Then, Avery mentioned Belo Horizonte.
Although the city offers a few day`s worth of site seeing, Avery's reasons for including BH on the list had other motivations.
During the last few years while involved in and studying food justice movements, Belo Horizonte has consistently come up as a model for how cities can successfully tackle food insecurity with dynamic, inclusive programs.
After spending a year working on food security projects at the World Food Programme in Quito with limited academic background in the subject, I needed little convincing to put BH on our itinerary.
Fortuitously, a friend we met at our hostel in Belem put us in contact with the head of the Municipal Secretariat for Food and Nutrition Security, who was kind enough to schedule a meeting with him and another member of his office to discuss their work.
In 1993, the mayor of Belo Horizonte made it city policy that residents had a right to food. At the time 11 percent of the population was living in poverty and 20 percent of children were going hungry. The city developed dozens of innovative programs to ensure that people had improved food security, or "physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meet dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life."
The program was so successful that the president of Brazil used it as a model for the country's "zero hunger" program in 2003, including having the former mayor of Belo Horizonte lead the program.
What struck me as most impressive about the project is how inclusive they are. Within each in
Their work is broken down into six initiatives, each of which has several smaller projects. What struck me as most impressive about the project is how inclusive they are. Every initiative tries to engage as many different segments of the population as possible:
Promoting urban agriculture
The work in urban agriculture focuses on school and community gardens. It works to transform unused spaces into productive land to improve food and nutrition security. They also work in community tree nurseries, as well, to produce and sell seedlings in the metro area, which has the side benefit of creating economic opportunities for those working in the urban agriculture initiatives.
The monthly income for the farmers participating in the income-generating activities is $88 / month.
There is a program, called "Straight from the Field" where small-scale producers sell directly to the consumer. The project maintains some price controls to make sure it is a fair price and performs lab testing of the vegetables to ensure their quality.
They also manage three different types of markets for different types of producers and consumers
- Organic markets
- Open street markets
- Trade markets (They are like street markets but occur in the evening and usually include some recreational activities, as well)
Subsidizing commercialization of food
The main component of this initiative is the Restaurante Popular, which offers balanced, healthy, and safe meals at low costs, allowing portions of the population to access good food that they would otherwise not have the chance to eat.
In Belo Horizonte alone, they serve 14,000 meals per day. I would go into more detail about these, but that would steal thunder from tomorrow's blog post about our visit to the Restaurante Popular at the Central Station in Rio de Janeiro.
Stay tuned and get excited.
Nutritional and food assistance
The office hopes to give out 54,000,000 meals as part of the school feeding program in 2012. Depending on the type of educational institution, some students receive up to three feedings a day through the program to ensure a healthy, quality diet.
In fact, the food in the school feeding program is so good that the teachers make a big deal about being able to eat these meals.
For other types of institutions, such as senior citizen homes and homeless shelters, the municipality has other mechanisms for ensuring that their beneficiaries receive healthy food. Institutions that meet certain requirements can participate in food distributions directly from the municipality. For other types of institutions that don't meet those requirements, the municipality sets up a food bank to make sure those clients get served.
Supply and regulation of the markets
With the fluctuation of food prices, there are times when consumers can't afford safe, nutritious foods. So the municipality set up a network of stores that are required to sell at least 25 products for an established price of R$0.79 / kilo ($.19/lb). In exchange, the stores receive the benefits of a better location or reduced rent.
Education about food consumption
The office has a massive education component that works with institutions all over the metro area to promote healthy eating habits.
Many of their education campaigns are targeted toward those who process and handle foods to make sure they are doing it safely.
Employment and income generation
The people who we were talking to said that the best way to ensure that a person no longer suffers from hunger is to get them out of poverty. That is why the office has many programs geared toward income generation and job training.
They offer courses on food production, baking, pizza making, and many other themes to work with at-risk segments of the population to get them a decent job.
Because the issues of food security encompasses so many different fields, the office partners with other government agencies, NGOs, universities, and other entities in all of its undertakings. What struck me as one of the most impressive aspects of the project is how inclusive all the programs are.
After three and a half years in Ecuador, hearing so many people and governments talk about implementing projects that can have a sustained impact on the communities, it felt good to hear about projects making a significant difference. I have seen many projects in Ecuador trying to target these problems, but they don't receive necessary funds or other resources and, therefore, don't succeed. It was really refreshing and uplifting to see a local government commit sufficient resources to the success of food security projects.
After our meeting at the municipality, we had another meeting to discuss the region's food security projects. This one was set up by Avery through contacts he got from a professor at Michigan. We had lunch with someone who is doing research in land-use change in Belo Horizonte in the last 10 years. One of the impacts that he has noticed is the effect that the food security projects have had on farmers. He is just starting his research, but it was great to talk with another person about the work and get their perspective.
1 comment:
kudos to the little brother...
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