Researchers from the London School of Economics (LSE) made a visit this year to the cities of São Paulo and Belo Horizonte as part of the project Engineering food: infrastructure exclusion and ‘last mile’ delivery in Brazilian favelas. The study done by Insper in partnership with the British school and funded by the Academy is a cross-functional project from urbane geography, sociology, engineering and public policy areas and generated several scientific essays.

 

On Insper, the team is composed by André Duarte, Vinícius Picanço, Lars Meyer Sanches, André Filipe de Moraes Batista, Gustavo Oliveira and Michele Martins. “English specialists came here to make an important part of the fieldwork”, says André Duarte, professor from Operations Management and Supply Chain courses. “We went to the favelas to understand what people consume and how, which are the difficulties to access fresh produce and how favelas differ with regards to population, size and infrastructure.”

 

The partnership with LSE is one of the Insper’s internationalization initiatives. The beginning of the project happened when COVID-19 pandemics began, in 2020, and ended generating the food donation project Campo Favela. The first workshop took place one week prior to shops closure by sanitary measures, in São Paulo, at Insper. “Coincidently, we’ve had already met either with small producers and with people from favelas, and we began to connect to what we called the chain weakest points”, states Duarte.

 

The results from Campo Favela were awarded by United Nations on the first edition of PRME Recognition Awards, in recognition to the contribution to the Sustainable Development Objectives and their collective benefits. The project Campo Favela received more than 3 million reals on donations from persons and companies, converted in approximately 1.000 tons of fresh foods. After a year, about 1,500 food producers and 100,000 vulnerable families were benefited.

 

Starvation is an issue still within the radar in Brazil. The number of families living in extreme poverty on São Paulo capital keeps growing as data recently informed by the city hall. In January this year, there were 619,869 families with monthly per capita income of less than 105 reals. In July, there were 684,295. The information obtained by Social Programs Single Register (CadÚnico) pointed 450,351 families in this situation prior to the pandemics.

 

Food deserts and food swamps

 

In the research “Engineering food”, the objective is to understand which foods are made available in those communities and how they get there as well as main breakdowns and barriers throughout the process. Its aim is to develop a new approach to understand people as important bond from urban infrastructures and essential to provide fresh foods to the favelas. “We look to the fresh foods that integrate a complex supply chain, especially due to product’s perishability and a high number of players”, says Duarte. “But it is also a very important chain as healthy and nutritional foods are the ones that compose an important part of what we eat on a daily basis.”

 

Due to several reasons such as nutritional quality and food health, the researchers pursued to understand how these products get to the low-income persons areas – to enhance this logistics chain in future. The investigation showed that, on many times, the fresh foods do not arrive in those places. From 1,700 favelas in São Paulo city, in which a 12% of population lives, Only 274 have some sort of food companies. Also, the average within São Paulo favelas is that for each shop that mainly sells fresh foods (fish shops, butcheries and fruit stores), there is twice shops mainly selling overprocessed products.

 

Logistics get complicated due to favelas’ size and infrastructure. There are communities with thousands of inhabitants — such Paraisópolis and Heliópolis — or hundreds of people, in central or peripheral regions, in plain areas or in top of mountains, with streets and pavement, or without access, with or without electrical power to keep fresh foods. “We used to say these places are either food deserts, where there is no access to fresh foods, or food swamps, where there is an offer of ultra-processed food at a higher rate than fresh foods”, states Duarte.

 

This means that, within time, persons suffer from over offer of ‘unhealthy’ products and lack of healthy products offer. This is a general condition from favelas at any place around the country. Infrastructure and water supply issues also impact on food cleaning and conservation, discouraging the purchase of vegetables and fruits.

 

Who lives very far from work, after hours on public transportation, tends to prefer ultra-processed food on meals when returning home as its preparation is quicker. Low-income population can’t also easily differ healthy and unhealthy food, fresh and unfresh food. Thus, actions to raise awareness on the importance of foods on health are other challenges that appeared in this study.

 

Weaker bond

 

As storing ultra-processed foods, such as cookies and candies, is easier and their expiration date is longer, shops’ owners tend to prioritize these products, opening more room to precarious food on low-income areas. On another hand, fresh food is proportionally more expensive as it considers product loss if sell is not fast – hours or days, depending on the product.

 

Most retailers do their shopping on São Paulo State food distribution market (Ceagesp), where fresh foods production from not only São Paulo’s green belt but also from all Brazil are made available. A part is transferred to fresh grocery stores and supermarkets. “In fact, urban agriculture is poorly used although São Paulo has such potential as well as Belo Horizonte”, says Duarte. Small producers from Parelheiros, south São Paulo, have a hard time to distribute their products. “Some favelas have very interesting urban vegetable garden works that could be part of the solution.”

 

Beyond listening to favela residents, the researchers spoke with small producers. “They are chain’s weakest bond”, states Duarte. “It is too much dispersed and, on many times, do not have financial support. It suffers impact from inputs prices that are in power of seed and fertilizers big companies and were suffering a lot as many restaurants were closed and inputs prices climbed up during pandemics”. Small producer also has the urgency of perishability. A lettuce plant takes months to be cultivated by get rotten in days after harvested. If it is not consumed, it goes to trash.

 

The Food and Agriculture Organization for the United Nations (FAO) estimates a loss of 30% of food’s world production due to issues on planting, harvesting, storage and transportation of fresh food, or due to wastes related to retailers’ improper practices and population consumption habits. For vegetables, it leads to 50%, especially on poorest countries.

 

The small producer is responsible for most part of our daily feeding, but does not have access to formation, information or technology. Strengthen this bond would reinforce the overall chain. “They suffer a lot from price oscillation, does not have the vision from consuming market, have little access to credit and is subject to climate risks”, says Duarte.

 

Solutions set

 

The research allows to point some solutions to improve access to food in the favelas, such as chain shortening, connecting producer and consumer directly, removing middlepersons. Another way is to connect small producers to retailers, but a logistics cost gets in-between, what turns Ceagesp more attractive. Small hubs or Ceagesp distribution centers close to low-income areas can be a facilitator. It is known that favelas closer to the company can obtain fresh food more frequently, reducing food waste.

 

There is not a single major solution, but a set of solutions composed by initiatives for awareness and qualification of the residents, grocery stores owners and small farm producers. Major retailers and finance companies, as well as major agriculture inputs companies can support fresh foods chain weak bonds. “It is up to the government to provide a decent infrastructure to facilitate the access to a healthy feeding, specially to low-income population and surroundings”, states Duarte. “We know favelas with higher access to fresh foods tend to eat healthier.”