LEEDS, United Kingdom — Having struggled with high food insecurity and poverty rates for many decades, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has seen many strides toward reducing this national hardship. His term was preceded by a data collection carried out by Brazil’s Institute of Applied Economic Research, which showed that of Brazil’s population, more than 20% or 32 million people, were destitute.
However, from 2003 to 2012, Brazil saw some transformative campaigns implemented under Lula da Silva. To shed light on some of the president’s policies, The Borgen Project has interviewed Dr. Markus Fraundorfer from the University of Leeds, an expert on Brazilian foreign and domestic policy. “Unlike previous Brazilian presidents,” Fraundorfer notes, “Lula da Silva made the fight against hunger and poverty a principal pillar of his time in power.”
He adds, “In this context, it is also important to consider Lula da Silva’s personal story. He was the first Brazilian president in Brazil’s modern history with a working-class background born into poverty and hunger, so he knew how it felt to live in poverty and not have enough to eat.” Indeed, Lula da Silva’s perspective allowed for his initiatives to thrive under his leadership, some of which the rest of the article will highlight.
The Push for Zero Hunger
Fraundorfer identifies Brazil’s Zero Hunger strategy as the initiative that has seen the most success across the nation. “Introduced in 2003 by the then Brazilian government under Lula da Silva,” he notes that “in the following decade, the program has been successful in dramatically reducing poverty linked to food insecurity, which ultimately removed Brazil from the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Hunger Map.”
Fraundorfer cites several reasons for its success, but the overarching theme is careful collaboration. Collaboration between the Special Secretariat of Family Farming and Agrarian Development and the Extraordinary Ministry of Food Security saw that Bolsa Familia, “a financial aid program for poor families,” originated. Other initiatives that fell under the blanket campaign included the creation and support of low-cost restaurants, lessons in nutrition, expanded and upgraded water supplies and a school feeding program.
Fraundorfer emphasizes that “all these programs were of an integrated nature, reducing poverty by supporting local farmers/smallholders and integrating marginalized communities into the market.” Collaboration between different actors within Brazil was crucial to the strategy’s success. Fraundorfer highlights that the level of co-development allowed the initiative to be “implemented in collaboration between the government and civil society.”
Progress
Indeed, the strategy made great strides in reducing food poverty. Between 2003 and 2012, malnutrition rates fell by 82% and overall poverty fell to 8.5% from 24%. Fraundorfer, having lived and worked in Brazil for many years, highlights how he has “witnessed how poverty rates have fallen, with a direct impact on personal security (when walking through the streets of a city) and reduced violence.”
He adds, “Simultaneously, I met many people who benefitted from the various programs of the Zero Hunger strategy and went on to go to university and start fulfilling their potential, finally escaping the cycle of poverty in which otherwise they would have been trapped.” The enrolment of Zero Hunger beneficiaries in university speaks to a crucial aspect of reducing poverty: improving life quality overall.
One notable impact of reducing poverty nationwide was the increasing education rates. From 2003 to 2012, the rate of 15-year-old school enrolment alone expanded from 65% to 78%, translating to more than 450,000 students. Meanwhile, child mortality rates fell from 26.1% to 15.3%. This demonstrates that the Zero Hunger program did more than fill empty stomachs; it was a transformative initiative that allowed many to break out of the cycle of poverty.
Telling the World
Fraundorfer explains that “the Brazilian government has shared lessons learned from the Zero Hunger strategy via the WFP Centre of Excellence Against Hunger, a center established in Brasilia by the Brazilian government and WFP to engage in knowledge exchange with international organizations and governments.”
One important collaboration was the involvement of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) ActionAid. ActionAid was involved in developing the Zero Hunger strategy from the beginning. Fraundorfer mentioned that the nonprofit had significant leverage in implementing the plan. As a result of its successes, ActionAid was able to “scale up elements of the Zero Hunger strategy to a global level.” It also impacted “global decision-making processes at the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and the Committee on World Food Security.
The initiative’s success was first heard in Africa. In 2008, the Africa-Brazil Cooperation Programme on Social Development originated, modeled around the Zero Hunger program. Beneficiaries included Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia, particularly Ghana, which received support in implementing its financial aid program. The FAO also launched a transnational campaign, the Initiative for Latin America and Caribbean Without Hunger 2025, inspired by Brazil’s successful campaign against hunger. According to the latest estimates from the FAO, the initiative has helped lift 2.4 million people out of food poverty.
Final Remark
Fraundorfer explains that Brazil’s Zero Hunger strategy “has shown that the challenges of poverty can be successfully tackled with an intersectoral and holistic strategy, acknowledging poverty and hunger as sociopolitical and economic problems and supporting local farming.” He emphasizes that “the Brazilian government did not try to impose its policies on other countries. Instead, it shared the lessons learned with interested countries worldwide.”
Indeed, the sweeping success of Lula da Silva’s initiative demonstrates the importance of prioritizing the fight against food insecurity and poverty and the value of collaboration between NGOs, governments, civil services and global committees to uplift people worldwide.
– Kayleigh O’Brien
Kayleigh is based in Leeds, UK and focuses on World News for The Borgen Project.
Photo: Flickr