ABSTRACT
This chapter aims at presenting a historical account of the Brazilian construction of seguranca alimentar e nutricional (SAN), highlighting the most important developments. It presents the main understandings about the causes of food insecurity in Brazil that the policies, reinforced or instituted within Sistema Nacional de Seguranca Alimentar e Nutricional (SISAN), were intended to address: food production, distribution and consumption dimensions. In general, these policies aimed at supporting family-based agriculture for domestic market supply, reinstating the role of the State in food provisioning, and increasing access to food through poverty reduction policies. In Brazil, the use of the terms food security and human right to food were first registered in official documents in the mid-1980s. In 1985, the Ministry of Agriculture elaborated the document 'Food Security: Proposal for a Policy to Fight Hunger', with the focus on the socioeconomic aspects of food security.
