Edible Armor: Brazil’s Bread Tank

Normally tanks are designed and built for military purposes. However, this is not the case for this particular tank built in Brazil in mid 2012. Named the Bread Tank piece of edible militaria was created to try and raise awareness for efforts to get military spending decreased an instead use that money to fight hunger.

Looking back at the photos posted by the organizers for the project does give us a good look at the design process and the construction of the tank.

*Photo showing the internals of the Bread Tank during construction. Source: https://www.facebook.com/TheBreadTank/photos*

The construction seems to have been made up of a steel frame covered with wood and mesh. Once this was assembled the entire frame was then covered in bread. They also mention a small vegetable garden inside which would become visible as the bread was removed, but none of the photos I found seem to show this. This was visible in one of the early drafts so perhaps it was planned and never quite materialized.

Measuring 8 meters long, 4 meters wide, and 3 meters tall the final design sort of resembles a casemate tank destroyer like the Italian semovente line of vehicles or the Stugs, although it does also look a bit like an inflated Ford 3-ton tank. Likely they did not intend for it to look like anything in particular, but I think they did a good job with their representation.

As for the fate of the Bread Tank, it was displayed in Rio de Janeiro in the Santa Marta Favela during June of 2012 with these photos from the 19th. It later appeared in a few locations for different events including a press conference at Athletes park. Alongside the tank was information showing military spending compared to how money could be used for social and ecological means. We can also see the slogan “Bread not Bombs” used with the Bread Tank. The next and seemingly last appearance of the Bread Tank was the following year in August for World Youth day as well as the visit of Pope Francis. Following this both the Facebook page and Twitter account of the project went dormant and the breadtank.org website they had is no longer online. Using the Wayback machine does show us that this was essentially just a redirect to a page on the World Future councils website which is no longer up. What happened to the tank model and the project as a whole after this appearance is unclear, but judging by the lack of activity on social media it was likely scrapped and the people involved have moved on to other things. Don’t worry though, the bread did not go to waste as it was reportedly donated to a foodbank following the display.

Although the history of the Bread Tank is fairly short I found it fascinating and couldn’t believe I had never heard about it before now. If any of you saw it in person or were actually involved in the project please don’t hesitate to reach out to me so I can help preserve this story. I tried to reach out to them through their Facebook page which is still up to get more details about the project and its impact but have yet to hear back. If I do get a response in the future I’ll be sure to return to this for a follow up.