Honoring the Betinho Legacy: The Power of Agency

Introduction

The right to food extends far beyond being free from hunger. The Rome Declaration on World Food Security established a global commitment to provide all people with safe, nutritious, and adequate food (FAO, 1996). Building upon this declaration, the Centre for Studies in Food Security at Toronto Metropolitan University outlined that complete food security relies on five essential components (CSFS, n/d; Koc, 2026). For true food security to exist, all five dimensions must be present:

• Availability: Having a reliable, sufficient supply of food at all times.
• Accessibility: Ensuring all people have the physical and economic means to obtain food.
• Adequacy: Accessing food that is safe, nutritious, and produced through environmentally sustainable methods.
• Acceptability: Accessing food that is culturally appropriate, produced, and obtained in ways that fully respect human dignity, self-worth, and human rights.
• Agency: Implementing the policies and governance processes that empower people and enable the achievement of food security.

Agency refers to all mobilization, initiatives, programs, and policies needed for food security. It is about democratic governance needed to guarantee the availability, accessibility, adequacy, and acceptability of the food we have. Is what we do individually and collectively to have food security (Rocha, 2019).

Agency matters because it gives individuals and communities the rights, capabilities, and power to actively shape their own food systems with dignity rather than remaining passive consumers (HLPE-FSN 2020). By elevating people to active “food citizens” (Welsh & MacRae, 1998), agency empowers people to make and execute critical decisions about how food is produced, distributed, and eaten. Ultimately, this enables effective participation in governance and decision-making processes at the local to global levels, driving improvements in overall well-being (HLPE-FSN 2020).

Agency is the central theme of the present book. Its chapters address broad, macro-level frameworks (national policies, systemic guidelines, and democratic participation) down to specific institutional settings, and finally, ground-level struggles, cultural resistance, and lived experiences in the fight for food security and sovereignty in Brazil. The book, thus, describes a trajectory of how agency is operationalized, restricted, and reclaimed across different scales.

The book has been conceived as part of the Betinho Project, which inspired this volume.

The Betinho Project

Herbert “Betinho” de Souza (1935-1997) was a humanitarian forced into exile by the military dictatorship in Brazil in the 1970s. During this time of exile, Betinho lived for five years in Toronto, Canada. Among the many causes Betinho embraced and led was the Campaign Against Hunger and for Life, which triggered the new movement for food and nutrition security in Brazil. Betinho was one of the most important civil society leaders in the country, an undeniable example of the power of a person’s agency.

In 1973 Betinho, his wife Maria Nakano, and a few Brazilian friends were received in Canada as political refugees after fleeing the military coup that had toppled the government of Salvador Allende in Chile. With the guidance and support of Professor Liisa North, Betinho was accepted as a graduate student in political science at York University and was a major force in the creation of that university’s Brazilian Studies group, later the Latin American Research Unit (LARU), which became the seed for CERLAC (Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean). In Toronto he also contributed to other non-governmental organizations such as the Development Education Centre (DEC) and Gatt-Fly. As a student at York University, Cecilia Rocha (co-editor of this volume) had the privilege to work alongside Betinho during this time.

Returning to Brazil in 1979, Betinho and friends Carlos Afonso and Marcos Arruda founded the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analyses (Ibase), a pioneering non-governmental organization (NGO) for citizenship mobilization in support of public policies and democracy. As a social activist, Betinho was a leading figure in several national campaigns including the National Campaign for Agrarian Reform, the Movement for Land and Democracy, the Movement for Ethics in Politics, and the Citizenship Action Against Hunger, Poverty and for Life. He also founded the Inter-Disciplinary AIDS Association (ABIA), and worked with street children (receiving UNICEF’s Child and Peace trophy in 1993), the women’s movement, and for the democratization of communications and information using the (then, very new) internet as a tool.

For everything he did, Betinho became one of Brazil’s modern heroes. Although living with a debilitating health condition (he was a hemophiliac and lived with HIV/AIDS for the last 10 years of his life), Betinho was one of the country’s strongest fighters for social inclusion, citizenship and democracy.

In March 2004, Cecilia Rocha (Director, Centre for Studies in Food Security, Ryerson University), Debbie Field (Executive Director, FoodShare Toronto), Wayne Roberts (Coordinator, Toronto Food Policy Council), and Nick Saul (Executive Director, The Stop Community Food Centre) were invited to attend the Second National Conference on Food and Nutrition Security in Olinda, Brazil. This was an opportunity to witness the culmination of a democratic process in which civil society organizations from throughout the country participated in the development of key recommendations to be forwarded to the federal government through the National Council for Food and Nutrition Security (CONSEA). For the Canadian observers, it was also an opportunity to reflect on the challenges and opportunities in developing a movement to improve food security in Canada and elsewhere based on principles of social justice and participatory democracy.

The 2004 Conference was strongly grounded on the works of two key figures in the Brazilian movement against hunger and for food security: Josué de Castro and Herbert (Betinho) de Souza. The impact of the work of these two Brazilians reached far beyond their country’s borders (see Rocha et al, 2026, in this volume), and their legacy can still be felt today.

Upon their return to Toronto, the four Canadian observers of the Brazilian Conference felt the need to rekindle the Toronto connection with Betinho. Thus emerged the Betinho Project, coordinated by Cecilia Rocha. The project aimed to celebrate Betinho’s life and work, and to make a contribution to the continuation of his campaign against hunger and for life everywhere in the world.

The Betinho Project had two phases – an earlier period from 2004 to 2010, and a second period from 2019 to 2024. Key activities in the first phase of the project included invited seminars by Brazilian scholars (Renato Maluf, Luciene Burlandy, and Gislene Aparecida dos Santos); a presentation and visit by then Brazilian Minister of Social Development and Fight against Hunger, Patrus Ananias; an encounter of Indigenous representatives from Brazil and from Canada (see Barbosa & Rocha, 2026, in this volume); and fundraising for the Community Bake Oven built at Wychwood Park in Toronto. The project counted with the work of a number of research assistants and volunteers, including Andrea Moraes, Marcelo Paolinelli, Rita Simone Liberato, Tania Tzupanic, Marcos Abreu, Vania Freire, Bernadete Nobrega, and Alison Clegg.

The second phase of the project emerged out of a need felt by Brazilian scholars at the Toronto Metropolitan University to debate the political situation brought about by the election of Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil in 2018. With a reactionary and anti-democratic agenda, one of the first acts of the new president in 2019 was to abolish the National Council for Food and Nutrition Security. The Betinho Project Seminar Series (2019-2024) was created as a space for academic conversations in support of democracy and the food security movement in Brazil. Coordinated by Cecilia Rocha and Andrea Moraes, this seminar series brought together diverse scholars, practitioners, students, and researchers at the Centre for Studies in Food Security, to discuss Brazilian democracy, social change, and agency in food security.  Isabella Trindade, Tatiana Terry, Hudson Moura, and Andhressa Fagundes also participated in the creation of the Seminar Series.

The current book, part of the celebrations of the 30th anniversary of the Centre for Studies in Food Security, presents a selection of contributions from Brazilian scholars and activists associated with the Betinho legacy. Many of the authors were Visiting Scholars at the Centre and participants of the Betinho Project Seminar Series.

Part I: Public Policies and Participation: Institutionalizing Agency for Food Security   

A number of initiatives, policies and programs implemented in Brazil in the past 20 years have received international attention for their originality, comprehensiveness, and effective results. Among those, Bolsa Familia (conditional cash transfers to families in poverty), the National School Food Program (serving all students in public schools), direct food procurement from family farms, and the bold revision of the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population are prominent examples.

The first five chapters in this volume address the question of how democratic participation in the construction of public policies for food security is being institutionalized in Brazil.  This process of institutionalizing agency happens at a macro level (as described in the first two chapters), but it has also been essential in the development and implementation of policies in specific settings (chapters 3 and 4). Active participation of individuals and organized civil society is also important in facing the many challenges and in finding solutions for problems emerging at local levels (chapter 5).

Chapter 1 – Moving Forward in Guaranteeing the Right to Food: Timeline on Food Security Policy in Brazil, by Rocha et al., sets the baseline by looking at the historical trajectory of the fight against hunger and food insecurity in Brazil, highlighting some of the main policies and programs that have elevated the country as an example and source of inspiration for effective food and nutrition security (FNS) policy worldwide. The chapter emphasizes the centrality of understanding hunger as a political and social problem, a human-made and not a natural phenomenon.

Looking at the recent history of policy-making in Brazil, the chapter argues that progress does not follow a smooth, linear trajectory. Instead, it is characterized by fluctuations. Meaningful progress is realized only when advancements outweigh setbacks. The consolidation of FNS policy—achieved by institutionalizing its most successful programs and securing civil society participation—has been essential to ensuring that these advancements consistently outpace the setbacks.

The institutionalization of civil society participation is the focus of Chapter 2 – Exercise in Democracy: Social Participation in Public Policies for Food Security in Brazil, by Fagundes et al. This chapter explains how civil society engages with the state to shape the policies mentioned in Chapter 1, highlighting the democratic mechanisms unique to Brazil’s food security framework – the National System for Food and Nutrition Security (SISAN) – under construction in the country. By merging the principles of participatory and representative democracy, this framework guarantees citizens a direct role in drafting, implementing, and monitoring public policies across municipal, state, and federal levels.

The text concludes that the democratic vision of the 1988 Constitution demands constant defence and renewal. While civil society mobilization is vital when formal channels are open, it becomes absolutely critical when institutional spaces are threatened or destroyed. Frameworks like SISAN are essential because they empower citizens to participate in governance, which strengthens civil society. In turn, a robust, mobilized civil society serves as the ultimate shield required to continuously defend and reclaim these democratic gains.

Chapter 3 – Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population: A Tool for Addressing Syndemic Problems, by Lima et al., positions the 2014 Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population (BDG) as an important instrument in combating the simultaneous problems of obesity, malnutrition, and climate change. Earning international acclaim, the BDG moved away from tracking isolated nutrients to spotlighting whole foods and their level of industrial processing. The authors argue that this processing-based framework helps regulate food environments by shaping policies, such as on clear food labelling, the taxation of sugary drinks, and institutional school menu mandates.

Ultimately, this chapter shows that the BDG’s importance extends far beyond education and guidance for individual dietary choices. By connecting consumption to how food is produced and distributed, the Guide is framed as a critical strategic tool for cultivating a healthy, just, and sustainable food system.

Chapter 4 – Food Services as Strategic Settings for Food Security: The Central Role of Menu Planning,  by Rolim & Bezerra, defends that food services can drive systemic, transformative actions that integrate sustainability, public health, and food security. Drawing on a “One Health” approach that recognizes the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental well-being, the authors explore how nutritionists can expand their roles from routine menu planning to broad policy implementation. To demonstrate this potential, the authors examine Brazilian public policies and offer practical applications based on institutional experiences and research at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. These include strategies for sustainable public procurement, healthy menu design, worker health, and food waste reduction.

The chapter notes that the field of food services has traditionally been viewed through a technical lens, primarily focusing on operational efficiency, sanitary control, and cost management. However, rising global concerns regarding food insecurity, environmental degradation, and diet-related chronic diseases demand a broader perspective. Looking ahead, the future of food services relies on connecting menus directly to resilient food systems. By embedding sustainable procurement and waste reduction into management mechanisms, every institutional meal served can actively contribute to community health and planetary sustainability.

While Brazil’s National School Feeding Program (PNAE) is one of the largest and most celebrated food programs in the world, Chapter 5 – Challenges Implementing the School Food Program in Rio Grande do Norte: Local Micronutrient Supplementation and Full-Time Schooling Expansion, by Medeiros et al., provides a crucial reality check, evaluating how national policy standards manifest as distinct, localized challenges. The chapter reports on two studies examining local attempts to complement basic services under PNAE in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte. The first study identifies implementation barriers for NutriSUS—a micronutrient supplementation strategy—in a small town. The second study addresses the challenge of maintaining national PNAE standards amidst an expansion of full-time schooling.

The studies illustrate how subnational entities are vital to funding and operationalizing PNAE at local levels. Ultimately, both studies reveal the challenges of top-down decision-making in a federative context. The authors argue that previous consultation with local managers could have prevented the breakdown of the NutriSUS project, while noting that these same local actors were central in lobbying for the supplemental resources required for the success of PNAE under full-time schooling.

Part II: Agency and Social Mobilization: Anti-Racism and Food Sovereignty 

The exercise of agency is deeply intertwined with social structures. Systemic inequities and power imbalances rooted in gender, age, race, and other characteristics often act as barriers to participation, which can directly undermine food security. Overcoming these barriers requires enhancing agency at both the individual level—by boosting autonomy, safeguarding labour rights, and ensuring culturally acceptable food—and the community level, where collective governance has been proven to drive better food security and nutritional outcomes (HLPE-FSN 2020).

The final four chapters in this volume address a major challenge to achieving food security in Brazil: the systemic racism and discrimination embedded in the country’s social structures. Despite an anti-racism legislation in place since 1989 (Felix, 2024), the country still struggles with a social reality deeply marked by a history of slavery and colonization, reflected in the daily lives of non-white workers, as reported in chapter 6.

The other three chapters in this section highlight the fight for food sovereignty, and how marginalized and traditional communities across Brazil reclaim their collective agency and use cultural, ancestral, and activist frameworks to resist systemic inequities and secure self-determination within their food systems. This final section centres on the voices, worldviews, and historical resistance of Brazil’s Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous communities.

Chapter 6 – Precarization of Precariousness: Work Process, Hunger and Food Insecurity of Non-White Food Delivery Drivers in Curitiba, Brazil, by Daufenback et al., provides a stark, modern counterpoint to successful state programs. It exposes a cruel paradox in the modern food system: the very gig-economy workers delivering food in urban centres are themselves facing severe food insecurity and racialized precarity. It shifts the book’s tone into the urgent realities of structural inequality.

The chapter reveals how structural racism combines with algorithmic governance to exacerbate the precarious situations of non-white workers, severely impacting their health and income. Structural discrimination actively undermines customer ratings and fosters algorithmic distrust, which directly results in fewer assigned deliveries, extended waiting hours, and deflated monthly earnings. The authors conceptualize this phenomenon as the “precarization of precariousness”—a compounding cycle where a volatile employment structure intersects with racialized systemic inequality to reinforce pre-existing socio-economic disadvantages.

Chapter 7, Food Systems and Food Sovereignty of Traditional Peoples of African Matrix in Brazil: Critical Reflections, by Nogueira et al, examines how ancestral foodways serve as vital frameworks to combat systemic racism and protect cultural identity. The chapter summarizes findings from the research project “Public Health and Traditional Peoples of African Matrix for the Promotion of Food and Nutrition Security”. Exploring ancestral wisdom, it emphasizes the integration of food, nature, and culture, offering sustainable solutions to contemporary challenges as a vital counterpoint to the hegemonic food system.

The chapter uncovers narratives that reveal the profound depth of ancestral food systems. The authors argue that recognizing and protecting the food knowledge of traditional peoples of the African matrix is a fundamental step. It secures cultural and religious rights while sustaining alternative, equitable possibilities for living in, and relating to the planet.

Chapter 8 – Food as Communication in the Formation of the Buen Vivir in an Indigenous Village in Brazil, by Barbosa & Rocha, examines how food serves a central communicative role in developing the Indigenous village of Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba (CVJ) in Brazil. The authors discuss how the fight for food security communicates the community’s core values across generations and to the outside world. The villagers’ agricultural choices, food practices, and views on territory have directly guided them toward Buen Vivir (Good Living), an Indigenous philosophical framework. The chapter reflects on key values embraced by the CVJ, including commensality, reciprocity, solidarity, and permaculture, showing how the village reconstructs ancestral knowledge to articulate survival strategies and dialogue with national society.

The authors argue that these practices are not merely economic activities, but communicative acts that materialize memory, reciprocity, and territorial belonging. Exploring food as a living system of communication in an Indigenous village highlights how marginalized groups utilize their land and heritage to speak back to dominant societal structures. Through this relational labour, the community successfully organizes, educates, and defends its territory against the ongoing pressures of historical erasure.

Chapter 9 – Lifewritings on Food Security and Sovereignty: Trajectories of Anti-Racist Activism and Resistance, by Moraes et al. presents six personal trajectories of anti-racist activism, resistance, and commitment to food sovereignty in Brazil. These narratives blend personal and collective experiences with localized and global events to illustrate a profound discomfort with systemic inequality.

A central thread connects the contributors to the Caruru da Gratidão, a celebratory gathering focused on a sacred Afro-Brazilian dish. Many authors include their Orunkó (sacred Candomblé names), reflecting their spiritual identities as Traditional Peoples of African Matrix (POTMA). Historically born out of enslaved resistance, these traditional communities occupy territories and use institutional mobilization to combat hunger and environmental degradation. In 2011, they founded FONSANPOTMA, a national forum dedicated to preserving ancestral food systems and defending food sovereignty.

By embedding education, nourishment, and ancestral preservation into their daily practices, these activists challenge exclusionary state structures, planting seeds of transformation that bring global sustainable development goals to life.

Final Words

Agency through social participation in policy making and implementation is a core pillar of Brazilian democracy. Still, while robust democratic frameworks and public participation are essential for defending the right to food, effective food security also requires clear, systemic blueprints to guide what a healthy nation actually eats.

Moving from the political scaffolding of citizen-led governance to concrete policy implementation at specific settings,  the chapters in this book explore how state guidelines can transcend basic nutrition to target deep-seated, intersecting health, social, and environmental crises. Establishing national frameworks, democratic oversight mechanisms, and progressive dietary guidelines provides the essential legal and philosophical foundation for securing the right to food. However, for these national ideals to impact lives, they must be successfully translated into daily institutional routines in physical, practical settings—such as public kitchens, schools, and workplaces.

A profound synergy between personal experiences, ancestral territory, and food sovereignty culminates in the volume’s final section. Weaving together the book’s overarching themes around agency and food security, the last chapters of the book also reveal that the democratic ideals of the country must still be extended to much of its racialized populations. They show how Indigenous and traditional communities of the African matrix are exercising and building agency through reclaiming ancestral knowledge that serves as a critical shield against environmental racism and cultural erasure. The deep connection between territorial sovereignty and systemic survival is vital to these populations and exemplifies how food transcends material nourishment to become an essential form of communication, community building, and philosophical resistance.

References

Barbosa, R.S. & Rocha, C. (2026). Food as Communication in the Formation of the Buen Vivir in an Indigenous Village in Brazil. In Rocha, C. & Moraes, A. (Eds), Agency for Food Security in Brazil: Social Mobilization, Participation, and Public Policies. Toronto: TMU Pressbooks.

Centre for Studies in Food Security – CSFS (n.d.). About. Toronto Metropolitan University.

FAO – United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (1996). Rome Declaration on World Food Security. World Food Summit.

Felix, A. (2024). Entendendo a Lei de Racismo no Brasil. Jusbrasil: 21/05/2024.

HLPE FSN- High Level Panel of Experts Food Security and Nutrition.  (2020) Food Security and Nutrition: Building a global narrative towards 2030. Executive Summary. 15. A report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security, Rome.

Koc, M. (2026). Changing Discourses in Food Security. In Regnier-Davies, J., Koc, M., Rocha, C., & Edge, S. (Eds), Rethinking Food Security in the 21st Century. Toronto:  TMU Pressbooks.

Rocha, C. (2019, April 07). What is the COVID-19 pandemic telling us about food systems and food security? [presentation]. Toronto Metropolitan University.

Rocha, C., Bezerra, M., Pequeno, N., Pinheiro, A., Lima, S., & Lyra, C. (2026). Moving Forward in Guaranteeing the Right to Food: Timeline on Food Security Policy in Brazil. In Rocha, C. & Moraes, A. (Eds), Agency for Food Security in Brazil: Social Mobilization, Participation, and Public Policies. Toronto: TMU Pressbooks.

Welsh, J. & MacRae, R. (1998). Food Citizenship and Community Food Security: Lessons from Toronto, Canada. Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 19:4, 237-255.