Food security has always been at the top of my agenda. Upon taking office, my government launched a major domestic programme aimed at eliminating—not just alleviating—hunger at home. In 2003, the pioneering Zero Hunger programme has allowed millions of extremely poor Brazilians to have three square meals a day. Its success has encouraged me to believe that similar goals can be achieved at the global level, where millions fall victim to hunger every year. I have therefore put the fight against poverty at the top of Brazil ’s international agenda.
For this reason, in 2004, I joined a formidable array of world leaders from rich and poor countries to launch the Action Against Hunger and Poverty to meet this urgent challenge. We developed proposals to free a large part of humanity from the scourge of hunger and malnutrition. Together, we also developed creative ways to re-route money that previously went from financial speculation into weapons production or amassing exorbitant profits. We want it to serve the most humanitarian of goals—feeding hungry people. There has been progress. For example, a mechanism is now in place to finance treatment of endemic diseases in the poorest countries.
Yet, this is only a drop in the ocean compared to the huge task ahead. Let us keep in mind that every night over 800 million people around the world go to bed hungry. I find this reprehensible and an insult to humanity. There is no room for complacency.
This became abundantly clear over the recent months as soaring food prices triggered food riots and unrest in many countries around the world. And this gave an added sense of urgency to the High-Level Conference on World Food Security: The Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy, convened in June 2008 at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) headquarters in Rome.
It was and remains my conviction that the underlying challenge is fundamentally the same: to make public opinion recognize that poverty and hunger are not inevitable just because they have been around for so long. The technology and distribution networks are available; what is required is political will.
Perhaps the greatest and most welcome novelty is the fact that more people are eating. The poor in China , India , Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, including Brazil , are eating more. This is cause for celebration. Droves of new consumers are joining the marketplace. Many countries that were considered poor in the past are now developing fast and improving the living conditions for their peoples. This crucial reality is here to stay.
During the discussions in Rome , there was an emerging consensus that no single explanation could be given for the crisis. I myself pointed out that the issue must not be dissociated from the wider context of the major global challenges facing the international community: soaring energy costs, and therefore the cost of fertilizers and freight; rising global demand for foodstuffs; paralysis of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Round of trade liberalization talks; and accelerating climate change. I will address these issues here drawing more from what I said at the Rome summit.
Global governance
This bleak scenario underscores the need to improve global governance as we seek to forge concerted international responses to these major threats. Yet what we have seen is quite the opposite. As individual nations or groupings seek to tackle specific issues, the outcome has often been new problems or the aggravation of existing ones. Nowhere is this clearer than with the immediate threat of food shortages.
These issues and their intricate linkages were the central focus of the summit in Rome . One of the meeting’s main outcomes, in fact, was a broad commitment to take urgent and coordinated action to boost food production, especially in the most vulnerable regions. To this end, a compact was agreed upon to invest heavily in research on high-yielding cereal strains. On this issue, Brazil has already taken a lead: for years now we have been sharing our experiences and expertise in tropical agricultural research with other developing countries.
True food security must be global and sustained through cooperation. This has been the motto behind Brazil ’s partnerships with countries in the developing world, particularly in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean . Expanding such initiatives makes it possible to enhance triangular cooperation.
Over the past 30 years, a truly silent revolution in agriculture, particularly in the tropics, has been underway—a revolution that can benefit rich and poor alike. And that can provide tools, solutions and alternatives to meet the growing needs of hundreds of millions of people. We must review our approach and recycle ideas. We must take on board the notions of interdependence and collaboration.
Rich-country subsidies
A decisive factor behind rising food prices is the intolerable protectionism that fences in agricultural production in rich countries, weakening and disorganizing production elsewhere, particularly in the poorest countries.
Subsidies to farmers in rich countries have made it impossible for their brethren in many developing countries to compete in the export markets, let alone in their own domestic ones. The result has been a fatal dependency on imported foodstuffs, which many poor farmers can no longer afford.
Let us hold no illusions. There will be no structural solution for world hunger as long as resources are not put into food production in poor countries and without doing away with unfair trade practices that hinder agricultural trade. In some countries, multitudes of peoples made desperate by food shortages have taken to the streets to protest and demand government action.
We face a grave and delicate problem. If we are to respond appropriately, we must first understand its true causes. Let us begin with the highly dramatic example of Haiti. The poorest country in the Americas, Haiti was once a major Caribbean rice producer. However, macroeconomic policies foisted on that country from abroad focusing solely on fiscal objectives, together with the import of highly subsidized food surpluses from overseas, led Haiti to cease planting its own rice, with the tragic results we have come to see.
The problem of food shortage, however, is not just one of supply. In fact, there is little likelihood of a significant short-term relief on this front, given the profound structural adjustments required to increase world production substantially. The apparent collapse of the Doha Round bodes ill for any hope of increasing food output in developing countries by eliminating trade-distorting agricultural policies.
Food riots also have to do with buying power—or the lack thereof. Many of the world’s poor have been priced out of the market for the reasons mentioned above. Brazil’s ethanol and biodiesel programme has generated hundreds of thousands of jobs, and therefore higher income for farmers, and all those involved in the production and distribution cycle of this multi-billion dollar industry. Added income, especially for the poorest, who spend a higher proportion of their income on feeding their families, is a major part of the answer to hunger, as well as to global poverty.
The so-called world food crisis is, above all, a crisis of distribution. We must produce more food and distribute it better. Brazil, as an agricultural powerhouse, is working to increase its domestic production. But what good is it when subsidies and protectionism undermine market access, depress income and render sustainable farming unfeasible?
Countries with the means to develop advanced technology have made extraordinary gains in crop yield. This has enabled them to be competitive both domestically and on the world market, despite the unjustifiable barriers and distortions imposed by the world’s richest economies. But what of the poorer economies, especially in Africa, that struggle to provide support for their subsistence farmers despite inadequate financing, irrigation and inputs?
Subsidies breed dependency, break down production systems and provoke hunger and poverty where there could otherwise be prosperity. It is high time to do away with them. We could have overcome these hurdles had the Doha Round successfully concluded with an agreement that ceases to treat agricultural trade as an exception to the liberalization rule. Poorer countries must be allowed to generate income through their own production and exports.
Lowering the cost of energy and fertilizers and putting an end to intolerable farm subsidies in rich countries are the biggest challenges facing us today. The expansion of agriculture in developing countries such as Brazil puts a different perspective on these problems. It means that new approaches and strategies will be required.
In today’s world, control over territory and over food and energy supplies has been the prevailing approach to security issues. Farm subsidies and trade barriers that have so jeopardized the development of agriculture in poor countries are also a consequence of this outlook. If agriculture had been encouraged in developing countries through free markets, perhaps we would not be facing the present food crisis.
Biofuels are no villain
If we are to fully understand the true roots of today’s food crisis, we must do away with the smokescreen raised by powerful lobbies seeking to blame ethanol production for the recent rise in food prices. More than an oversimplification, this is an affront that does not stand up to serious scrutiny. The truth is that there is no single explanation for rising food prices.
Biofuels generate income and jobs, especially in rural areas, while producing clean, renewable energy. It is frightening, therefore, to see attempts to establish a causal link between biofuels and the rise in food prices.
I am disappointed to see that many who blame ethanol, including ethanol from sugar cane, for the high price of food, are the very ones who for decades have maintained protectionist policies to the detriment of farmers in poor countries and of consumers worldwide.
An egregious example of the mismatch between good intentions and unexpected outcomes has to do with corn-based ethanol. Although there might be some merit to this scheme, the perceived benefits in terms of reduced petroleum dependency and carbon dioxide emissions would seem to be outweighed by the loss in food production resulting from diverting corn harvests away from livestock feed. The impact on food prices is undeniable.
This is why the focus of my intervention at the Rome summit was on what I believe can be the crucial contribution of biofuels to providing answers to major challenges before us without falling into these traps. In times of soaring oil prices, growing competition over access to secure energy supplies, as well as concern over rising carbon dioxide emissions, biofuels can offer a renewable alternative, cleaner and cheaper than oil derivatives.
Currently, about 20 countries produce the vast majority of the fossil fuels consumed by the remaining 180 nations. Worldwide adoption of biofuels in a judicious manner, on a case-by-case basis, would mean that more than 100 countries could successfully produce ethanol or biodiesel, replacing a significant percentage of global fossil fuel consumption. Biofuels are no villain menacing food security in poor countries. Quite the contrary, when grown responsibly in a manner appropriate to local conditions, biofuels can help generate income and pull countries out of food and energy insecurity. There is no better example than Brazil.
