The Protein Sovereignty Index

Country assessment

Brazil

We assess Brazil as Resilient (75.1). It is the world's largest net exporter of protein, shipping a record 5.32 million tonnes of chicken in 2025 on the industry's series,[9] about 35 per cent of world chicken trade on the USDA series.[2]

The binding constraint sits upstream: 88 per cent of the fertiliser behind those harvests is imported, including 96 per cent of potash,[18] and the 2026 Strait of Hormuz disruption repriced those inputs during the 2026/27 purchasing window itself.[21][22]

Brazilian households, meanwhile, have seen a genuine improvement in access: unaffordability of a healthy diet fell from 31.2 per cent of the population in 2021 to 21.1 per cent in 2025, and Brazil dropped off the FAO Hunger Map in the SOFI 2025 report.[40][41] Brazil's sovereignty is limited by what it buys to grow food, by thin stocks and fragile logistics, and by a still-elevated fiscal risk premium, rather than by anything it eats.

The protein system

Brazilian diets are protein-adequate: daily protein supply stands at 104.3 g per person in 2022, comfortably above requirement.[1] Behind that sits a production complex without close parallel: a record 2025/26 grain harvest of 358 million tonnes, within it a record 180.1 million tonne soybean crop[3] and 138 million tonnes of corn on the USDA series;[2] 12.61 million tonnes of beef, 15.45 million of chicken and 4.75 million of pork in 2025;[2] record milk output, up 7.2 per cent,[6] with dairies acquiring a record 27.61 billion litres of raw milk;[7] and farmed fish passing 1 million tonnes for the first time, at 1,011,540 tonnes led by tilapia.[4]

The surplus flows outward on a similar scale: record beef exports of 3.50 million tonnes in 2025, up 20.9 per cent and earning USD 18.03 billion, with China taking 48 per cent of the volume;[8] record chicken exports of 5.324 million tonnes;[9] 103 million tonnes of soybeans in 2024/25 with 115 million forecast for 2025/26;[2] and a record 23.3 million tonnes of soybean meal.[27] The import side is narrow: 7.2 million tonnes of wheat,[2] a dairy trade deficit of roughly 2 billion litres milk-equivalent,[6] and Chilean salmon at 83 per cent of farmed-fish import value.[5] The central bargain of Brazilian agriculture sits underneath: Brazil exports protein and imports the chemistry to grow it.[18]

Durable domestic capacity: 88

Quantitative score 88, no adjustment applied

Production exceeds domestic use by wide margins in beef, poultry, pork, eggs and soy, and Brazil supplies about a third of the world's traded chicken from its own feed base, having also become the largest beef producer in 2025 at 12.61 million tonnes against the United States' 11.84 million.[2] The system is durable in the sense the methodology intends: overwhelmingly rainfed, in a country holding about 13 per cent of the world's renewable internal freshwater resources,[12] with none of the fossil-aquifer mining that undermines nominal self-sufficiency elsewhere.

The gaps are real but peripheral to protein adequacy. Wheat is the one major grain in structural deficit, output forecast to fall to 6.7 million tonnes in 2026/27 against demand of 12.5 million;[2] dairy runs a deficit near 2 billion litres milk-equivalent despite record output;[6] and aquaculture, still growing at 4.4 per cent in 2025, leaves Brazil a net importer of premium fish.[4][5] Against export surpluses in every major meat, these deficits cost a few points rather than a band, and we apply no adjustment.

Resource headroom: 81

Quantitative score 86, adjusted down 5 points

No major producer has more room to grow. Peer-reviewed Embrapa research maps 28 million hectares of degraded pasture with good or very good potential for conversion to cropland, concentrated in Mato Grosso (5.1 million hectares), Goiás (4.7 million), Mato Grosso do Sul (4.3 million), Minas Gerais (4.0 million) and Pará (2.1 million), available without clearing forest and with indigenous lands, conservation units and high-biodiversity areas excluded;[11] the agriculture ministry's own 2025-26 mapping puts the convertible total at a corroborating 27.7 million hectares across 1.02 million properties.[61] The corn system already takes a second harvest from soybean land, the safrinha delivering 108.5 million tonnes of CONAB's 140.2 million tonne total, about 77 per cent.[3] Irrigation covers 8.2 million hectares of a roughly 55 million hectare irrigable potential,[13] up from 3.7 million hectares in 2000, doubling the irrigated share of arable land from 8.1 to 16.5 per cent over the period.[55] Agricultural credit shows the same direction of travel: FAOSTAT's orientation index for credit to agriculture, forestry and fishing rose from 0.376 to 0.446 between 2019 and 2024 on an unbroken series, and the government's own Plano Safra rural credit plan grew from R$364 billion in 2022 to R$525.1 billion for 2026/27, with R$140.2 billion of that earmarked for investment including irrigation and mechanisation.[56][58] Arable land expanded 22 per cent between 2000 and 2024, roughly matching population growth over the same period so that arable land per person has barely moved.[55][57] The feed-conversion profile is better than the beef-heavy mix suggests: the herd is largely pasture-based and tilapia, about 70 per cent of farmed fish output, is raised on domestic rations rather than wild-caught fishmeal.[4]

The caveat is governance, and it has two layers. Amazon deforestation fell to 5,796 km² in the year to July 2025, an 11 per cent drop and the lowest since 2014,[14] which strengthens the case that output growth has decoupled from clearing. The Amazon Soy Moratorium, however, is legally unsettled. The competition regulator CADE moved to suspend it in August 2025, a federal court stayed that order within days,[15] and CADE's Tribunal upheld the measure on 30 September 2025 with effect from 1 January 2026.[16] That effect has not materialised: on 5 November 2025 Justice Flávio Dino of the Supreme Federal Court suspended nationally every proceeding on the moratorium's legality, including at CADE, and the stay was still in force when the court resumed the matter in March 2026.[17] The moratorium therefore continued to operate through the research window. Were it dismantled and expansion re-coupled to clearing, the headroom would become commercially self-limiting under EU due-diligence rules.

The second layer is financing, and it is weaker than the resource maps suggest. MATOPIBA, the Cerrado's most active frontier, shows the expansion mechanism working in practice: soybean area rose from about 1 million hectares in 2000 to more than 6 million by the early 2020s, 4.8 million hectares planted in 2022/23 yielding 18.5 million tonnes,[59] but native vegetation on the properties studied fell 38 per cent over the same window, so a material share of MATOPIBA's realised growth has come through clearing rather than around it. The instrument built specifically to convert degraded pasture without clearing tells a weaker story again. ABC Recuperação, the subsidised credit line behind Brazil's low-carbon agriculture plan, was evaluated against its own 2020 target of recovering 15 million hectares of degraded pasture: independent econometric analysis of credit contracted between 2016 and 2018 and tracked to 2022 found three-quarters of financed land unchanged four years on and put the credit line's contribution at no more than 2.5 per cent of the target.[60] Its successor, the 40 million hectare Programa Nacional de Conversão de Pastagens Degradadas decreed in December 2023, remained at the mapping and investment-estimate stage in nine states as of May 2026, with no disbursement or conversion data yet published.[61] We deduct 5 points from the indicator-based score of 86 for a Brazil-specific finding: the one credit line built to let pasture-to-cropland conversion bypass the moratorium's legal risk entirely is financed, so far, at only a small fraction of its own target, taking the pillar from 86 to 81. Irrigation and agricultural credit both pass the realisability test convincingly, evidence that the broader resource base is genuinely mobile.

Import exposure: 83

Quantitative score 83, no adjustment applied

Brazil imports little protein, and most of it arrives from next door. The single material exposure is wheat, 7.2 million tonnes imported in 2024/25 against consumption of 12.2 million,[2] and concentration there is regional rather than single-supplier. Argentina provided 63 per cent of import tonnage in 2024 and the three Mercosur neighbours 83 per cent between them, all reachable overland or by short-sea routes that transit no maritime chokepoint; Russia supplied a further 11 per cent by sea, the one seaborne slice of the line. Dairy imports fill the 2 billion litre gap[6] from the same neighbourhood, Argentina and Uruguay taking 91 per cent of dairy import tonnage in 2024 under tariff-free Mercosur terms.[10] Salmon comes from Chile.[5]

Set against those export flows, exposure is marginal, and the implicit import cover is one no plausible supplier failure can breach. Argentine export restrictions are the realistic threat to the wheat line, and even those would raise prices rather than empty shelves. We score 83 with no adjustment; the lost points reflect the wheat line and the dairy and fish deficits.

Upstream dependence: 48

Quantitative score 45, adjusted up 3 points

Feed, the input that most constrains the Gulf states' score, is sovereign in full: Brazil exported a record 23.3 million tonnes of soybean meal in calendar 2025[27] and 43 million tonnes of corn in 2025/26[2] after meeting domestic demand. The complex faces no imported-feed exposure, a position almost unique among major livestock exporters.

Fertiliser is the mirror image. Brazil became the world's largest fertiliser importer in 2024, ahead of the United States, India and China, and in 2025 bought 88 per cent of consumption abroad: a record 43.3 million tonnes of the 49 million delivered to the market, against 7.2 million produced at home.[18] Potash is 96 per cent imported, nitrogen 95 per cent and phosphate 72 per cent,[18] and the fertiliser trade deficit ran to USD 13.2 billion in 2024.[19] Supply sits where geopolitical risk is highest: by 2023 Canada shipped 36 per cent of Brazil's potash, Russia 29 per cent and Belarus 8 per cent.[20] Iranian restriction of Hormuz in 2026 cut a corridor carrying up to 30 per cent of global fertiliser shipments in 2024,[18] and urea rose from a fourth-quarter 2025 average of USD 398.7 per tonne to USD 856.9 in April 2026, up 80 per cent on February,[22] before falling back to USD 453.1 in June, inside the 2026/27 soybean purchasing window.[21] Work by Arita and colleagues at North Dakota State University, reported by IFPRI, puts the cut to Brazil's cumulative urea imports for April 2026 to March 2027 at 18.7 per cent if closure lasts to July, and 27.3 per cent if it runs to end-2026.[23]

Energy adds a second Russian dependency, volatile in size. Russia supplied 59 per cent of imported diesel volumes over January to August 2025 and 35 per cent of imported petrol,[24] and by March and April 2026 accounted for 81 per cent of diesel imports by value on primary trade data.[25] That position then collapsed: purchases fell about 65 per cent in June 2026, before Russia banned diesel exports from 8 July to the end of that month.[26] The dependency is real, its direction unsettled, and Brazil has repeatedly substituted United States, Indian and Gulf barrels within a quarter.

The indicators put this pillar at 45; we add 3 points on admissible grounds: after the 2022 Russia shock Brazil re-diversified suppliers within a season and still harvested record crops, domestic phosphate capacity has been added including a complex opened in 2024 with 1 million tonnes for the home market,[18] and soil nutrient reserves mean a one-season potash interruption degrades yields rather than halting production, taking the pillar from 45 to 48. The uplift is small because the structural dependence is untouched.

Access and affordability: 69

Quantitative score 69, no adjustment applied

Brazilian access to protein has improved on a genuine multi-year trend. The share of the population unable to afford a healthy diet fell from a peak of 31.2 per cent in 2021 to 21.1 per cent in 2025 on the primary World Bank Food Prices for Nutrition series, a monotonic decline through 26.4, 24.1 and 21.4 per cent in the three years between.[40] The gain is a recovery as much as an advance: the same series put unaffordability at 20.8 per cent in 2020, so four years of improvement have returned Brazil to roughly its pre-inflation position rather than carried it past it.[40] At 21.1 per cent, unaffordability sits in the moderate range, and the other indicators lift the score a few points above what that share alone would set. Undernourishment fell far enough that Brazil dropped off the FAO Hunger Map altogether in the SOFI 2025 report, below the 2.5 per cent reporting threshold on the 2022-2024 average.[41] Child stunting has held near 7.0 per cent since the last national nutrition survey, comfortably inside the World Health Organization's "low" prevalence band.[42]

The weaker components are price stability and physical access, both of which turn on distribution and volatility rather than on aggregate output. Food and beverages inflation swung from 1.03 per cent in 2023 to 7.69 per cent in 2024, contributing 1.63 percentage points to that year's 4.83 per cent headline,[43] and eased only to 6.66 per cent by mid-2025;[45] dairy alone rose 22.1 per cent in 2022.[44] Households absorb this largely through the currency and export-parity pricing set out under upstream dependence and shock endurance below. Physical access is a narrower, localised weakness: a peer-reviewed study of the favelas of Belo Horizonte, mapping every food retailer registered in Minas Gerais in 2019, finds outlets selling predominantly healthy food to be fewer and farther away, while outlets selling predominantly unhealthy food are widely available.[46] We score 69 with no adjustment. The score rests on the outcome and physical-access indicators, and it is what those indicators support and no more: undernourishment at the FAO's 2.5 per cent reporting floor,[48] child stunting of 7.0 per cent,[42][49] and a food-desert pattern localised to urban peripheries.[46][50] The quantitative indicators already capture the improving trend, and we found no admissible ground to move the score further.

Shock endurance: 72

Quantitative score 72, no adjustment applied

Brazil's decisive buffer is the direction of its trade. A country that exports about a third of its beef, about a third of its chicken and over half of its soybean meal[2] can redirect those flows inward, leaving domestic protein supply highly resilient even under a full trade cut-off. The first commercial avian-influenza outbreak, announced on 16 May 2025 at Montenegro, Rio Grande do Sul,[31] was contained to one farm, and Brazil self-declared freedom from the disease 33 days later, WOAH recording the case as resolved.[32] China's ban ran from 29 May to 31 October,[33] and 2025 chicken exports still set a record.[9] The US 50 per cent tariff of mid-2025 cut shipments to that market by nearly 80 per cent, and the volume went to China, which took 948,000 tonnes over January to August, up 19.6 per cent.[34] China's own 55 per cent tariff on beef above a 2.7 million tonne quota, effective 1 January 2026 for three years, shows the limits of one buyer.[35]

The weaknesses are internal. Public stocks are thin, CONAB's regulating reserves having been run down over the 2010s, and rebuilding is recent: a package announced on 29 July 2026 through the government's Sala de Situação do El Niño, a task force spanning 24 ministries, commits R$1.335 billion, about USD 262 million, of which R$850 million buys 310,000 tonnes of rice and 180,000 tonnes of corn,[36][39] and CONAB's Ponta Grossa unit was expanded from 180,000 to 300,000 tonnes on completion in June 2026.[37] Internal logistics are the sharpest single point of failure: the ten-day truckers' strike of May 2018 halted feed delivery so completely that around 70 million chickens were culled and only two of 109 beef plants kept operating.[29][30] Export routing has diversified, with Arco Norte ports handling 40 per cent of corn and soybean shipments over January to August 2024,[38] but domestic distribution remains road-dominated and strike-prone. Currency and export-parity pricing are the transmission mechanism for the price-volatility fracture described under access and affordability above: world price spikes and a weaker real pass straight into food inflation even when supply is abundant.

Crisis purchasing power is a genuine strength that partly offsets those operational weaknesses. Foreign exchange reserves reached USD 358 billion at end-2025, up USD 29 billion on the year and equal to 121 per cent of the IMF's reserve-adequacy metric;[51] on the World Bank's separate measure, for 2024, reserves covered 8.11 months of imports.[52] Brazil has also already demonstrated it can scale social protection fast: the COVID-era Auxilio Emergencial reached 55.6 per cent of the population in direct and indirect beneficiaries, which the World Bank rates among the most agile and robust social protection responses mounted by any developing country, combining automatic selection from the existing Bolsa Familia and Cadastro Unico registries with a new application channel and eligibility checks against more than 40 administrative databases.[54] Fiscal space is the qualifier on this strength: general government gross debt sits near 93 per cent of GDP, and Brazil carries a sub-investment-grade BB/BB/Ba1 rating across S&P, Fitch and Moody's, all with stable outlooks.[53] Market access stays open, but at a rising risk premium, so Brazil can outbid rivals on world markets in a pinch without being able to do so cheaply. We score 72, with no adjustment. The purchasing-power component scores above the logistics and stockholding components beside it: strong reserves and a proven, fast-scaling safety net add resilience the trade-flow and logistics indicators alone do not capture, while the fiscal qualifier caps how far that goes.

Trajectory

The direction of travel is mostly positive. Capacity and headroom keep improving: record harvests, record meat output, aquaculture past a million tonnes,[2][3][4] and 28 million hectares of pasture convertible without clearing forest.[11] Access has improved in step, the unaffordability share falling every year since 2021 and undernourishment dropping Brazil off the Hunger Map,[40][41] though food price volatility and favela food deserts show that improvement in the average has not yet closed the gaps in distribution.[43][44][46] The Plano Nacional de Fertilizantes 2050, published in 2022, sets a long-run strategy against a stated 2020 baseline of 85 per cent import dependence and projects, under its central scenario, potash dependence falling from 98 per cent in 2020 to 40 per cent by 2052.[28] Scenario projections carry no weight here until funded projects produce tonnes, and the evidence to date is a flat 7.2 million tonnes of domestic output while imports set records.[18] What would strengthen this picture most is potash and nitrogen capacity coming on stream, sustained CONAB stock rebuilding, rail and waterway investment that removes the single-mode fragility the 2018 strike exposed, the Programa Nacional de Conversão de Pastagens Degradadas moving from mapping to disbursed credit and converted hectares,[61] and continued fiscal consolidation that narrows the sovereign risk premium.[51][53] What would weaken it is a post-moratorium return to clearing-linked expansion[14][15][16][17] or a reversal of the affordability gains of the last four years. On present evidence Brazil is a very large protein exporter whose sovereignty is mortgaged to imported potash, but whose people are steadily gaining ground on affording what it produces.

Sources

  1. Food Balance Sheets: protein supply quantity (g/capita/day), Brazil, Grand Total (Americas data) · FAOSTAT (FAO) (October 2025 release (data 2022 and 2023))
  2. Production, Supply and Distribution (PSD) database: grains, oilseeds, livestock and poultry (data) · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2026 (April livestock and July grains/oilseeds releases))
  3. Acompanhamento da Safra Brasileira de Graos, eighth survey of the 2025/26 crop, released 14 May 2026 · CONAB (Companhia Nacional de Abastecimento) (2026)
  4. Brazilian fish farming produces more than 1 million tonnes in 2025 (Peixe BR 2026 Yearbook, tenth edition, released 24 February 2026) · WeAreAquaculture (2026)
  5. Peixe BR: producao de cultivo cresce 4,4% em 2025, para 1,01 milhao de t (Peixe BR 2026 Yearbook import values) · Istoe Dinheiro (2026)
  6. Producao recorde e precos em queda: perspectivas para o mercado de leite em 2026 (Embrapa Dairy Intelligence Centre, Cileite) · Conexao Safra, reproducing the Embrapa release of February 2026 (2026)
  7. Pesquisa Trimestral do Leite, table 1086: quantity of raw milk acquired by dairies, Brazil · IBGE (SIDRA) (series retrieved July 2026 (data to Q1 2026))
  8. Brasil bate recorde nas exportacoes de carne bovina em 2025 (MDIC data compiled by ABIEC, 7 January 2026) · ABIEC (Associacao Brasileira das Industrias Exportadoras de Carnes) (2026)
  9. Exportacoes de carne de frango confirmam projecoes positivas e fecham ano com alta de 0,6% · ABPA (Associacao Brasileira de Proteina Animal) (2026)
  10. Detailed Trade Matrix: Brazil wheat and dairy imports by partner country (Americas data) · FAOSTAT (FAO) (December 2025 release (data to 2024))
  11. Potential for Agricultural Expansion in Degraded Pasture Lands in Brazil Based on Geospatial Databases · Bolfe, E.L. et al., Land 2024, 13, 200 (MDPI, peer-reviewed; Embrapa authors) (2024)
  12. Renewable internal freshwater resources, total (billion cubic metres), indicator ER.H2O.INTR.K3 · World Bank (FAO AQUASTAT data) (accessed July 2026 (data 2022))
  13. Atlas Irrigacao (second edition): total irrigated area in Brazil updated to 8.2 million hectares · ANA (Agencia Nacional de Aguas e Saneamento Basico) (2021 (data 2019))
  14. Heading into COP, Brazil's Amazon deforestation rate is falling (INPE PRODES 2025) · Mongabay (INPE data) (2025)
  15. Brazil suspends Amazon Soy Moratorium, raising fears of deforestation spike · Mongabay (2025)
  16. Tribunal do Cade mantem medida preventiva sobre moratoria da soja, com efeito a partir de 2026 (decision of 30 September 2025) · CADE (Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Economica) (2025)
  17. STF determina suspensao de acoes que discutem a Moratoria da Soja (injunction of 5 November 2025, Justice Flavio Dino) · Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) news service (2025)
  18. Middle East conflict revives concerns over fertilizer dependence in the US and Brazil · Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture (Colussi & Langemeier, 20 April 2026) (2026)
  19. How dependent is Brazilian agriculture on fertilizer imports? · Insper Agro in Data (2025)
  20. Global fertilizer trade 2021-2023: what happened after war-related price spikes · IFPRI (2024)
  21. World Bank Commodity Price Data (the Pink Sheet), July 2026 edition: monthly urea, DAP and potassium chloride prices · World Bank (2026 (published 2 July 2026))
  22. Fertilizer prices surge as Strait of Hormuz disruptions tighten supplies · World Bank Data Blog (2026 (14 May 2026))
  23. The Iran war: farmers in Brazil and Argentina face rising fertilizer and energy prices (reporting projections by Arita et al., North Dakota State University) · IFPRI (2026 (5 May 2026))
  24. Brazil petroleum product flows 2025 characterized by Russian consolidation and quality issues · SGS Inspire (2025 (12 September 2025))
  25. Russia dominates diesel sales to Brazil amid Iran war (Comex Stat / MDIC data) · DatamarNews (2026 (12 May 2026))
  26. Russia's diesel export ban hits Brazil, but its buying already fell 65% (Abicom and Comex Stat data) · Rio Times (2026 (9 July 2026))
  27. Brazil soybean meal exports reach record in 2025 amid growing EU demand, low prices · UkrAgroConsult (Secex data) (2026)
  28. Plano Nacional de Fertilizantes 2050 · Government of Brazil (Secretaria Especial de Assuntos Estrategicos) (2022 (March 2022))
  29. Brazilian chickens slaughtered as striking truckers paralyze supplies · Reuters via CNBC (2018)
  30. Economic impact of the Brazilian trucker strike · USDA FAS GAIN (2018)
  31. China bans all Brazilian poultry over bird flu outbreak · The Poultry Site (Reuters) (2025)
  32. WOAH deems Brazil bird flu case resolved · The Poultry Site (Reuters, WOAH) (2025)
  33. China lifts poultry import ban on Brazil · The Poultry Site (Reuters) (2025)
  34. China beef demand drives Brazil recovery from tariffs · China-Global South Project (2025)
  35. China to impose 55% beef tariff above import quotas · The Cattle Site (Reuters) (2026)
  36. Brazil El Nino plan: US$262 million to stockpile corn, rice · Rio Times (2026)
  37. Strengthening the resilience of Brazil's food supply (Ponta Grossa modernisation inaugurated 2 June 2026) · UNOPS (2026)
  38. Arco Norte ports handle 40% of Brazil's corn and soy exports · DatamarNews (ANTAQ data) (2024)
  39. Governo anuncia plano de R$ 1,3 bilhoes para enfrentamento ao El Nino; veja detalhes (independent corroboration of the 29 July 2026 CONAB package: 310,000 t rice, 180,000 t maize, R$850 m grain-purchase component, coordinated through the Sala de Situacao do El Nino; cites Provisional Measure 1.367/2026) · Brasil de Fato (2026 (29 July 2026))
  40. Food Prices for Nutrition database (FPN 5.0), series CoHD_headcount: percent of population unable to afford a healthy diet, Brazil, 2017-2025 · World Bank, jointly compiled with FAO (2025 (FPN 5.0 vintage, retrieved August 2026))
  41. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025 (Brazil prevalence of undernourishment below the 2.5% Hunger Map threshold, 2022-2024 average) · FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO (2025 (28 July 2025))
  42. Child undernutrition in Brazil: the wound that never healed (reporting the ENANI-2019 national child nutrition survey stunting figure of 7.0%) · Jornal de Pediatria / SciELO Brasil (2024 (data 2019))
  43. IPCA em dezembro vai a 0,52% e acumula 4,83% em 2024 (Food and Beverages group +7.69% in 2024, up from +1.03% in 2023, contributing 1.63 pp to the headline) · IBGE (Agencia de Noticias) (2025 (data 2024))
  44. Carta de Conjuntura no. 58, Nota de Conjuntura 5 (food inflation review for 2022, including the 22.1% dairy and derivatives price variation) · IPEA (Instituto de Pesquisa Economica Aplicada) (2023 (data 2022))
  45. Inflacao de alimentos e bebidas cai 0,18% em junho (12-month food and beverages inflation of 6.66% to June 2025, against a 5.35% headline IPCA) · CNA Brasil (IBGE IPCA data) (2025)
  46. Food retail in favelas of a Brazilian metropolis · Rocha, L.L. et al., Food Security, 16(1):277-92 (Springer, peer-reviewed) (2024)
  47. Food Prices for Nutrition database (FPN 5.0), series CoHD_headcount: percent of population unable to afford a healthy diet, Mexico, 2017-2025 (20.0% in 2025, 20.1% in 2024) · World Bank, jointly compiled with FAO (2025 (FPN 5.0 vintage, retrieved August 2026))
  48. Prevalence of undernourishment (% of population), indicator SN.ITK.DEFC.ZS, Brazil and Mexico (Brazil 2.5%, Mexico 2.7%, 2023) · World Bank (World Development Indicators, FAO SOFI methodology) (2025 (data 2023))
  49. Prevalence of stunting, height for age (% of children under 5), indicator SH.STA.STNT.ZS, Mexico (12.5% in 2022) · World Bank (UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Group Joint Malnutrition Estimates) (2024 (data 2022))
  50. Estudio diagnostico del derecho a la alimentacion nutritiva y de calidad 2024 (food insecurity in Mexico, 2022: 17.7% mild, 9.9% moderate, 6.4% severe, 34.0% in total) · CONEVAL (Consejo Nacional de Evaluacion de la Politica de Desarrollo Social) (2024 (data 2022))
  51. IMF Country Report No. 26/191: Brazil, 2026 Article IV Consultation (foreign exchange reserves USD 358 bn at end-2025, 121% of the IMF ARA metric) · International Monetary Fund (2026)
  52. Total reserves in months of imports, Brazil, indicator FI.RES.TOTL.MO · World Bank (World Development Indicators) (2025 (data 2024))
  53. Research Update: Brazil 'BB/B' Ratings Affirmed (sovereign rating actions; general government gross debt via IMF World Economic Outlook data, compiled by Statista) · S&P Global Ratings; Fitch Ratings; Moody's Ratings; IMF World Economic Outlook (via Statista) (2025-2026)
  54. Sharing lessons learned from Brazil's social protection response to COVID-19: the Auxilio Emergencial Program (emergency cash transfer reaching 55.6% of the population in direct and indirect beneficiaries, via automatic selection from the Bolsa Familia and Cadastro Unico registries plus a new CAIXA application channel) · World Bank (2021)
  55. Inputs: Land Use data, Americas (arable land, cropland, land area equipped for irrigation, item and element codes, area codes) · FAOSTAT (FAO) (2026 (data 1961-2024))
  56. Investment: Credit to Agriculture data, Americas (Credit to Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing; agriculture orientation index; share of total credit) · FAOSTAT (FAO) (2026 (data 1991-2024))
  57. Population, total, Brazil, indicator SP.POP.TOTL · World Bank (World Development Indicators) (2026 (data 2000-2024))
  58. Plano Safra 2026/27: agribusiness credit plan of R$525.1 billion, up from R$516.2 billion in 2025/26 and R$364 billion in 2022; R$140.2 billion earmarked for investment · Government of Brazil, reported by Canal Rural (2026)
  59. Land-Tenure Dynamics and Deforestation Pressure in MATOPIBA, Brazil: An Assessment of the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), 2019-2025 · Land, peer-reviewed journal (MDPI), 15(5), 700 (2025)
  60. The Impact of Brazil's ABC Program Credit on Pasture Recovery: Evidence from the Cerrado · Climate Policy Initiative / PUC-Rio (Oliveira, W., Souza, P., Assuncao, J.) (September 2024)
  61. MAPA lanca estudos para auxiliar na implementacao de acoes do Programa de Pastagens Degradadas em nove estados brasileiros (PNCPD status, 27.7 Mha mapped, R$139bn initial investment estimate) · Ministerio da Agricultura e Pecuaria (MAPA), Agencia Gov (2026)

What we could not measure

Brazil's child stunting figure comes from a 2019 national survey, the most recent available, though independent reporting suggests the rate has held near 7 per cent since 2006. No income breakdown exists for diet affordability: the headline unaffordability share of 21.1 per cent is a national average, and Brazil's inequality means the true share among poorer households is almost certainly higher. No single measured self-sufficiency ratio exists for protein overall; capacity rests on separate production and trade figures for each product instead.

Published August 2026 ·How scores are produced