Opening session of the 39th FAO Conference

FAO's 39th Conference opened this Saturday (06/06), with representatives from 194 countries including more than 130 ministers gathered to discuss the Organization's future workplan, set a new two-year budget, and elect the next FAO Director-General.

Sergio Mattarella, President of Italy, FAO's host country, opened the proceedings with a speech describing the right to food as a core component of the basic right to life, and warning that true peace will never be achieved unless poverty and malnutrition are vanquished. He commended FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva for intensifying the agency's focus on sustainability, an objective undermined by social rifts.

Mattarella also argued that issues such as climate change, natural resource limits and food and energy insecurity have consequences that cross borders and will require policy makers to adopt a rights-based approach at key summits on development finance, greenhouse-gas emissions and new United Nations goals later this year.

"The world has changed and the time has come for us to pool our resources", he said. "We all have to go the extra mile, otherwise global governance will be impossible."

Brazilian programme "Zero Hunger" as inspiration

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former president of Brazildelivered the biennial Frank McDougall lecture, named for an Australian economist who helped found FAO. Lula da Silva discussed the lessons learned from the ground-breaking Zero Hunger program he implemented in 2003 after being elected, which led to a sharp improvement of general welfare in the country, where fewer than 5 percent are hungry today, down from 20 percent when he took office.

Noting that FAO's Graziano da Silva served as chief architect and the first minister of the Zero Fome program , Lula emphasized that the initially controversial idea of cash transfers to the poor has since led tens of millions out of a poverty trap -- at the cost of only 0.5 percent of Brazil's gross domestic product.

"This is the first generation of Brazilians that hasn't had to face the drama of hunger," he said in a passionate description of how "income transfer to the poorest ends up being very beneficial to the country as a whole."

He stressed the need for political will to prioritize and guarantee steady resources in national budgets to combine food, health and education schemes with support for small-scale family farmers, rigorous civil registrars to ensure efficiency and transparency, policies that raise wages and "treating the poor not as statistical data but as humans, men, women and children."

"FAO", Lula said, "should serve as a sounding board for other countries to learn about best practices" as world leaders negotiate a post-2015 development agenda. "We have never been so close to realizing the dream of ending hunger," he said. "We have the material resources, we have the powerful moral argument and we also have the practical proof that it's possible".