Jean-Martin Bauer | Fighting hunger in a world of plenty (S12-E5)

 

 

 

[00:00:00] Melissa Fleming

My guest this week told me a haunting story. It's about a woman he met who had a daily struggle to get her kids to fall asleep on empty stomachs because she had no food to give them. 

 

[00:00:12] Jean-Martin Bauer

She would build a fire. She would bring out the pots and pans. She'd fill them with water. She'd act as though she were cooking. It was an act. And if the kids would say... If they got suspicious and if they would ask, 'Mom, when's dinner ready?' She'd snap at them and say, 'Quiet! Can't you see I'm cooking?' She'd keep pretend cooking until they'd fall asleep. And only when they were sound asleep would she stop. 

 

[00:00:42] Melissa Fleming

Jean-Martin Bauer has spent his career working to help bring food to the hungry. Today, he is Director of Food Security and Nutrition Analysis at the World Food Programme (WFP). From the United Nations, I'm Melissa Fleming. This is Awake at Night. Jean-Martin is speaking to me from Rome at World Food Programme headquarters. Welcome. 

 

[00:01:18] Jean-Martin Bauer

Hi. Thank you. 

 

[00:01:18] Melissa Fleming

I wanted to first ask you about your last posting, which was Haiti. And I understand you have a very personal connection to Haiti. Can you tell me about that? 

 

[00:01:30] Jean-Martin Bauer

Sure, Melissa. My personal connection to Haiti comes from my mother. My mother was born in Port-au-Prince. She left Haiti as a teenager to come to the US where I was born and raised. Haiti for me has been a very special place. I'd go to Haiti with my family when I was young, but the situation in the country was such that I wasn't really able to know it aside from being in the diaspora, being a member of the Haitian diaspora. I'd hear a Creole all around me. My grandmother would cook all the Haitian dishes the country is famous for. But I never really got the chance to live in Haiti until I got back to the country in 2022 as the WFP Country Director for Haiti. 

But I have to say, I discovered my passion for food security in the country because my uncle, my uncle Serge, was a rice farmer in the south of Haiti. I visited with them a few times when I was a teenager. I grew up in the suburbs of Washington, very much a quite privileged area. And going down to the south of Haiti and seeing a completely different environment. But that was familiar because it was part of my family. And discovering what the farming was like in Haiti really opened my eyes. I understood this was a marvelous thing to grow rice and feed one's community. And it brought me to the job I do today, which is working to build more food-secure communities around the world. So, you understand, Melissa, how special it was for me to join the World Food Programme. But to be the World's Food Programme's representative in Haiti meant quite a bit to me. 

 

[00:03:07] Melissa Fleming

Jean-Martin, could you just tell me how your mother came to the US. What were the circumstances that she arrived there? 

 

[00:03:15] Jean-Martin Bauer

So my mother left Haiti because... Well, my family had been very close to the regime. They were very close to the Duvalier regime, a family that ran Haiti from 1957 through 1984. It was a father and son dictatorship. It spanned three decades. It was a corrupt and violent regime. My family was very close to this corrupt and violent regime. 

My uncle, Uncle Jacques, was Duvalier's personal physician, was his right-hand man. He was the dean of the medical faculty. He was head of the Haitian Red Cross. He carried a pistol on his hip as the head of the Haitian Red Cross. In fact, the Haitian Red Cross was expelled from the International Red Cross under my uncle's leadership. And Jacques was a confidante of the dictator and as a result, my family was well placed in Haiti at the time as being insiders in the Duvalier regime. 

The regime began in 1957. There was an election in 1957. And my mother describes as an eight-year-old having voted in that election, going to the polling place, been carried on someone's shoulders and casting her ballot. And I think it shows what a mockery of democracy the Duvalier regime was. As the years went by, the dictator became more and more paranoid as dictators do. 

And one day Uncle Jacques told my grandmother we have to go. Jacques himself stayed in Haiti and Duvalier took everything away from him - his titles, his jobs. But not his life. He was fortunate. He died in Haiti decades later. But my grandmother and her six children came to the US. My mother describes arriving in New York in 1969. I think it was on the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. And she said she arrived in New York on a Sunday in July 1969. And on the Monday morning at 9 a.m., she already had a job at a store somewhere. So, my family lived in Harlem for a while and moved to Washington, D.C. soon after, which is where I was born and raised. 

 

 

[00:05:24] Melissa Fleming

I understand that your dad comes from Europe. So, you had quite a multicultural upbringing. 

 

[00:05:32] Jean-Martin Bauer

That's right. So, my mother came from Haiti when she was 19. My father was a Fulbright. So, he came on a Fulbright scholarship to the US. He did his studies in Georgia and met my mom later in Washington. And they decided that they'd raise us as French speakers. So, I was fortunate enough to attend the French school in Washington. 

 

[00:05:54] Melissa Fleming

Your dad was French? 

 

[00:05:56] Jean-Martin Bauer

French. Yeah. Yeah, from Alsace, from the East. 

 

[00:06:00] Melissa Fleming

Okay. You talked a little bit about visiting Haiti as a teenager and meeting your uncle who was a rice farmer and how that kind of sparked something in you. If you could just maybe describe what his life was like a little bit more and what was it and how did it look? Like how did his rice fields look and how did it sustain him and the community? 

 

[00:06:25] Jean-Martin Bauer

My uncle Serge is one of my role models. And he grew rice but had a turbulent youth before he decided to grow rice. He was actually part of an opposition group to Duvalier in 1964. There was a referendum where Duvalier tried to get elected for life, as president for life. When that happened, it spawned all types of opposition movements and Serge was part of one of those movements. At the time, Serge lived in New York. He was on 77th Street on the Upper West Side and people would meet at his apartment. And his friends from southern Haiti decided to overthrow the regime. Like Che Guevara, get into a boat with guns and overthrow Duvalier. Serge never got into the boat. He knew the plan would not work and he stayed behind. But 13 of his friends landed in Haiti. Duvalier knew about the plot and his forces picked off those rebels one by one in 1964. The last two were executed in public. I know that Serge felt horrible about all this. He tried to retrace their history when he went back to Haiti later. 

Duvalier's son... Under the second Duvalier, political tensions got better. So, Serge was able to go back to Haiti. And what he decided to do was to grow rice on an estate he'd inherited from his father. It's an estate near the town of Jérémie. Jérémie is a town in southwest Haiti. It's isolated. I mean, when I was a teenager, it would take a day's drive and then another day's sail to get to the property. But it's good land. It's fertile land. It was a sugar plantation during the colonial times. It was converted to rice and Serge wanted to feed his community using rice. He grew a brand of rice that they called Madame Gougousse. And this is local Haitian rice, very sought after because it tastes great. Rice when it's fresh is quite a treat. 

He tried to bring new technology into this area, southern Haiti. He read about the Green Revolution. So, he tried to bring fertilizers, a tractor, advisors, new seeds. But he and his wife, my aunt Nelly, fought a battle there. They really believed in nature-based solutions, but at the same time, they brought this technology to the south of Haiti to grow more rice. It ended up for them being a cycle of debt. It just never worked out for them. 

In 1994, there was regime change in Haiti when the US marines came to Haiti after a period of chaos to bring back President Aristide, who'd been democratically elected in 1992. The Haitian government decided to open its economy to international markets and open its food markets to international imports. And that was what broke my uncle's back. All of a sudden, he found himself facing a flood of very cheap subsidized rice that came from overseas, mostly the US. So, my uncle who was in this remote corner of southwest Haiti was competing against USDA [US Department of Agriculture] subsidized farmers from Arkansas. And this was just not a fair battle. And he... I mean, he didn't lose the farm, but he lost his market and he switched to other things. I mean, the farm is still there. It's growing a very good quality organic rice that's very much sought after. It's overseen by my two cousins who still live in New York. I mean from a distance they're trying to make things work. 

But the dominant model of agriculture just never worked out in that place. It's always been something that works better with small plots, small farmers growing a small acreage of rice and so... I hadn't been to the farm in a very long time and went back for the first time in 2023. And to see the acres and acres and acres of green rice growing right there in Haiti, which is thought of as a country in crisis. It is in crisis, but it's got so much potential. I thought that island in the south of Haiti was a great message of hope for everyone in the country because the farmers of Haiti can feed themselves. They can feed the nation if given a chance. 

 

 

[00:10:50] Melissa Fleming

That's a lovely story. And you do... Something about that experience and being on that rice farm as a teenager, planted a seed of interest for you in working in the field of fighting hunger. 

 

[00:11:06] Jean-Martin Bauer

Absolutely. And we are at a point where hunger is at record levels. Worldwide, you've got more than 300 million people who are acutely food insecure. The resources worldwide are just very large. The world economy has never been this big. The amount of food we grow on this planet has never been so large. And we're still facing food crises in places like Haiti, Sudan. We're talking a lot about Gaza right now with reason. South Sudan, Mali. 

And I suppose to me it's always been, how do you make the link between the capacities of small farmers like the ones who are growing rice in southern Haiti and this problem, this very serious problem of acute food insecurity? So, I was fortunate to start with the World Food Programme when I was 22 years old. And I've devoted my life to trying to develop solutions that work for those small farmers. 

And a book that I read when I was a teenager, it's called "The Masters of the Dew." This is a book by radical Haitian author Jacques Roumain. Describes how someone who was working in Cuba comes back to Haiti. The protagonist of the novel is called Manuel. Comes back to Haiti to his home village, which is parched by drought, riven by division, not able to feed itself. Manuel comes back and gets people together, faces down the conflict in the village, tries to bridge some of the divides. Finds water in the mountains. And over the opposition of some of the people in the villages, manages to get water to the parched fields of his home and bring new life and new hope to his town. 

And I think that's more than an allegory. It's more than a story I read in a novel. It is work that we in the UN can do. There's, again, much untapped potential at the local level to resolve the food security problems that exist out there. 

 

[00:13:19] Melissa Fleming

We hear now about Haiti very often through headlines that are mostly about gang violence getting worse and worse and worse, and the consequences of that, including hunger. What keeps you awake at night when you think of the situation now? 

 

[00:13:38] Jean-Martin Bauer

What keeps me awake at night about the situation in Haiti is that I'm not seeing a solution. I'm just seeing things get worse and worse and worse. I'm a food security analyst at present. That's my job right now. And what I see in Haiti was that there was no acute food insecurity in Haiti in 2016. We have a system called the IPC [Integrated Food Security Phase Classification], which is the gold standard for food security analysis internationally. The IPC did an analysis in Haiti in 2016 and there was no acute food insecurity in the country at the time. There were problems. I mean, there are chronic issues. There are definitely many, many challenges in Haiti. 

Late 2016, Hurricane Matthew hits the country. It was an uppercut, a hurricane that came up from the south and devastated my family's ancestral home of Grand'Anse, wiped out the south. One million people needed food aid after that hurricane. A few years later, the number reached 2 million as a result of the political instability in the country. With COVID, it got almost to 4 million. When I was in Haiti in 2022, we were at 4.3 million people facing acute food insecurity. Three years later, here we are at more than 5 million people. So that's half of the population that's analyzed in these cycles. 

So, what keeps me awake at night is I know how corrosive hunger can be for an individual, for a family, for community. And what's wrong here is that this has gone on for years. It's been more and more people are facing this problem over a long time. And this protracted crisis, this protracted hunger in Haiti, I think will bring nothing good in the future for the country and for its neighbours. There's a very real risk of seeing Haiti turn into a huge problem for Haitians themselves, but also for the neighbourhood in the Caribbean. So, I think back to the people I met in Haiti. I think back to those small farmers in Haiti. When you grew up with years of hunger, what does that mean? It means you've got a lost generation. Some kids aren't going to school. You've got the people facing malnutrition over years who will never reach their full potential in life because they haven't had enough food at critical periods of their life. 

Hunger also destroys the social fabric. And I saw that in Haiti. The richest agricultural zone in Haiti. It's not the south where my family is from. It's the centre. It's Artibonite Valley. This is a major rice farming area in Haiti and that part of Haiti has gone under the control of armed groups. I remember speaking to market women in that part of Haiti who were telling me that instead of being out there purchasing rice, purchasing fresh foods and bringing them to market they were hiding at home because they were afraid of being kidnapped and racketeered and raped. And this has been going on for such a long time in Haiti. It's something that Haitian observers have called the "long Haitian night." This has gone on for so long that I just fear for the long term. 

When I was in Haiti, I met a lot of people who... Or before deploying even, I spoke to people who had been in Haiti during the 2010 earthquake or in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. And that was a traumatic event. Horrific for those who were there and those who went in the immediate aftermath. But it was also something that was followed by an upswell of hope. The Haitians themselves and the people who responded to the earthquake from the international community who traveled to Haiti, the diaspora, there was a belief that we were going to rebuild and build back better. At least initially, that was the sense. Of course, the reconstruction of Haiti after the earthquake had many limitations, many failings, but there was optimism. And right now, in Haiti, unfortunately, there is no optimism. 

 

[00:17:47] Melissa Fleming

It sounds like that it must be very frustrating for you because you know that the solutions are all there from what you're saying. People don't... Five million people should not be hungry. The land is fertile. There could even be self-sufficiency, but it's the violence that is causing all of this suffering. 

 

 

 

[00:18:13] Jean-Martin Bauer

Haiti can definitely feed itself. Outside Port-au-Prince, there are very real opportunities to do great things with local farmers and promote value chains and work towards a longer-term improvement in the country. It's unique in the Caribbean in that it's actually a big country. There's space for a lot of things, including farming. And it is a country that could feed itself. 

Now, what I want to make clear is that even now, even during these dark times, there are opportunities to sow seeds for a better future. And one of the things we tried to do during the dark days of, for example, early 2024, when there was a change in government in Haiti, when there was a "peyi lock". And that expression, I need to explain it. It's when the country shuts down. And it's happened regularly in the past six years that people take to the streets. Everything is shut down. Barricades come up. There's shooting. There's violence. There is looting. And people stay home, have to stay home because it's too dangerous to leave your house. 

And there was an episode like that in early 2024. The ports were shut down. The airports were shut done. Traveling around Haiti was impossible. And what we saw in 2024 is that there was a large-scale displacement of the population. In fact, Haiti is a country with almost 12 million people. More than 1 million people are currently displaced. They were forced to leave their homes. And the way we were able to support this group in early 2024 was through local value chains. It was through local farmers. The way humanitarian work usually operates is you've got a very long supply chain. I describe to many colleagues how long these can be. When I was the representative in Congo, we had food from the US for refugees who lived in the border of Congo with the Central African Republic. The food was grown in the US Midwest, barged down the Mississippi River, put on a boat that sailed across the Atlantic Ocean. Then it was driven from a port on the South Atlantic Ocean to a river port on the Congo River, then barged up the river.  And if the river wasn't high enough, we'd have to wait for a few months for the river to rise. All told, it would take between five and six months to get the food to the refugees. So, these very, very long supply chains, they don't always work out. 

And I just said in Haiti, we had violence that closed the ports. We weren't able to bring in food from outside during this very difficult moment. So, we worked with local farmers. And we were really pleased to be able to use local Haitian food to feed thousands of displaced people every day. We would prepare local Haitians dishes made with rice, with beans, with pig feet, with just tasty, delicious food for people who've been displaced at a time of need. I mean, that's really important to use food to uplift people. We were during that time able to feed a quarter million school children every single day with a hot meal, a homegrown school meal. So, this is food that was planted, grown, harvested, processed in Haiti. 

And that's just a huge difference because the country's right now 50% dependent on imports, 80% dependent on its staple food - rice. But to have been able to shorten the supply chain, it insulated the WFP operation from the risk of gangs controlling the ports, controlling the access roads in the country. And therefore, farmers were able to bring food to their communities and again, do what they do best, which is provide food in proximity. And by working with them, that's a different paradigm of humanitarian response. That's how things should look. And therefore, even in an emergency, we can try to build a link to a better future. And what that looks like is again Haitian farmers, Haitian cooperatives providing food to school meals programmes and other similar programmes. 

 

[00:22:18] Melissa Fleming

That sounds like something that I'm sure that you're aspiring to implement all over the world that would be more sustainable. But I know that people still felt very desperate at this time.  And there was an incident that was very dramatic when a mob of people came to plunder a WFP warehouse. What did you experience there? 

 

[00:22:43] Jean-Martin Bauer

That happened right after I got to Haiti. I mean, I remember reaching Haiti in the summer of 2022, very excited about being there and rediscovering the country. And I remember my Creole being rusty. And reintegrating into Haitian society, but also trying to be a good member of the UN team in Haiti. And the government announced an increase in fuel prices. Melissa, all hell broke loose in a day. And in one of these episodes, one of this “peyi lock” happened in September 2022, and everything was shut down. And the worst looting since 1986, the departure of the Duvalier dictatorship, took place in September 2022 when I was the WFP rep in Port-au-Prince. And one of our offices was looted in mid-September and another one a week later. 

And what happened was that the... We had crowds of people force their entry and made away with stocks of food. Thankfully, no one got hurt. None of the WFP team got hurt. The warehouse was itself ransacked, looted and burned to the ground. All the food was taken away, but thankfully no one get hurt. And that's probably what was most important. But I think for me it was a learning moment. I remember going to see the team. I wasn't there. This was in the town of Gonaives. I remember going a few days after the looting, as soon as security allowed me to see how the team was doing. And I was expecting to see people who had been... who were still under the shock, still in distress after seeing their workplace go up in flames. And they told me very clearly, 'We want to get back to work. We want to work to help the people of the city and the area around it.' I thought they needed time off. No, they wanted to get back to work. 

And we got our programmes going again, but we did it differently. We didn't bring food from across an ocean to Haiti for the schools and for the programmes in that area. We started working with the local farmers. And that meant we had more acceptance. One of the key things in an environment as hostile as the one in Haiti where you're the object of attacks is to gain the community's acceptance. And by working with local farmers, well, that changed the equation. 

And there were two major episodes of violence when I was in Haiti. There was that first one in September, 2022, and then another one in February, 2024. And I can tell you that we completely changed our supply chain and our way of working by engaging with these farmer organizations and these cooperatives. And we didn't get looted in 2024. That didn't happen, because we'd built that relationship with the communities. Because when you create... When you purchase food from local farmers, from a local cooperative, you're providing employment to dozens of people. And that means you're not a target. 

I know that for humanitarians overall, we have become targets. I have colleagues in Haiti who took bullets while coming to the office. I had colleagues who were kidnapped. It's more difficult to be a humanitarian worker in our day and age. I think when I see what's happened to some of my colleagues in Gaza or in Sudan, it just breaks my heart. But part of the way to mitigate against that type of risk really is how we do our programmes and embedding them in the community as much as we possibly can. It won't guarantee, by the way, that you won't get attacked or threatened. The local community is a huge ally, and in the case of Haiti, they were a great enabler of our ability to stay and deliver at a time of crisis. 

 

 

[00:26:42] Melissa Fleming

Do you think, because you've faced at WFP massive cuts, sudden cuts to your budget in the past year, mostly from the US, but also the Europeans are scaling back. How has this changed that approach? Are you suddenly having to say that we have to focus on local solutions? 

 

[00:27:05] Jean-Martin Bauer

Localization is one of the key policy priorities for the World Food Programme. And that makes it easier for us to stay on track when funding goes up and down. So, as you said, Melissa, there have been deep funding cuts to the World Food Programme. All major donors have reduced their funding to the agency this past year, unfortunately. We're trying to keep things going. But what will keep us going is, again, having a very clear sense of what we need to achieve. And I think the focus on local solutions is all the more urgent because what we're seeing is more and more host government funding for World Food Programme activities worldwide. In the case of Haiti, I often made people pause when I would give the statistic. The number one donor to WFP in Haiti wasn't the ex-USAID or Canada. It was the Haitian government itself. They would give us more funding than those traditional donors. 

 

[00:28:04] Melissa Fleming

I know WFP is working in very acute situations where that could be something to aspire to, but there is war and people are fleeing and there's nothing. What are your thoughts when you wake up in the morning and think about the people, the children, the women, the men who are struggling just to find a little bit of food? 

 

[00:28:27] Jean-Martin Bauer

So this podcast is called Awake at Night, and this is definitely an issue that has me awake at night. I'd like to give you a simple statistic, Melissa. The IPC, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, it's a five-point scale to rate the severity of a food crisis. Phase 1 is normal, 2 is stress, 3 is crisis, 4 is emergency, and 5 is catastrophe. If enough people are identified as Phase 5, that becomes a famine after a review process. The number of people living in Phase 5 worldwide has increased from about 100,000 in 2018 to almost 2 million at the end of 2024. It's gone up tremendously. It's women. It's displaced people. It's members of disadvantaged groups. And that's a trend that has me very much worried. 

 

[00:29:25] Melissa Fleming

What is happening to those children who are in this Phase 5, this stage of famine or almost famine, malnutrition? What happens to their bodies and could they recover if they were to have access to food soon? 

 

[00:29:44] Jean-Martin Bauer

What happens in Phase 4 already... So, this is before you get to Phase 5. People start dying in Phase 4. Mortality begins. Excess mortality is detected already in Phase 4 because that's where malnutrition rates exceed certain thresholds. So even before Phase 5 there's an impact on the wellbeing and the lives of these children. I mean, it's life-threatening food insecurity. And then when you get into Phase 5 it's out of control. You get much more mortality. Children are much more susceptible to death from diseases. When you get to such an extreme stage of malnutrition, it takes a long time to recover. I'm just hoping that our generation will meet the moment and will demand action to help protect these children. 

 

[00:30:31] Melissa Fleming

Is there a person that you've met in the field, like during your travels, that motivates you to keep you going? 

 

[00:30:38] Jean-Martin Bauer

I remember being in the south of Mauritania in 2004. I was a young humanitarian worker at the time and I was sent to check on the situation on the ground after a drought and locust infestation. It was very, very interesting. The locusts had wiped out half of the crop and we were getting ready to respond to an emergency. And I got to a village in southern Mauritania. And I met a woman named Binta. She was living in a dry river bed. She was living under a patched-up canvas tent. She had three kids, three boys. And I asked her how were things. And looking at me straight in the eye with a smile, she told me about how things were really difficult. 

And she told me about she managed to get her kids to fall asleep at night on empty stomachs. So, she told me that every night she would build a fire. She would bring out the pots and pans. She'd fill them with water. She'd act as though she were cooking. It was an act. And if the kids would say... If they got suspicious and if they would ask, 'Mom, when's dinner ready?' She'd snap at them and say, 'Quiet! Can't you see I'm cooking?' And so, she'd keep pretend cooking until they'd fall asleep. And only when they were sound asleep would she stop the show. And it's a story that to me brings to mind that hunger is a lived experience. It's more than a statistic. Of course, I'm working as the head of a statistics department here in Rome, but it's women like Binta. There are millions of them all over the world who have to face their young kids and find a way to make it to the next day. 

 

[00:32:29] Melissa Fleming

That's quite an image. Just imagine stirring water to give the kids an illusion that they may be getting food. Jean-Martin, you've just written a book about your experiences called "[The] New Breadline." What drove you to write it? 

 

[00:32:50] Jean-Martin Bauer

I was sitting in Brazzaville during the COVID lockdown and I realized two things. Is that hunger was misunderstood at the time. The COVID pandemic was a global health crisis, but it was also a global food crisis. And I think people came to realize that it was also a food crisis, a global crisis a little bit late. And we lost opportunities to respond and help people as a result. In the middle of the lockdown in Brazzaville, people had to stay at home. People lived day to day. You worked during the day to earn your dinner basically. And people in Brazzaville were really suffering. The incidence of food insecurity in the capital had more than doubled during the lockdown because people just weren't able to make ends meet and they needed support. And I felt that this was misunderstood. 

And I also felt that I'd reached a point in my life where I had a lot to say about this issue, about the issue of food and security and just what I'd seen in my different assignments with the World Food Programme in different parts of the world. So, I felt like... And I'm also an avid journaler and had notes and I thought this could be a book. I mean, I also remember being... I would come to the US on home leave and talk of people about the work I did on hunger and the penny just never dropped with the people I was speaking to. I'd explain I was an aid worker and leave it at that. 

But to me, it looked like hunger had become all of a sudden, a very important issue in the US. I saw lines of people waiting for food at food banks and churches. And I remember seeing people at my daughter's school. There was a line of SUVs, the big vehicles in line at seven in the morning. And I saw someone come out of the school handing out food parcels to these people in these big cars. And I realized that these people were car rich, but food poor. And that the issues that I'd worked on my entire adult life were also relevant in the US, the richest society in the world. And I just thought that I had something to say about that and that's how "The New Bread Line" came into being.  

 

 

[00:35:12] Melissa Fleming

Jean-Martin, can you imagine a world without hunger? 

 

[00:35:17] Jean-Martin Bauer

I think it's hard to. I am an optimist, but I'm just seeing things trend in the wrong direction. When I started my career in 2001 with WFP in Niger, there was optimism. There was talk of zero hunger. There was talk of eradicating hunger like a disease, honestly. And in 2015, all 193 Member States of the UN adopted the SDGs. SDG number 2 is Zero Hunger. We're not there. In 2019, there were 135 million people facing acute hunger worldwide. As I speak to you today, Melissa, it's 300 million. We're not on the right track. I know that solutions are out there. I know there's a lot we can do, but I've seen the debate shift from zero hunger a decade ago to famine prevention today. So, we've lowered our expectations. Maybe we've come back to reality. And maybe what we can do is instead of dreaming of a world free of hunger, let's dream of a world free of famines at least. 

 

[00:36:24] Melissa Fleming

At least. 

 

[00:36:25] Jean-Martin Bauer

And that's the bare minimum. 

 

[00:36:28] Melissa Fleming

Thank you, Jean-Martin, it was really great talking with you. 

 

[00:36:32] Jean-Martin Bauer

Thanks. It's nice getting to know you. I've, again, listened to your show, so it's great to be here. 

 

[00:36:39] Melissa Fleming

Thank you for listening to Awake at Night. We'll be back soon with more incredible and inspiring stories from people working against huge challenges to make this world a better and more peaceful place.

To find out more about the series and the extraordinary people featured, do visit un.org/awake-at-night. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and please take the time to review us. It helps more people to find the show. 

Thanks to my editor Bethany Bell and to my colleagues at the UN: Katerina Kitidi, Roberta Politi, Julie James-Poplawski, Eric Justin Balgley, Benji Candelario, Jason Candler, Abby Vardeleon, Alison Corbet, Laura Rodriguez de Castro, Anzhelika Devis, Tulin Battikhi and Bissera Kostova. The original music for this podcast was written and performed by Nadine Shah and produced by Ben Hillier.