This article is from cointelegraph.com.br and the original article can be read here in Portuguese
Hunger is cowardly, merciless, unfair, it has no party, no football team, no religion. When it arrives, what exists is despair, suffering, agony. At these times, a plate of food is invaluable, because it represents relief, survival, or at least survival. Hunger is the reality, the daily life of 33.1 million people in Brazil according to a survey released last Wednesday (8) by the Brazilian Research Network on Food and Nutrition Sovereignty and Security (Rede Penssan).
The data are contained in the 2nd National Survey on Food Insecurity in the Context of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Brazil, produced based on 12,745 interviews in urban and rural areas of 577 municipalities in the country by the Vox Populi Institute, with support from Ação da Cidadania, ActionAid Brasil, Friedrich Ebert Brasil Foundation, Ibirapitanga, Oxfam Brasil and Social Service of Commerce (Sesc).
According to the document, the Covid-19 pandemic also brought as a consequence the growth of hunger in the country, increasing by 14 million the number of people who have nothing to eat, the most critical area of a portion that represents 58.7% of the population. Brazilians living in some degree of food insecurity, be it mild, moderate or severe, a number that is equivalent to 125.2 million people, in absolute numbers.
The data favors the understanding of the scale of the problem and, at this time, any help is valid. One example is the use of disruptive technologies such as cryptocurrencies and blockchain, successfully used in several projects around the world, including Brazil.
One of the cases is the startup ImpactMarket, which decided to make blockchain and cryptocurrencies tools to fight hunger in several countries through donations that are converted into basic income through RBI (Universal Basic Income) community contracts. This represents a total of 45,600 people benefited worldwide, distributed in 254 communities in 34 countries, most of them in Brazil, according to the platform data this Friday (10th).
On another front, blockchain and IoT (Internet of Things) present themselves as allies in the fight against another issue related to food: waste. A problem that, in addition to aggravating hunger, accounts for 8% to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions and that generates an annual loss of US$ 165 billion in the United States.
In this context, which includes the reduction of diseases caused by the consumption of contaminated food, the FDA, the regulatory agency of the US Department of Health, developed the HACCP framework, an acronym for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, which is a quality certification for food companies used worldwide, including Brazil.
HACCP determines all food chain touchpoints where products are vulnerable to contamination, while blockchain and IoT simplify HACCP plans by unifying digitized task management, real-time temperature checking, traceability and compliance reporting. automated.
For example, if an IoT sensor detects that a retail consumer’s refrigerator has exceeded the HACCP-defined hamburger storage temperature, an actual alert is sent to the associate’s handheld indicating all corrective action to be taken. In turn, blockchain is leveraged to reduce critical traceability inefficiencies that reduce compliance accuracy.
Far from being the solution to problems, cryptocurrencies and blockchain present themselves as collaboration tools. A recent example was the use of a digital wallet to collect donations in Bitcoin to help residents of the metropolitan region of Recife hit by a storm that killed more than 100 people, as reported by the Cointelegraph Brazil.
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