“Se ao final do meu mandato,
cada brasileiro puder se alimentar
três vezes ao dia, terei realizado
a missão da minha vida.”.
“If by the end of my term of
office, every Brazilian is able
to have three meals a day,
I will have accomplished
my mission in life.”
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 10/28/2002
On the day he was elected, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced his intention to put the highest priority on the eradication of hunger during his administration’s four-year term of office. The Special Ministry of Food Security and Combating Hunger (MESA), under the Office of the President, was specifically created to implement the most ambitious set of social programs ever conceived in Brazil: the Zero Hunger (ZH) initiative, a multifaceted set of policies and programs for food security. Involving nearly all ministries, all three levels of government (federal, state and local) and all of Brazilian society, the ZH initiative is the result of a full year of work by experts, NGOs, research institutes, unions, other organizations of civil society, plus social movements related to food issues from all over Brazil, coordinated by the Citizenship Institute. Brazil is the world’s fourth largest food exporter and produces more than enough food to fully satisfy the standard recommended nutritional needs of its entire population.
Nevertheless, according to ZH, 46 million people in Brazil were living in a situation of “food insecurity” in 2001, which means they did not regularly have access to enough food to meet their basic needs and sustain active, healthy lives. ZH’s priority is to fight hunger and ensure food and nutritional security by attacking the structural causes of poverty, therefore providing sufficient purchasing power for every Brazilian to have access to food. This initiative has not only mobilized Brazilian society as a whole, but also has earned recognition from international institutions such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). As of June 2003, Zero Hunger was assisting 193 communities in 10 Northeastern States, or 58,259 families; twice as many families were expected to be assisted in July), and hopefully it will inspire other countries to follow Brazil’s lead in moving vigorously towards the goal of a world free of hunger.
Hunger, Food Insecurity and Poverty in Brazil – Hunger, poverty and food insecurity are distinct but deeply interrelated phenomena. The word “hunger” refers both to the feeling of an empty stomach and the social problem of starvation, usually rooted in calamities such as drought, armed conflicts, etc. In Brazil, only a very small share of the population is affected by this kind of hunger, usually associated with drought. Food insecurity is a broader concept that refers to a lack of access to decent food with enough regularity, quality and quantity. According to ZH, 28 percent of the Brazilian population—46 million people—is today living in a state of food insecurity, thus being deprived of a fully decent life and denied one of the most fundamental of all human rights, the right to adequate food.
The main cause of food insecurity in Brazil is not a shortage of food, but insufficient purchasing power. Despite FAO’s indicators that Brazil produces 2,960 kCal/day of nutrition for every inhabitant, well above the 1,900 kCal/day recommended minimum, millions of unemployed, underemployed and so-called “informal” (i.e. unregistered) workers and their families lack sufficient quantities of quality food to meet their basic nutritional needs and maintain good health. Most of these very poor Brazilians live in small villages and medium-sized towns in the countryside (20 million people) and in large metropolitan areas (9 million people), where unemployment rates and the costs of out-of-home meals and non-food expenses (such as housing, transportation, health care, education) have increased substantially. Poverty also afflicts around 15 million people in rural areas of Brazil. Although there is a heavy concentration of poverty in the less developed Northeast region (50%), even the Southeast, Brazil’s most industrialized region, has a high proportion of poor people (11.5 million). Zero Hunger addresses poverty not as an isolated or occasional phenomenon, but as the result of an economic growth pattern characterized by extremely low wages, rising income concentration and unemployment. The ZH initiative seeks to ensure the fundamental right to food for every Brazilian, as an essential condition for enjoying the full benefits of citizenship, by means of a permanent Policy for Food and Nutritional Security.
The Structural Causes of Food Insecurity – Structural aspects of Brazil’s development model, such as income concentration, low wages, high unemployment rates and stagnant economic growth—especially in job creating sectors—are ultimately the root causes of food insecurity in the country. Millions of families with extremely low purchasing power are trapped in a vicious cycle of hunger, aggravated by weak income and job creation policies, as well as insufficient farm policies. As a consequence, the poorest people are excluded from the food consumption market, which causes further drops in food production, with consequent declines in employment opportunities, thus perpetuating unemployment, social exclusion and economic marginalization. Hence, eliminating food insecurity in Brazil demands a different economic development model that favors income distribution in order to enlarge the domestic market and create jobs, thus providing adequate access, not only to food but to the benefits of full citizenship, for the vast number of people currently in poverty.
The Zero Hunger initiative includes a combination of structural policies to tackle the underlying causes of poverty—such as job and income creation, universal social security, and land reform—as well as a set of emergency policies aimed at ensuring immediate access to food for the population at greatest risk, by reducing food prices and promoting self-sufficiency and subsistence production.
Zero Hunger: the Political Solution to Hunger in Brazil – The work of the Zero Hunger initiative is organized in three main areas of activity: (a) implementing structural, specific and local policies—coordinated by the Special Ministry for Food Security and Combating Hunger (MESA); (b) formulating and carrying out a participatory National Food and Nutritional Security Policy, with the active participation of the organizations of civil society, in the National Food and Nutritional Security Council (CONSEA); and (c) establishing a major national solidarity movement to eliminate hunger, with the involvement of both the government and the organizations of civil society.
• Structural policies include job and income creation initiatives, strengthened land reform, universal social security, basic health care, incentives for family farming, educational incentives, minimum wage programs and social development in the semi-arid region of the Northeast.
• Specific policies are focused on promoting food security and working to eliminate hunger and malnutrition among the neediest segments of the population. These policies include the food stamps program, emergency food support, maintenance of security food stocks, expansion of the workers food program, donations of emergency basic food baskets, working to eliminate malnutrition among mothers and children, and expanding the school meals program, as well as food and consumption educational programs.
• Local policies are basically successful programs that are already operating at the local level, implemented by states and local governments, in partnership with the organizations of civil society. In metropolitan areas, these programs include: creating low-cost restaurants that supply high-nutritional quality and low-price meals; establishing a food bank that increases the availability of food to the entities that are responsible for feeding needy populations, establishing new relationships with supermarkets and other retailers in order to recruit them as partners in implementing food security policies through their participation in food stamps programs, modernizing food supply facilities and commercializing local agroindustrial products, etc. In addition to these initiatives, local proposals for small villages and medium-sized towns include incentives for urban farming and support for local produce. In rural areas, the emphasis is on support for family farming, technical assistance, improved access to credit, infrastructure investments and support for production and self-sufficiency.
Funds for Zero Hunger -The government’s commitment to eradicating hunger includes the creation of a permanent federal budget category allocating funds to cover not only the policies of the Zero Hunger initiative, but also those allocated to education, health care and land reform. The Fund to Fight Hunger and Eradicate Poverty was created in 2001 to pay for actions targeting poor families. The fund receives both budget allocations and donations from individuals and corporations located in Brazil and abroad. The fund is managed by the Special Ministry for Food Security and Combating Hunger, in collaboration with an Advisory Council. The government has opened bank accounts in Brazil and abroad in order to receive cash donations from companies and individuals interested in supporting the Zero Hunger initiative. Both small and large-scale food donation campaigns organized by city governments and the National Food Supply Company (CONAB), respectively, provide additional funds for the Zero Hunger initiative. Additional funding is expected to come from the economic growth arising from the implementation of income and job creation policies that are part of the ZH initiative.
The Challenges of Zero Hunger – The eradication of hunger is a moral imperative. Its success cannot be ensured by a government initiative alone, even if all the federal, state and local institutions involved are efficiently coordinated. It is vital to involve the organizations of civil society, such as trade unions, membership associations, NGOs, universities, schools, churches, and companies, while also having support from the international community. Zero Hunger faces two main challenges: first, working in conjunction with a fully engaged civil society to strengthen the institutional capacity to implement what is necessarily a complex and multifaceted set of programs; and, second, mobilizing the required funds in ways that are consistent with economic and fiscal stability.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is now in the process of analyzing possible short- and mid-term actions to support the government’s efforts in implementing ZH. In the short-run, the IDB is in the process of identifying activities, within ongoing projects, that directly complement the ZH initiative and can be implemented rapidly. In the medium-run, the IDB will assist the government in the ongoing design of the initiative. The World Bank is already supporting activities in a variety of areas related to Zero Hunger. The Bank is committed to supporting policies to reduce poverty, malnutrition and hunger through existing and new activities, in response to requests from the new government. Likewise, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) believes it is necessary to review its ongoing and pipeline projects, particularly those in support of the National Program for Generating Income (PRONAGER) and the National Program for Family Farming Empowerment (PRONAF), with the aim of exploring how they can contribute directly and on an appropriate scale, to the early implementation of the ZH initiative. Certainly, if ZH is successful, Brazil will have more than fulfilled the commitment it made at the World Food Summit (WFS) in 1996, and reaffirmed five years later at the 2001 World Food Summit, to reduce by 50% the number of undernourished people in Brazil by 2015. Brazil’s actions and initiatives will certainly inspire other countries to follow its lead in moving vigorously towards the goal of a world free of hunger.
Links:
Ministério Extraordinário de Segurança Alimentar e Combate à Fome
(Portuguese only)
Instituto Cidadania
Zero Hunger
Fome Zero
Report of the Joint FAO/IDB/WB/Transition Team Working Group
Brazil receives US$1 million for Zero Hunger Project from FAO
CONSEA (Conselho de Seguranca Alimentar)
(Portuguese only)
Programa Nacional de Apoio a Agricultura Familiar
(Portuguese only)
CONAB
(Portuguese only)
World Food Summit – five years later