2015-06-07 11:20:00

Lessons from Brazil’s landmark “Zero Hunger” campaign


The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)'s 39th Conference has opened with representatives from 194 countries including more than 130 ministers gathered to discuss the Organisation's future workplan and to set a new two-year budget.

The Conference has also re-elected incumbent FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva to a second term in office.

President Sergio Mattarella of Italy, FAO's host country, opened the proceedings with a speech describing the right to food as a core component of the basic right to life and warning that true peace will never be achieved unless poverty and malnutrition are vanquished.

"The world has changed and the time has come for us to pool our resources," Mattarella said. "We all have to go the extra mile, otherwise global governance will be impossible."

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former president of Brazil, delivered the biennial Frank McDougall lecture, named for an Australian economist who helped found FAO.

Lula da Silva discussed the lessons learned from the ground-breaking Zero Hunger programme he implemented in 2003 after being elected as Brazilian President, which led to a sharp improvement of general welfare in the country, where fewer than 5 percent are hungry today, down from 20 percent when he took office.

Noting that FAO's Graziano da Silva served as chief architect and the first minister of the Zero Fome program, Lula emphasized that the initially controversial idea of cash transfers to the poor has since led tens of millions out of a poverty trap -at the cost of only 0.5 percent of Brazil's gross domestic product.

"This is the first generation of Brazilians that hasn't had to face the drama of hunger," he said in a passionate description of how "income transfer to the poorest ends up being very beneficial to the country as a whole."

He stressed the need for political will to prioritize and guarantee steady resources in national budgets to combine food, health and education schemes with support for small-scale family farmers, rigorous civil registrars to ensure efficiency and transparency, policies that raise wages and "treating the poor not as statistical data but as humans, men, women and children."

FAO, Lula said, should serve as a sounding board for other countries to learn about best practices as world leaders negotiate a post-2015 development agenda.

Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile, also spoke, stressing the need to foster efficient and inclusive food systems while urging governments to push back against rising calls for protectionism in international commodity markets and to broaden their anti-hunger programs to tackle new nutritional problems such as obesity.

(FAO)

 








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