Josué de Castro: o homem, o cientista e seu tempo

Josué de Castro: a Geographer of multiple contribution revisited in his ideas

“…C it. ), Anselmo e Bray (1998) e mais uma vez Andrade (1996), que em biografia escrita para compor a reedição do livro de A. M. Castro13 em comemoração ao cinqüentenário de Geografia da Fome, resgata e contextualiza a sua trajetória, destacando o geógrafo social implícito no intelectual e homem público que fora Josué.…”

Participação e ativismo do grupo de interesse da segurança alimentar e nutricional em São Paulo/SP

“…Castro foi um dos brasileiros que mais abordou o tema da alimentação, incluindo-o na questão geopolítica e aprofundando o debate sobre a fome e o meio ambiente. Ademais, exerceu grande influência na vida nacional e alcançou projeção internacional nos anos decorridos entre 1930 e 1974 (Andrade, 1997). De acordo com Castro (1984) as ameaças alimentares não partem somente da dimensão qualitativa e quantitativa, mas também da importância de uma alimentação adequada.…”

The Geography of Hunger: 75 years

“…Thus, we approach a cost very close to what would be a basic salary for family expenses and their essential demands with the acquisition of 12 food items referring to the demands on calories, proteins, vitamins, minerals, (macro and micronutrients) and their functions isolated and combined in a harmonic and physiologically appropriate manner. 4 It was an enormous advance, at a time when even the rich and politically and culturally developed countries were involved in issues that were still so primitive, such as hunger, food insecurity, and a whole structure of adversities, which can be enunciated in the so-called "ecosystem" of poverty. It is a process sustained by the instability of employment and income, by precarious housing and sanitation conditions, by the limited supply and low quality of health actions, by the culture of poverty and even indigence that scatters around the world niches of families united or stigmatized by the apparent fatalism of poverty.It is clear that these situations in which sociology of poverty has called "poverty villas" in Latin America, are multiplied by urban or rural agglomerations in the Third World countries, especially in Equatorial Africa, without being understood as a geographical fatalism or racial condemnation.…”

“…This change in treatment, which was reaffirmed and consolidated in the Geopolitics of Hunger, in addition to the unprecedented editorial success, made possible in Brazil, the establishment of the minimum wage, the basic laws of the Previdência Social (alike Social Security), the institution of Merenda Escolar (Meals at School), until this day, it is one of the largest food support programs in the world, the iodation of salt for human consumption to prevent endemic goiter, the network of Previdência Social restaurants and, above all, the creation of state and city councils for food and nutritional security. 4 And, perhaps the greatest achievement, a collegial effort of public authorities and civil representatives of society made it possible to remove our country from the "hunger map", creating a historical example used by the United Nations as a benchmark platform for countries of the community or poor countries as Africa, Asia, and Latin America. 5 With a commendable sense of opportunism and historical responsibility, when several events and processes were developed in Brazil and on a global scale such as the case of the tragic COVID-19 pandemic, expanding rapidly in to all the continents and to almost every country on the globe, Brazil, with a determined support of institutional organizations, such as: OXFAM Brazil, FREDERICH/EBERT/STIFTUNG Brazil, and more active National agencies of its own country to document very unique changes in the public life and in the Brazilian society itself over more recent times.…”