Brazilian City Makes Food a Basic Right and Ends Hunger

[Kathryn41 3,205]

Brazilian City Makes Food A Basic Right And Ends Hunger

by Jeff Nield, Vancouver, British Columbia

Restaurant Popular (People's Restaurant) by Bruno Spada/MDS

Back in 1993, the newly elected city government of Belo Horizonte, Brazil declared that food was a right of citizenship. At that time, the city of 2.5 million had 275,000 people living in absolute poverty, and close to 20 percent of its children were going hungry. Since the declaration the city has all but wiped out hunger and only spends 2% of the city budget to do so.

So how did they make it happen?

Writing in the Spring edition of Yes! Magazine, Frances Moore Lappe, author of the classic book Diet for a Small Planet, digs into how Belo Horizonte residents and government officials keep their city food secure.

The city agency developed dozens of innovations to assure everyone the right to food, especially by weaving together the interests of farmers and consumers. It offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to sell to urban consumers, essentially redistributing retailer mark-ups on produce-which often reached 100 percent-to consumers and the farmers. Farmers' profits grew, since there was no wholesaler taking a cut. And poor people got access to fresh, healthy food.

Once the concept of food as a right took hold a variety of different methods for getting healthy food to the people emerged. Entrepreneurs are given the chance to bid on high-traffic plots of land to sell produce. In return they agree to sell 20 or so fresh produce items at 3/4 of the going market price, and the rest of their produce can be sold at the market price. Three large scale "People's Restaurants" serve healthy meals to 12,000 people a day for the equivalent of $0.50, and innovative school programs ensure that students are well fed.

Belo's food security initiatives also include extensive community and school gardens as well as nutrition classes. Plus, money the federal government contributes toward school lunches, once spent on processed, corporate food, now buys whole food mostly from local growers. In just a decade Belo Horizonte cut its infant death rate—widely used as evidence of hunger—by more than half, and today these initiatives benefit almost 40 percent of the city's 2.5 million population. One six-month period in 1999 saw infant malnutrition in a sample group reduced by 50 percent. And between 1993 and 2002 Belo Horizonte was the only locality in which consumption of fruits and vegetables went up.

The last word goes to Lappé who says, "Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy."

http://www.treehugge...ends-hunger.php

Edited July 18, 2010 by Kathryn41

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

Brazilian City Makes Food A Basic Right And Ends Hunger

by Jeff Nield, Vancouver, British Columbia

Restaurant Popular (People's Restaurant) by Bruno Spada/MDS

Back in 1993, the newly elected city government of Belo Horizonte, Brazil declared that food was a right of citizenship. At that time, the city of 2.5 million had 275,000 people living in absolute poverty, and close to 20 percent of its children were going hungry. Since the declaration the city has all but wiped out hunger and only spends 2% of the city budget to do so.

So how did they make it happen?

Writing in the Spring edition of Yes! Magazine, Frances Moore Lappe, author of the classic book Diet for a Small Planet, digs into how Belo Horizonte residents and government officials keep their city food secure.

The city agency developed dozens of innovations to assure everyone the right to food, especially by weaving together the interests of farmers and consumers. It offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to sell to urban consumers, essentially redistributing retailer mark-ups on produce-which often reached 100 percent-to consumers and the farmers. Farmers' profits grew, since there was no wholesaler taking a cut. And poor people got access to fresh, healthy food.

Once the concept of food as a right took hold a variety of different methods for getting healthy food to the people emerged. Entrepreneurs are given the chance to bid on high-traffic plots of land to sell produce. In return they agree to sell 20 or so fresh produce items at 3/4 of the going market price, and the rest of their produce can be sold at the market price. Three large scale "People's Restaurants" serve healthy meals to 12,000 people a day for the equivalent of $0.50, and innovative school programs ensure that students are well fed.

Belo's food security initiatives also include extensive community and school gardens as well as nutrition classes. Plus, money the federal government contributes toward school lunches, once spent on processed, corporate food, now buys whole food mostly from local growers. In just a decade Belo Horizonte cut its infant death rate—widely used as evidence of hunger—by more than half, and today these initiatives benefit almost 40 percent of the city's 2.5 million population. One six-month period in 1999 saw infant malnutrition in a sample group reduced by 50 percent. And between 1993 and 2002 Belo Horizonte was the only locality in which consumption of fruits and vegetables went up.

The last word goes to Lappé who says, "Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy."

http://www.treehugge...ends-hunger.php

Ending the food-stamp program and forcing everyone into going and eating at the local soup kitchen is a great idea.

[Jenn! 918]

Ending the food-stamp program and forcing everyone into going and eating at the local soup kitchen is a great idea.

I agree. Far more efficient to feed people than to give them money to feed themselves.

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

I would imagine alot of the fraud would be eliminated also, due to the fact that people that could feed themselves would not want to go to the public kitchen.

[slim 1,533]

I would imagine alot of the fraud would be eliminated also, due to the fact that people that could feed themselves would not want to go to the public kitchen.

I could almost agree with all this, but in true American fashion, anything the government subsidizes becomes insanely expensive and very rarely helps the poor. It's not as if all that food stamp money would go for food... it would go to administrators and business folks who oversee the process and deliver the goods and services. I like the idea but I don't see it as being any cheaper. The reason food stamps are done the way they're done now is because it's the cheapest way for the government to claim they're doing something about the problem while still making people rich.

The reason the above story is "working" (and I use that term loosely.... 12,000 people a day?) is because the government is setting food costs on a local level. Do you really think American farmers are going to be usurped by "local growers" so the government can feed the poor?