How Latin American Journalists Are Politicizing the Food Beat

Food journalism isn’t just critics reviewing Michelin-starred meals or influencers rating oat milk lattes. Brazilian food journalist João Peres said he considers the beat a way to discuss complex, systemic problems in Latin America, including deforestation in the Amazon and rising rates of obesity and hunger. 

“We were journalists that have a history of human rights coverage,” Peres said. “So we never looked at food as just a theme of lifestyle or diet. We were already approaching it as something from a much broader context.”

Peres hasn’t veered far from his early work as a human rights journalist. His current reporting is equally probing, exposing the economic and political roots of some of Latin America’s most pressing public food issues.

Through projects like O Joio e O Trigo (Joio) and former cross-border initiative Bocado, Peres and his peers have shown how Latin American food systems are inextricably tied to agribusiness expansion, corporate lobbying and public health crises.

Peres said he first recognized the nuance of food reporting after reading books by Michael Pollan, whose work places food at the center of a complex web of social, political and environmental systems. Since then, Peres has found an urgent case study in his home country of Brazil.

Brazil is a strong example of how deeply government and food are intertwined. Peres reports on this intersection closely, he said, investigating how dietary guidelines, food sovereignty laws and agricultural policies influence shape Brazil’s food systems. 

The Ministry of Agriculture and Congress are heavily influenced by agribusiness, Peres said, which dominates political narratives in the nation. This power dynamic often sidelines small farmers and local food initiatives while driving deforestation of key regional biomes to expand farmland, Brazilian journalist Mariana Ceccon explained. 

“If you look at how the Brazilian economy is structured, it's hard to ignore that food systems have a major impact on a lot of social issues and environmental issues,” Peres said.

Historically, Brazilians have perceived food as complex, making the country a strong basis for analysis, Peres said. The nation’s geography, demographics and vibrant food culture make food issues easy to spot but highly pressing, the Joio site says. 

The Cerrado, one of Brazil’s most crucial biomes, has been devastated by soy and cattle expansion, Peres said. Meanwhile, millions still struggle to access fresh, healthy foods, a problem compounded by political priorities and industrial-scale farming, Brazilian journalist Rhasna Albuquerque said in a Borgen Project article. 

When these systems falter, journalism becomes resistance, and O Joio e O Trigo’s mission captures this ethos. “When the end of the world is announced, all that’s left is to tell stories,” the site says. The project’s name, which translates to “The Chaff and the Wheat,” is a biblical allusion that refers to the separation of the good from the bad. 

“We are a journalistic project that affirms the need to build a new economic system that places the well-being of people, animals, and the planet at its center. Today, corporations are at the center, and that is what Joio is all about,” the site says.

The Joio team works to make their stories accessible, entertaining, and irreverent, especially because these issues, Peres said, extend far beyond Brazil’s borders. Across Latin America, journalists are recognizing how government policies and corporate influence perpetuate similar health disparities and societal inequalities. 

For instance, noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) like obesity and heart issues disproportionately affect those in low- and middle-income countries, including those in Latin America, according to the World Health Organization. By 2030, the Population Reference Bureau predicts, NCDs will account for approximately 81% of deaths in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Some countries are taking action. Chile, for example, has implemented restrictions on advertising ultra-processed foods and has remodeled front-of-package labeling, Peres said. 

Brazil, however, remains tethered to agribusiness interests, with Congress and the Ministry of Agriculture heavily aligned with large producers. The government maintains that industrial farming is central to national prosperity, even as policy outcomes tell a more complicated story. Food journalists aim to disprove this fallacy.

There's not yet enough data to measure whether their reporting has significantly shifted global understanding of food systems, Peres said, but public perception may be evolving. Concrete changes in Brazil illustrate this shift.

“Last year in Brazil, we had, for the first time, an inventory of the national emissions connected to climate change,” Peres said. “Three-quarters of the national emissions are connected to food systems because of deforestation, land use and cattle.”

The United Nations’ “hunger map” no longer features Brazil, Peres said. Also, policies that prioritize family farmers and public programs lifted 40 million people out of food insecurity in just two years, according to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report.

Raj Patel, a research professor at the University of Texas and member of IPES-Food, said that policies like supporting family farmers rather than agribusiness and investing in public programs like school meals are effective, but it's up to the government to utilize these tools, Jessica Levy reported. 

While journalists can’t directly make policy, they play a crucial role in exposing systemic inequities, which may catalyze political change. In 2020, Peres and fellow journalist Soledad Barruti founded Bocado, an initiative championing investigative food reporting across Latin America. 

Though short-lived, the project highlighted the breadth of food-related challenges in the region.

“What was its strength was also its weakness. The diversity of situations is fantastic to be shown and to be shared,” Peres said, “but it was also a challenge in terms of quality of production and what is considered good journalism in each context.”

Looking forward, Peres sees both promise and pressure for the next generation of food journalists. In a fast-paced digital era, reporting on food systems – which requires patience, depth, and nuance – is increasingly challenging.

“We have always tried to make very deep journalism and I see that this next generation is more resistant to it because they’re always thinking about the short-term result,” Peres said. “It's not a bad thing, but it's a different way of seeing our labor, our mission, and what journalism means in the context of the 21st Century.”

Peres said he remains hopeful that reporting can continue to challenge entrenched powers, even as dynamics change.

“I think there is also a greater challenge to understand the social structures in the context of the 21st century because we are facing a big change in how everything works and how information is distributed,” he said. 

For Peres and his peers, food journalism was never about taste, but rather about exploring the political power that stretches from the Cerrado of Brazil to grocery aisles in Buenos Aires. 

How governments choose to support agribusiness, small farmers and public programs can either perpetuate inequality or foster positive change, and this movement of food journalists believes that journalism is the first step in making those choices visible.