ORIGINAL PAPER Food acquisition programs in the Brazilian semi-arid region: benefits to farmers and impacts of climate change Patricia S. Mesquita 1 & Marcel Bursztyn 1 Received: 26 November 2015 /Accepted: 6 July 2017 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. and International Society for Plant Pathology 2017 Abstract Climate change has been predicted to impact many vulnerable communities in rural regions of developing coun- tries. Meanwhile, social protection programs have been discussed as strategies not only to address the current socio- economic issues, but also to deal with vulnerabilities related to the capacity of people to cope with climate change. However, limited information remains available on the impacts of those social protection programs to beneficiaries, precluding further insights over the totality of effects due to program participa- tion. In addition, the role of current environmental shocks and climate change over program functioning is far from being understood. Herein we investigate the perceived impacts, ac- cording to institutional actors, of a Brazilian food-based safety net program (Food Acquisition Program - PAA) on participat- ing farmers, and the impacts of an extended drought on pro- gram functioning. Projections of changes in climate according to global and regionalized models provided in the literature were also used to discuss possible impacts on crops procured by the PAA. Overall, based on the interviews, PAA was per- ceived as positive with a diversity of effects at farm, house- hold and community levels, while the extreme drought in 2012 impacted the program through the decreased availability of produce and even disruption of services. Changes in cli- mate in the Northeast region will impact key crops procured by the program with possible consequences over all groups of beneficiaries if business stays as usual, requiring ex-ante ad- aptation over the various levels of program functioning. Keywords Climate change . Social protection . Food security . Semi-arid regions . Brazil Climate change, as one of the most debated environmental topics, has been predicted to impact many communities around the world, especially in the most vulnerable regions of poor countries, driving even further the existing inequalities (World Bank and GFDRR 2013). Those areas, in general, have greater vulnerability to impacts due to the high exposure and reduced adaptive capacity to cope in an appropriate man- ner to all sorts of nature-related shocks. To overcome vulner- ability issues related to climatic factors, the field of climate change adaptation has been developing strategies that encom- pass short and long-term approaches at both local and national scales (Smit and Wandel 2006; Eriksen et al. 2007; Tubiello et al. 2008; Heltberg et al. 2009). Currently, social protection programs have been playing a great role in decreasing socioeconomic vulnerabilities and have also been recognized as an important variable in the field of food security and climate change adaptation (Davies et al. 2008; Heltberg et al. 2009; Von Braun 2009; Alwang and Norton 2011; Wood 2011). Programs such as cash-, food-, and asset-transfer and insurance have been producing great transformations in the livelihoods of vulnerable populations in developing countries (Devereux et al. 2008). Changes in education, school attendance and health status, for example, are widely present in many countries that implemented national social protection programs (Espejo et al. 2009; Devereux et al. 2012). Food-based safety nets (FBSN), through the provision of food to School Feeding and Food for Schooling Programs, and for other institutions such as hospitals, prisons and social * Patricia S. Mesquita patriciasmesquita@gmail.com 1 Center for Sustainable Development and Climate Network (Rede CLIMA), University of Brasília, Campus Darcy Ribeiro, Gleba A, Brasilia-DF 70910-900, Brazil Food Sec. DOI 10.1007/s12571-017-0711-1