President Lula on Wednesday during an official ceremony at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia.ADRIANO MACHADO (REUTERS)
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 77, often says that those who have not suffered hunger cannot understand those who have nothing to put in their mouths, the pain of mothers who have to put their child to bed on an empty stomach. It is a reality that the current president of Brazil met while growing up in a small house on the outskirts of a city in the interior of Pernambuco. This Thursday Lula has presented in Terezina (Piauí) his plan to end the hunger suffered by 33 million of his compatriots, 16% of the population. The leader of the Workers' Party is pleased that his homeland, which left the UN hunger map in 2014, as he usually remembers as soon as he can, and is an agricultural powerhouse, once again has so many hungry and malnourished.
"The problem is not the lack of food ... it is that the people do not have money to buy food!" the president proclaimed before a packed auditorium to which he reminded him that "Brazil is rich, it has a lot of land, it has scientific knowledge, it is the third largest producer of livestock in the world, the first of animal protein ...". Lula has stressed that hunger will only end when all Brazilians work and have a salary. During the event he was surrounded by many of his ministers and his wife, Janja.
When he first took power in 2003, Lula solemnly promised his compatriots, who for the first time saw a worker at the apex of power, that he would work so that everyone could make three meals a day. Although ten years ago that goal seemed within reach, hunger is again high on the to-do list of the Brazilian president who already held that position between 2003 and 2010.
The choice of Piauí is due to several factors: there Lula presented two decades ago the Fome Zero program, it is a sparsely populated state but no other is so faithful to the Workers' Party (76% took Lula there in the 2022 elections) and it is the political fiefdom of the Minister of Social Development, Wellington Dias, whose portfolio manages a large budget because it includes the anti-poverty program Bolsa Familia, in addition to the fight against hunger. A very juicy portfolio and coveted by center-right parties that Lula courts to expand his meager base of parliamentary support.
The new plan against hunger, with measures that concern 24 of the 37 ministries, is an updated reissue of the measures adopted by the PT governments. In addition to consolidating Bolsa Familia (whose amount Jair Bolsonaro increased dramatically during the pandemic to a level that Lula has maintained), the leftist president has promised to raise the minimum wage annually, has increased food purchases from family farms and has increased the budget for school meals that all students receive. During Bolsonaro's tenure, many of those measures saw their funding cut markedly.
Among the novelties included in this plan with respect to those designed at the beginning of the century, two stand out: the incentive for food producers to work in a medium-sustainable way and the creation of a national network of food banks (which already exist in some States) to fight against waste.
Minister Dias has also announced that the government will invest 25 million reais ($5 million) to buy food from small producers that will be distributed in a thousand soup kitchens spread across 25 of the 27 states.
After the interventions of the rest of the speakers, Lula has taken the microphone to give some brushstrokes about his childhood in Garanhuns. "I didn't know bread until I arrived in São Paulo. In my house, breakfast was a split coconut with cassava fariña and coffee. And that's it." Years passed, he said, "until I became aware of how important it is to eat calories and protein."
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