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“We have to work on a minimum consensus so this organization is not paralyzed by these divisions.”
- José Graziano da Silva, on the need for the FAO to bridge the divide between donor countries and developing countries
The new chief of the Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO), José Graziano da Silva, has a lot on his plate, his appointment coming at a time when global food prices are rising rapidly and the world is looking up to the UN body to provide a recipe for boosting agricultural output with minimal environmental damage. For the ‘hunger champion’ of Brazil though, such expectations seem to whet his appetite to persevere even more.
Indeed, the June FAO director-general election attracted unprecedented media attention, underscoring not just the complexities of da Silva’s new job, but also the newfound significance of the FAO as the world’s foremost agency for food and agriculture policy. Yet, despite being the largest among the UN’s seventeen specialized agencies, the FAO has historically been a rather low-profile multilateral body, perceived to be largely ineffective.
Perhaps it is a testimony to the Rome-headquartered organization’s previously poor standing among world bodies that the incumbent director-general, Jacques Diouf of Senegal, stayed at the helm for eighteen years (three six-year terms) despite his alleged inability to increase the relevancy of the FAO. In fact, only at the 36th FAO conference in 2009 were both the length and the number of terms for FAO director-general amended, stopping Diouf from running for re-election in June.
In other aspects too, this is a different historical moment for the FAO. The organization’s mandate to reduce hunger and enhance agricultural productivity has never been more difficult to fulfill, given that a billion go hungry every day, of the nearly seven billion people living on Earth. With increasing levels of affluence, as well as rapid urbanization and industrialization in developing economies, the world is consuming more and allocating fewer resources to agriculture than ever before. If new environment-friendly ways of increasing food production are not found quickly, a third of the world’s population will go hungry by 2050.
Now, the food crisis in 2007-2008 and the price shock of 2010-2011 have put the spotlight squarely on the FAO, which is struggling to deal with its own problems. For instance, major donor nations, such as the U.S., European Union members, and Japan, which contribute the bulk of the FAO's $1 billion general budget for administrative expenses and the $1.2 billion voluntary budget for development projects, have been weakened by the financial crisis. With this, the rhetoric for a reduction in funds for the FAO is rising.
And the dramatic reforms the world expects at the FAO are long overdue. The organization desperately needs to not only give itself new direction, but also improve its stature among the world’s policy-making bodies. Only then could the FAO hope to contribute more to the growth of the global economy, and create viable blueprints for hunger reduction, food price management, and prevention of large-scale land acquisitions.
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream; a dream you dream
together is reality.”
- José Graziano da Silva quoting John Lennon in his final campaign speech
It is against this backdrop that Graziano da Silva is preparing to assume the role of chief nurturer at the FAO. And if his excellent credentials are any indication, the 61-year-old America-born Brazilian agronomist seems up to the task. After all, he is considered the father of Brazil’s famed ‘Zero Hunger’ or ‘Fome Zero’ program, which reportedly pulled 24 million Brazilians out of extreme poverty in five years and cut undernourishment in the Latin American country by 25%. Graziano da Silva, who has authored several books and publications about food security, rural development, and the problems associated with Brazil’s agriculture sector, was already a respected academic when he chalked out an anti-hunger program as a campaign theme for presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. In 2002, after becoming president, Lula da Silva appointed Graziano da Silva as the Extraordinary Minister for Food Security. In this role, Graziano da Silva implemented several hunger-eradication initiatives under the Zero Hunger program, which have since become a global model for poverty alleviation schemes. In 2006, Graziano da Silva became the Assistant Director General of the FAO and its regional representative for Latin America and the Caribbean. In this role too, da Silva excelled, creating and fostering the Hunger-free Latin and the Caribbean Initiative, a plan aimed at eliminating hunger from the region by 2025.
However, as director-general of the FAO, da Silva needs to do much more than implement schemes to leave his mark on the organization. Through press conferences and vision statements, da Silva has made it known that he is aware of his organization’s lack of credibility as a facilitator and agent for building consensus among nations. In fact, donor nations have often publicly criticized the FAO for its consistently “patchy performance,” with some countries such as the U.S. starting their own agricultural development projects. In fact this year, the U.K. threatened to pull out of the organization entirely, only to mellow thereafter, declaring that it would review the FAO’s progress in carrying out internal reforms and, if the progress was unsatisfactory over a period of two years, it would withdraw its membership.
In response to these setbacks, da Silva has announced that upon assuming office, he would take up the FAO’s reform programs on priority. He has also reiterated his campaign goal to bridge the historical divide between donor countries and developing countries. Incidentally, nothing brought this tension into sharp focus more than da Silva’s own election, which he won narrowly against the former Spanish foreign minister on the back of support from developing countries. The director-general elect has promised to “forge agreements” and not allow these divisions to “paralyze the organization.”
In his final campaign speech, Graziano da Silva quoted music legend John Lennon — “A dream you dream alone is only a dream; a dream you dream together is reality.” Whether da Silva will be able to translate his dreams into reality remains to be seen, but with his election as FAO director-general, the seeds of hope have surely been sowed.
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