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The City that Ended Hunger
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Yes! Magazine
Posted: March 28th, 2009
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=3330
A city in Brazil recruited local farmers to help do something U.S. cities have yet to do: end hunger. More than 10 years ago, Brazils fourth-largest city, Belo Horizonte, declared that food was a right of citizenship and started working to make good food available to all. One of its programs puts local farm produce into school meals. This and other projects cost the city less than 2 percent of its budget. Belo, a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11 percent of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 percent of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship. The new mayor, Patrus Ananiasnow leader of the federal anti-hunger effortbegan by creating a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives to advise in the design and implementation of a new food system. The city already involved regular citizens directly in allocating municipal resourcesthe participatory budgeting that started in the 1970s and has since spread across Brazil. During the first six years of Belos food-as-a-right policy, perhaps in response to the new emphasis on food security, the number of citizens engaging in the citys participatory budgeting process doubled to more than 31,000. The city agency developed dozens of innovations to assure everyone the right to food, especially by weaving together the interests of farmers and consumers.
Note: Why not take this movement to each of our states and provinces? Are you willing to make a difference? To contact your local and national media and political representatives, click here.
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