About half a dozen men in hairnets busy themselves with crates of fresh produce outside a food depot in Rio de Janeiro’s northern suburbs. As one reels off a list of products, the others place oddly shaped vegetables into large bags before loading them into a waiting car. The produce will later be cooked and served in soup kitchens, nurseries and other institutions offering free meals to people in need across the city.
The depot is run by Brazil’s biggest network of food banks, Sesc Mesa Brasil. With 95 units all over the country, Mesa – which means table in Portuguese – collects food that would otherwise go to waste from supermarkets, farmers and other suppliers and retailers, sorts it, and then donates it to partner organisations.
“The programme has two pillars, to fight food waste and to fight hunger,” says Cláudia Roseno, an aid manager at Sesc, a not-for-profit private enterprise providing culture, leisure, education, health and aid services across Brazil.
New research published last week highlights how such efforts to reduce food waste can be bolstered in Brazil and used as a key tool for fighting widespread food insecurity.
Brazil re-entered the UN’s hunger map in 2021, seven years after first being removed from it, as two punishing recessions and the coronavirus pandemic saw hunger rise again.
Yet there is colossal food waste in the South American country. The numbers need updating, says Roseno, but an estimated 26.3m tonnes of food are lost during production and transportation each year, while at the end of the supply chain Brazilian households waste 60kg of food per capita each year.