomes. Supply chains that fail to cover the “last mile” into poor urban communities are a significant part of the problem, and impressive community initiatives to meet nutritional needs are not enough to bridge that gap. So far the issue of food security has been used by the current government mainly for political point-scoring, but there are real steps that it could take to achieve a more resilient, fairer, and healthier food system, write Gareth A. Jones (LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre), Aiko Ikemura Amaral (LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre), and Mara Nogueira (Birkbeck, University of London) as part of a series of blogs linked to their British Academy-funded project Engineering Food: infrastructure exclusion and “last mile” delivery in Brazilian favelas.