Rio de Janeiro – The “Zero Hunger” initiative that is the cornerstone of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s social agenda has put food on the tables of millions of poor households in Brazil, but South America’s biggest and most-populous country remains a long way from solving the problem.
The project was announced by Lula with much fanfare when he took office on Jan. 1, 2003, and has been promoted as an initiative that should be copied by other countries.
It is also credited with cementing Lula’s grip on the votes of poor Brazilians as the pragmatic leftist seeks a second four-year term in a contest that will be settled in an Oct. 29 runoff.
“Zero Hunger was a name with much power, but this problem has not been eradicated in any country in the world,” researcher Chico Menezes, president of the National Food and Nutritional Security Council, told EFE.
The council has been advising the president on his anti-hunger plans.
“What we’ve emphasized in Brazil is that the proportions of the problem were very large and it needed to be dealt with to reduce it significantly,” Menezes said.
Some 14 million people in Brazil suffered in 2004 from “serious food insecurity” and 26 million others from “moderate” insecurity, that is, they were not sure where their next meal was coming from, in a country of 183 million, according to a study by the government’s IBGE statistics agency.
The study, whose results were released in September, was prepared last year based on data collected in 2004, when the anti-hunger programs were still in the implementation phase, Menezes said.
“I am sure that a new survey will show better results, although the problem continues,” he said.
For Lula’s critics, the big issue is that these programs consist merely of handouts, while what Brazil needs is a growing economy to fund more investment in education and health care.
“The policies on transfers of income, food security and social assistance” have been implemented in all of Brazil’s municipalities and will get about $9.8 billion in funding this year, the ministry in charge of the program said.
Of the total funds appropriated, $6 billion will go to a subsidy program that will provide assistance to some 11.1 million households.
The funding works out to about $45 a month for each family and is designed to cover the purchase of at least one basket of essential foods.
In exchange for the assistance, families pledge to keep their children and teenagers in school and provide them with basic health care, such as vaccinations. Pregnant women and nursing mothers also agree to seek prenatal and postnatal care.
The programs created under Zero Hunger benefit a total of some 45 million people, of whom 20.3 million are children 15 and under, according to official figures.
The government has also cited figures from the prestigious Getulio Vargas Foundation showing that the poverty rate was reduced to 22.77 percent in 2005, the lowest level since the indicator began to be tracked in 1992.
Zero Hunger created 2,200 social assistance centers that have constructed 167,000 wells in the arid northeastern region of the country and acquired food produced by 190,000 poor farm families.
“Zero Hunger is a broad strategy whose flagship is Bolsa Familia,” as the subsidy program is known, said Adriana Aranha, an adviser to Social Development Minister Patrus Ananias.
Brazil also has a national school nutrition program in place that reaches 37 million pre-school and elementary school students at a cost of $604 million.
Funding for this program has risen 69 percent under Lula’s administration after remaining stagnant for 10 years, and it is an additional benefit for families under the larger subsidy program, Aranha said.
Under another program, at least 109 public dining halls will be opened in urban areas, serving some 6,000 meals a day for about 45 cents.
These programs have become permanent public policy with the recent approval and enactment of the National Food Security Law, which established food as a constitutional right, Aranha said. EFE
