Eradicating Hunger Quickly: Scaling up Hunger Free Programs Jos é Graziano Da Silva Beijing, October 2007

After stagnating in , poverty and indigence rates have fallen sharply in recent years, yet the percentage of people living in poverty is still close to the 1980 figure. LATIN AMERICA : TRENDS IN POVERTY AND INDIGENCE, (Percentages) Source: ECLAC, on the basis of special tabulations of data from national household surveys. b/ Includes indigentes more poor no indigents

Between 2002 and 2005, the number of poor and indigent population declined by 12 and 16 million persons. This might show a change in trend, but now there are still more poor people than in LATIN AMERICA: POVERTY AND INDIGENCE, (Millions of people) Source: ECLAC, on the basis of special tabulations of data from national household surveys. b/ Includes indigentes more poor no indigents

Reasons for the progress made towards the target: higher growth, increasing employment and rising per capita social expenditure LAC (21 COUNTRIES): SOCIAL EXPENDITURE AS A PERCENTAGE OF GDP IN , AND (Percentages) Source: ECLAC, on the basis of special tabulations of data from national household surveys.

Gini index map from WorldPolicy.org World Map Gini coefficient

Undernourishment in figures REGION *Variation rate Population (millions)% % Percentage points TOTAL DEVELOPING COUNTRIES LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN Mexico Central America Caribbean South America Source: FAO SOFI 2006

The number of people suffering from undernourishment declined from 59 to 52 million between 1990 and Even so, projections indicate that 40 million people will still be undernourished in Source: FAO 2006 Target 2015

Statistics on Undernourishment and malnutrition for Latin America and Caribbean Source: a/ Datos de Food Security Statistic 2007 FAO b/Este índice se calculó como la razón entre la oferta de energía alimentaria (Kca/persona/día) y el requerimiento mínimo promedio per-capita (2200 kca/persona/día). Valores mayores a 1 significa superávit y menores a 1 déficit.

Source: UNICEF 2006 Chronic child undernourishment in LAC 9 millions of children

A country case: Hunger Zero,Brazil Lessons learned: 1. Emergency=Conditional Cash Transfers - Bolsa Familia 2. Promoting small-scale agriculture 3. Eradicating hunger; emergency program; food security; legal and policy framework 4. Combine emergency actions with structural changes

Fome Zero 5. Territorial approach needs concrete actions at national, provincial and local level 6. Local, regional and national coordination 7. Social participation in the monitoring of the programmes 8. Interface with press and other media 9. Allocation of necessary public resources 10. Monitoring and evaluation

Recommendations 1. Have an all-embracing goal: Everybody is affected. State Policy 2. Mobilize multiple stakeholders 3. Link hunger eradication with social stability & economic growth 4. Unique beneficiary data base 5. Link conditional cash transfers with schemes to support small-scale agriculture

Conclusions 1. Eradicating hunger required to meet the MDGs and accelerate progress towards social cohesion 2. Hunger eradication should be the first priority of a wide programme of poverty alleviation

Conclusions cont 3. Political commitment needs a clear goal to eradicate hunger 4. Eradicating hunger demands State Policy and not only government action 5. Eradication child undernourishment by 2015 may be an appropriate intermediate goal for LAC

José Graziano Da Silva Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean Food And Agriculture Organization, FAO CONFERENCE ON “TAKING ACTION FOR THE WORLD’S POOR AND HUNGRY PEOPLE” Beijing, China- Octubre 17-19, 2007