Strengthening Safety Nets

Before the advent of Medicare and Social Security in the United States, seniors, the primary beneficiaries of these programs, had the highest poverty rates of any demographic group in the country. Since the establishment of these and other safety net programs, such as nutrition assistance, seniors consistently enjoy the lowest poverty rate of the three main demographic groups (seniors, adults, and children).

All developed countries have established some form of safety net for the most vulnerable members of society. The developing world also has safety net programs, but they miss many of the people most in need. One reason, of course, is that poor countries have less money to spend on the safety net. But well-designed social safety net programs do not necessarily place a heavy burden on the national budget.

Brazil’s experience with its Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) program offers many lessons for other developing countries. Brazil has been designated to receive modest funding from Feed the Future as a “strategic partner,” along with India, South Africa, and other developing nations that have access to more resources. The strategic partners will be funded to generate scientific and technical knowledge to be shared with other Feed the Future countries.

Brazil has already achieved the Millennium Development Goal (MDG 1) of reducing poverty by half: between 2003 and 2008, extreme poverty was reduced by 48 percent.¹ Economic growth played a role in the country’s swift development, but the main reason for the impressive progress against poverty came from improving safety net programs and attacking endemic social, economic, and political inequalities. The main program, known as Bolsa Familia, which reaches one in four Brazilians, costs just over 2 percent² of the federal budget—roughly the same percentage as the U.S. government spends on federal nutrition programs such as the National School Lunch Program, WIC, and the Food Stamp Program (now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP).

In 1992, 11.7 percent of Brazil’s population lived on less than a dollar a day. By 2006, this figure was only 4.7 percent.³ From 1993-2006, Brazil’s GDP grew at an average annual rate of 1.3 percent annually.⁴ This looks anemic compared to the growth rates of several Asian countries that also had large declines in extreme poverty over the same period—including China (8.7 percent annual GDP growth), Indonesia (5.1 percent), and Thailand (6 percent).⁵ What’s noteworthy about economic growth in Brazil has been its distribution: the incomes of the poorest 40 percent of the population grew by 12 percent, while the richest 10 percent saw their incomes rise by just 7.85 percent.⁶

The following sections will examine the success of Brazil’s Zero Hunger program. No two countries can follow the same path because so many issues affect the conditions that perpetuate poverty. Difficult challenges such as this are multidimensional and require a concerted effort of social, economic, and political reforms. But exemplary national programs such as Zero Hunger generally offer a lot of useful information for other countries.

Political Commitment

“If at the end of my term every Brazilian person has three meals a day,” declared Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (known as Lula) upon his inauguration in 2003, “I will have fulfilled my life’s mission.”⁷ Having grown up in poverty, Lula’s passionate commitment to Zero Hunger is clearly shaped by his own background. It would be easy though misleading to attribute Brazil’s success against poverty and hunger solely to its charismatic president. While the most dramatic progress against hunger has been achieved during his presidency, Brazil’s commitment to ending hunger actually predates Lula’s presidency. For example, the right to food is explicitly included in the country’s constitution.

Zero Hunger launched shortly after Lula came into office, adopting a more aggressive approach to hunger while still tapping into existing cooperative relationships. Zero Hunger calls on all Brazilians to play a part in ending hunger. Churches, media, and even private businesses are all active in the fight against hunger, and individuals are urged to donate food and money to local charities or directly to the Zero Hunger program.

Under Lula, the Brazilian government established the Ministry of Social Development and Hunger Eradication as the office charged with implementation of Zero Hunger. The program combines short and long-term initiatives. Bolsa Familia, the main short-term initiative, was operating when Lula took office. It received a substantial increase in funding during his presidency—rising from $649 million in 2001 to $4.95 billion by 2009.

A key component of the program is conditional cash transfers that are modeled after a program that started in Mexico in the 1990s and is widely viewed as a success. Poor families receive cash assistance if they meet certain conditions, such as enrolling children in school and taking them to receive vaccinations and nutritional screenings. More than 11 million families in Brazil have received cash transfers,⁸ and studies show this has led to far more children enrolling in and staying in school.⁹ A food grant component of the program (known as Bolsa Alimentacao) has also contributed to the improvement in food security. Nine in 10 families report better eating habits, 9 in 10 children are eating three or more meals per day, and 7 in 10 families are eating more diverse foods rich in micronutrients.¹⁰

Targeting the Most Vulnerable

Progress against inequality in Brazil is occurring more slowing in rural areas, where land reforms that would benefit the poor have been hard to pass.

The key to developing effective safety net programs is targeting the right groups. Just as with the targeting of seniors in the United States, Brazil’s Zero Hunger deliberately targets groups most in need of support. In Brazil, as elsewhere around the world, small farmers make up the largest share of poor and hungry people, so Zero Hunger has targeted most of the program’s resources there.

Brazil is at a very different stage of development than Rwanda or the other countries discussed in this chapter. However, people working in small-scale agriculture make up 70 percent of the rural labor force.¹¹ Farming is often the only option for groups excluded from other forms of employment by geography, discrimination, or lack of education. As part of its long-term strategy, Zero Hunger is addressing complex issues of social, political, and economic exclusion. The Zero Hunger program targets small farmers, for example, by paying them to produce food for the national school meal program, a strategy similar to the one in Ghana described earlier. This is another good example of how anti-hunger programs can create synergy across different sectors of the government—in this case, between agriculture and education.

Brazil’s government created a complementary program called Territories of Citizenship to address the political and social issues that perpetuate exclusion in certain areas of the country. The Territories program depends on strong participation from civil society organizations and capitalizes on their good relations with local populations. In some cases, these organizations receive assistance directly, bypassing local government authorities in order to avoid politicization.¹² Addressing long-term challenges mean taking on some of the thorniest issues in rural areas, such as land reform.

Quilombola communities, made up of descendants of African slaves, illustrate how land reform and hunger are interconnected.¹³ The estimated 1.7 million Quilombola are among the most isolated and marginalized groups in Brazil. Stripped of their land in the early 20th century, Quilombola petitioned the government to regain title, and in 1988 the government recognized their claims as legitimate. But progress in returning land to the Quilombola has been slowed by continual political and legal challenges.

The malnutrition rate among Quilombola children is 76 percent higher than for the rest of the children in the country.⁶⁹ According to Professor Ana Lucia Pereira of the National Council for Food and Nutritional Security (CONSEA), land reform is the most important issue impeding efforts to reduce malnutrition among Quilombola children. “Nowadays the issue of land ownership represents the most pressing risk for Quilombola children’s adequate nutrition,” she says, “because this is totally linked to the community’s food production.”¹⁴

Brazil has aggressively increased school enrollment and is on target to achieve the second Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education.

Flexibility

A final point to add about Zero Hunger has been its flexibility in adapting to changing circumstances. For example, efforts to improve the productivity of small farmers were slow at first due to the weakness of the support structures for small-scale farmers, underfunded and understaffed for many years.¹⁵ To compensate for this, the government accelerated its plans to scale up the Conditional Cash Transfers. The program’s responsiveness to conditions on the ground has been an important ingredient in its success.