Brazil's a benchmark in fighting poverty, says FAO

The Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), José Graziano da Silva, said that Brazil's advances in social policies and hunger alleviation “have not gone unnoticed by the rest of the world” and that “this array of policies has changed the face of the country. Brazil has risen to its responsibility as a global pioneer to share its expertise in hunger and poverty eradication.”

He spoke on a video shown Tuesday (Feb. 4) at a seminar marking the tenth anniversary of the Food Purchase Program (PAA) introduced in 2003, whereby the Brazilian government buys produce from small farmers as supplies for school meals.

Representatives from countries that have tapped into Brazil's expertise shared their experiences with their own program implementations. Among other initiatives, the PAA inspired the Purchase From Africans For Africa program (PAA Africa), a collaboration between FAO, the UK Department for International Development, and Brazilian experts. PAA Africa has been introduced as an experiment in five countries – Mozambique, Senegal, Nigeria, Malawi, and Ethiopia. In addition to acting as local suppliers for school lunch, farmers can sell their surplus to the FAO's World Food Programme (WFP).

Milton Rondó Filho, Coordinator-General of International Hunger Eradication Policies at the Ministry of Foreign Relations, 5,187 farmers, 125,000 schoolchildren, and 434 schools are benefiting from the program in Africa: “The program works differently in each country depending on their unique requirements, and the FAO is responsible for organizing farmers in all of them. Bearing in mind that part of the school meals [in Brazil] was a role of the WFP until the early 1990s, this is a leap that other countries can make, too.”

Alexander Wykeham Ellis, UK International Development Department representative and ambassador to Brazil, said that the UK is supporting PAA Africa because the program works: “My country can learn just as well as it can teach. When I see such a successful initiative in Brazil, I could learn how we can do this in other countries.”

Guidione Ezequiel Elias, from the Tilimbique Agricultural Association, Mozambique, said the PAA helps producers conform to regulatory requirements and organize themselves, as well as provide the facilities and promote quality: “We are in the early stages but this has been invaluable help. The [farmers'] associations didn't use to be legally established before. In order to sell our products, we also needed proper warehouses. Now we have built cellars and our quality products sell.”

Translated by Mayra Borges