How Brazil beat hunger

Hello, welcome to Farmgate. I'm Fino Costajn, the editor of 8.9.com. In July 2025, Brazil was officially removed from the UN Hunger Map after lifting 40 million people out of food insecurity in just two years. This was an historic achievement driven by political choices that put family, farmers and food access first. Brazil's blueprint offers proof that a future free from hunger is not only possible within reach. I'm joined by Elisabetta Racine, president of the Brazilian National Food and Nutrition Security Council, and by Raj Patel, a research professor at the University of Texas known for his work on the global food system. And they're both also Ipes food panel experts. Hello. Both. Look, Elizabeth, lifting over 40 million people out of food insecurity in just two years. I mean, my goodness, it's a remarkable achievement. What happened? How difficult was it to do this?

0:05

Well, actually, I think that's was possible because we didn't start from zero. We had a very important experience, especially from 2003 to 2014, 2015, where we develop a way where it's not only we have good programs or policies, but we started to have a very specific way of governance of these policies. So we know by experience that of course it's important to have programs that work well, that has very operational ways to deliver services, but it's really important to have a way to connect and to make connections with the actions to eradicate hunger is not enough, for example, to deliver food baskets or to have a school meals program, or to support family farm, etc. We need to coordinate these policies. And we have this experience, especially from 2003 and 2015, 2016, when we for the first time left the Zero Hunger Map in 2014, and between 2019 and 2022, we lost everything, all our results, because we lost the way that we coordinated the programs, but also we lost the programs. We have no budget, we have no teams to work in the programs. And when we restart to work on the food and security nutritional programs, we recover all the programs, but we also recover the way that we coordinate the programs. So I think that's one of the characteristics to have this kind of results in so short time. And also we have also very good results in our macroeconomics programs. We recover jobs, we recover minimum wage and things like that. So it was not one thing, but a coordination of different levels of policies, economic policies and social policies.

0:58

So it's almost like being a juggler in a circus where you're juggling 10 balls at once. And if one of Them goes, they all go. And so you've got to keep them all in the air and keep everything spinning in one go. It's fascinating, and we'll get into more of that detail as we go forwards. But Raj, you said that Brazil's success shows that no one needs to go hungry and that hunger is a choice. What do you mean by that hunger is a choice?

3:22

Brazil particularly has emerged from dictatorship and started embracing ide ideas around dignity in political participation and dignity in being member of the polity. Even in the 1990s, had started experimenting with ideas, particularly in cities like Belo Horizonte, for example, and the kinds of ideas that better being very discreet here. But I mean, there's a real political valence here around the PT party and the Lula administration, particularly after 2003, when they were elected, until the sort of slow coup that started unrolling pretty much as soon as Brazil was removed from the hunger map in 2014, there were a series of sort of destabilizing events that started to bring back a certain sort of neoliberal politics to Brazil. That cadence began in 2015, 2016, so that by the time Bolsonaro begins in 2019, the amazing work that we'll detail in a moment had become really quite precarious and quite undone. And if one wants to say, look, here's an example of a political choice around hunger being made, then one of the first choices that Bolsonaro did in 2019 was to disband the organization that Beta headed, Conceia. She was like victim number one and the embodiment of everything that was good about fighting hunger. And Beta's organization was essentially dissolved. And in that moment, it wasn't that the policy went away, though the policies had been subject to gradual erosion. Again, what's really important to note here is that the political mechanism for being able to keep all these balls up in the air was destroyed. In other words, a blindfold was put on, if you like. And all of a sudden, it doesn't matter how good the policies are, if you can't react to them and can't nudge them, and if you can't be held accountable to them, all of a sudden everything's going to go to hell. And that's exactly what Bolsonaro wanted to happen. He didn't want public input into the hunger policies. And that was the political choice that was made on 2019. And as a result, everything fell down. But again, the rapid recovery of that shows that there is a repertoire and a memory of the kinds of politics that predated Bolsonaro and predated the neoliberal kind of incursion that, again, that Beta has been leading.

3:46

Thanks so much, Raj. I'm really interested in the way that you framed that. And Elizabeth, I just wonder if you have any sense, because obviously you've worked alongside both of these governments in terms of political priorities. Why was that a choice of the Bolsonaro government? Why did it choose to, you know, get rid of these programs, not to fund them, get rid of the mechanisms. And then why did Lula decide he was going to bring that back?

5:48

Well, I think that is important to remember that Brazil is. All the history of Brazil is connected with inequalities and hunger. So we have a very important and during all our history, social movements that are fighting for land or fighting against hunger in the countries and rural and peasants movements, but also Yoruba movements. So it's very connected with our history, this kind of struggle. And also the struggle for democracy is also connected with the fight against hunger. Because if you don't have a democratic environment, it's very easy to have poverty and hunger. It's quite linear. So why Lula went in his first mandate and the second, second, and now in the third mandate, his first priority was he announced in 2022, when he win the election, he said that his priority was that every Brazilian has three meals a day, etc. Etc. When he launched the Zero Hunger Strategy. And the idea of the Zero Hunger strategies is based on these. We needed to watch what is happening with small farms. We need to watch what's happening in cities with poor communities. And we need to connect this necessity and also these strategies. It's important also to know that, for example, the Zero hunger strategy and now all the policies that we have, of course, that we have academics, we have scientists, we have a lot of people who work on government that are thinking about these policies. But a lot of very good results that we have also was born in civil society experiences. So it's very popular movement that is the dialogue between what is happening in civil society organizations and their practices in the territories on local basis, and some capacity of the government to see, to hear and to take these experiences and thinking how these spaces can be put in another level of public policies. So as Lula, and not only Lula as a person, but what he means as a political and historical moment in our country, he has this kind of sensibility, and he was born from this. He is not academic or he's not now, of course, now he's a political Professional, but he was born from the civil society movements for our democratization. So he is really connect with this. And for us, of course, all governments has limits. And it's not perfect, it's far from this. But we have this capacity to have this dialogue, to improve and to put new ideas on the table to be discussed and to decide what's possible, what's not possible, when will you be possible? That's exactly the whole that the Council, for example, that I am president now, what we do, we are all the time listening what civil society organizations and civil society movements are living, our necessities, priorities, but also their practices and their idea. And we can do this exchange.

6:11

I'm interested in the particular tactics, the particular actions that were taken by the government in order to, you know, to get this amazing result. And cash transfers were part of that, weren't they? Cash transfers to the most vulnerable families. How did that work?

9:58

Well, this is a very, very interesting experience that you have, because in 2002 we had different, very specific and very small cash transfer programs. For example, education sector has one, health sector has another one. And in 2003, one of the first idea that when Zero Hungry Strategy was launched is we need to reorganize everything and have just one problem, but with a quite a new versatile one. And we started to organize what we call cadastrunical. That is a database for all families here in Brazil that are under certain level of economic and social conditions. So we have this database that we know where is each family who needs to have this kind of program, to have this kind of access. So they come from social assistance services, they do this protocol. So we identify family, the characteristics of this family, the necessity of this family. So they started to receive both the familia or the cash transport program. But now what is. I think that we get another level of this because we are now doing a protocol to coordinate not only what happens in social assistance services, but also in health services and the schools. So we can have different kinds of services to reach the different necessities of each family. So now I think that I'm not sure, but I think it is one of the biggest problem of cash transfer programs. And they are responsible not only to transfer cash, but also to give minimal conditions for family to rebuild the capacity to have autonomy and to rebuild their life conditions.

10:13

It's fascinating hearing what you say, because you get this impression of incredible administrative capacity behind the program. There real complexity. And you mentioned there the universal school feeding program and that this was expanded further to hospitals, to public Institutions. And in the school program, it wasn't just about younger students, younger pupils, it was students of all ages. Was all of this paid for by government or were there contributions from citizens as well?

12:20

There are different ways to deliver the program. If you are thinking about the school meals program, the federal budget responsible for part of the budget that we need to deliver meals to students. And now 45 of this amount needs to be from food that came from family farm or depend of the state for agroecological producers, etc. But the states and the municipalities is responsible to put some part of this, also the money. So it's a combination for federal budget and local budget. But for example.

12:47

But it's from the government, it's not from the individuals. The citizens themselves aren't paying some of those budget.

13:28

It's a public budget. For example, for army or hospitals or university canteens. For example, the government buy food from family farmer producers and donate for hospitals or for army, etc. So depending on the program, there are different characteristics of operationalization.

13:35

And you've mentioned there the agroecological farmers. I'm going to come back to that in just a moment because I think there's all kinds of questions to ask around, you know, decisions that are taken about where food comes from, precisely how that's being produced and how it contributes to the broader economy. But Raj, if I can come back to you for a moment, do you think that there are lessons that we can all, as an international community take from Brazil's success? Yes.

13:59

I mean, in the same way that Brazil learned from overseas. I mean, one of the interesting things about conditional cash transfers, for example, was that Mexico was doing them before Brazil did. And Mexico had sort of tuned those incentives to make sure that kids went to school. And as a result, lots of kids went to school. And it was a very successful program in that regard. And what Brazil did is right? Well, you know, understand that these conditional cash transfers can do something. What do we want them to do? Actually, we want them to end hunger. And so Brazil repurposed the idea of the conditional cash transfer and really made it ending and hunger the priority. And so if you look at the trajectory from, you know, Mexico started this in the late 90s and Brazil a little bit later, hunger has gone down substantially in Brazil compared to Mexico. Whereas kids in Mexico now are more likely to go to school, slightly more likely to go to school, I believe, than Brazil. I mean, these are just policy choices that were made.

14:22

Let me interrupt just a second, Raj, because I want to ask you about the conditional element of the cash transfers, because if I think of Britain, for example, everybody with a child gets child benefit. They're eligible for child benefit. You're not told, I mean, it's expected that you spend this on your children's clothing or something like that, but there's nothing to stop you spending it, I don't know, down the pub on a bottle of wine or something, because it's just. It is transfer. So how does that conditionality work?

15:13

I mean, the precise mechanics of it. Actually, I'm looking to better to be able to fill in exactly how it works in Brazil. But the best practices that we realize actually is that better than conditional cash transfers is unconditional cash transfers. And in general, yes, you've always got this idea of, oh, well, they could go spend it down the pub. But actually it turns out that the people who have the best insight as to where money can yield the greatest return in the household is the household of the person who's on low income in the first place. But better. How does the precise mechanics of this work? I'm curious as well.

15:37

We have two conditions. One of schools. So each six months the municipality needs to prove that the students are assisting the class. And if there is some problems, of course, first someone goes to the family to see what's happening, that the children or the young is not going to the school. So they trying to. Because it's important, because the. The condition is not to. It's not a punishment for the family. The idea is that the government needs to deliver this kind of. Of service. So all children needs to have a place in the school now. So if there is some problems, also the first thing is to see what's happening why this children is not that this child is not going to the school. So they have some kind of control each six months. And we have another conditionality that is from the health services. So a woman that is pregnant, she needs to have some consultations during the pregnancy. And also if she has a child under two years, the child needs to go to the primary health services to control weight and the stature. So it's a way to guarantee that the family has access to education and primary health services.

16:08

Thank you. Thanks so much for clearing that up and come back to you, Raj. And again, I'm interested in that sort of idea of unconditional cash transfers because it's something that we've heard more about in Britain, I think over the course of the last year or two. And there are certain commentators, for example, Rory Stewart, who is part of the rest is Politics podcast, who campaigns quite hard, I think, for unconditional cash transfers. Just, you know, give people money and they'll spend it wisely. Is the, is the premise behind it? I'm just wondering. It feels as though the actions that have been taken by the Lula government are inherently left wing or socialist. They're investing in school meals and public programs, prioritizing access to food. Do you think this is a left right issue?

17:39

Honestly, I think it is because although, I mean, plenty of people who once voted for Lula ended up voting against him. What that was was often votes made in a context where the media was dominated by the right wing and various kinds of corruption allegations were being thrown at the left. And all of a sudden it appeared that some of them stuck. But ultimately the idea that working class people deserve and can have dignity and the state has a role in providing that does seem to be a bit of a left wing issue. I mean, I was just sort of looking up, up ideas around MAGA Marxism and the idea that you will occasionally hear, for example, here in the United States, various kind of right wingers saying, well, look, what we want for white people is a certain kind of extension of the welfare state because white people are struggling and all these immigrants are coming in and taking their jobs. But ultimately that hasn't been delivered. What you're seeing here is the racism without any kind of dividend to the white working class. You're just seeing the white working class being exploited even further. So, I mean, if the pattern, patterning that's happening here in the United States isn't anything to go on, then actually for quite a lot of white people who are part of the working class here, things are substantially worse in terms of hunger than before Trump came in. So I kind of do think that this is a right wing issue. I can't see the way, sorry, left wing issue. I can't see the way in which you can coherently say that, look, even if it's just for white folk, what we want is some sort of guarantee that there is an end to hunger without investing in the kinds of infrastructure that requires a substantial state intervention, where generally the sort of neoliberal kinds of right wingery are not terribly happy participating within that.

18:19

Do you think that there, I mean, and obviously you've got this experience that you're talking about within the United States, within the MAGA movement, MAGA Marxism movement, which is an interesting one I've not come across before, but do you think that there are arguments that could initiate a similar response or elements of a similar response from more right wing governments. There's always this challenge, isn't there, to try and, you know, put oneself into a range of different political shoes in order to achieve change. Do you think there are arguments that could work?

20:01

Arundhati Roy was very perceptive when she was talking about why it was that so many working class Hindus were voting for a Hindutva government that ultimately didn't have their best interest in mind. And she observed that the way that the RSS and the far right in India operate is through appeals to dignity, and that there was some way in which they were successfully, the right was able, successfully to make the pitch that by being able to persecute Muslims and by being able to entrench patriarchy, this was at least a way of being able to hold on to some shred, some modicum of dignity in an economic system that's designed to strip it away. And so I do think there's a dignity argument here. But the only ways in which dignity can be mobilized effectively if it's as if it's combined to an egalitarianism to which the left has a unique access. I don't think that egalitarianism and right wing politics go together at all. I mean, I think that's the opposite of what right wing politics is. The bedrock of left wing politics is this universalism. And so I think while dignity is something that the right is able to mobilize and do quite a lot of damage through, I think it is a left wing idea as well. And I think that that's certainly a way of poaching of the vote from the right.

20:27

One of the things that I was involved in probably about sort of almost 12 years ago now, was working with the right in Britain about values framing around climate change. Because at the time the issue was incredibly divisive. So the question was, well, how do we stop talking about things that left wing people care about, polar bears and all that sort of stuff, and insert climate change into more conservative values. And some of those values were around, you know, impacts on farmland, impacts on armed forces, impact on people, on flooding in local constituency areas. And I wonder around things like, you know, where you have farmers, where you're trying to support farmers, where you're trying to sort of ensure that there are, you know, farmers being able to make a living out of their local economies, whether there isn't a way of connecting the sort of outcomes that are being delivered in Brazil with a kind of sort of a local economy and respect. And I Mean, as you said, dignity for farmers sort of argument.

21:39

Well, I mean, I think Brazil's a really interesting place to think this through because the farming system in Brazil is so obviously schizophrenic, where you have, on the one hand, sustainable. I mean, you have two different farming ministries in Brazil. One that is geared towards family farming and the kinds of agroecological farming that we're about to talk about. And the other, it was a vast industrial scale farming that is responsible for going into the cerrado and destroying the Amazon and doing all the environmental evils for which the perpetrators remain pretty much at large, even though, in fact, jbs, for example, the largest meat company, I believe, in the world, is run by these Brazilian brothers who have been convicted of various kinds of fraud and spent time in jail. They were the people who gave the largest donation, by the way, to the Trump inauguration last year. Those kinds of politics exist side by side with the kinds of politics that we're talking about here that are about to. And the JBS brothers couldn't give a shit about dignity, as far as I can tell. I think this is where the kind of appealing to them on the basis of, you know, brotherhood and let's all get together and let's make sure that your farms are doing well as our farms. All that falls entirely flat. But again, I mean, this is because the structure of Brazilian farming is so obviously bifurcated. And I think actually it's the limit case of. And it demonstrates the danger of this kind of approach Finlow.

22:36

So Elisabetta, let's come back to you. And the idea of the agroecological farmer, the small, the local, the community farmer, and the choice to work with those farmers directly and through those farmers with that sort of element, that sort of scale of the economy in order to, you know, fuel the schools program meals and the hospital program, meals, et cetera. Why was that important? Why was that the decision that was taken? And also, I guess, how was that administrated?

23:53

I think that, well, what Haj just said, we have a very contradictory atmosphere here because we have also a ministry that is devoted to support family farm and the agroecological transition. But we also have a Ministry of Agriculture that's really powerful and the amount of public budget that goes to the Ministry of Agriculture is much bigger than the other one. So we are all the time trying to live with fit in two boats. And this is really difficult. Of course we have a lot of contradiction on this. But as the movement of peasants and small farmers in Brazil is Really strong. Also the agro business is strong, but the small farmers movement is also strong. Of course they have different access to power and to the economic resources. But we managed to have this division of priorities. And the history of the school meals program is linked with the small farmers. So when we approve the law that guaranteed that 30% of the federal budget needs to be dedicated to buy products from the family farmer. It was a social demand that was approved in our Congress. If you try to approve this now, I think that was quite impossible because the Congress is mainly from dominated by agribusiness. But at that time we get it and now we get another point. But now it's 45 of the federal budget that need to be dedicated for family farming. Because why we get this because also the agribusiness is identified. That is also opportunity for them. So we are all the time trying to manage all these contradictions. And we also need to know that the agroecological movement in Brazil, it's really strong and really capillaries. It's very spread all over the country. We have very big networks of agroecological territorial basis organization. So we approved the National Law for Agroecological transition and now we are trying to implement them. To understand Brazil, you need to be really resilient with the contradictions of the reality all the time. We have a lot of good examples on one side, but we also have a very terrible examples from the other side. So we are all the time. And you need to have a historical perspective to believe that we can change step by step. I think that sometimes is really difficult to believe on that. Especially in a moment like this, where the contradictions, not only in Brazil, but in the global political environment, but also we. We need to put our coins in one side. So that's what we are doing. Now.

24:19

You talked about, you know, we talked about this idea of lots of different balls in the air earlier on. And of course there's a singular outcome which is to lift people out of. Out of hunger so they have good nutritious meals. Lots of different tactics to deliver that. But I'm sort of also wondering about the. The political motivation and the way that you kind of construct an argument when there are people, people within the Congress who have a range of different views. And you talked a bit there, Elizabeth, about society. And I wonder if part of your sort of choice around smaller farmers and agroecology, whether you were using this sort of mission of ending hunger in order to deliver specifically environmental outcomes as well, specifically climate change outcomes, specifically social Outcomes to boost local economies as well.

27:36

I think that's one of the. Of course it's important to leave health meals to students. But I think that the movement that this kind of initiative puts on the local economy, but not about economic gains, but we can thinking about social improvement, we can thinking about traditional and our food culture, for example, we have a lot of gains about the this kind of initiative. And also we can think that this not a static result because now, for example, indigenous peoples, they are trying to sell their products to a school meals program. So we have this kind of movement, we have traditional communities that also they are starting to sell their products to the program. So we beginning with family farming products, but now we are thinking about our products for our biodiversity, for example. So it's a way also to protect our biomass. Because if you have indigenous peoples that they have conditions to live in their territories with dignity, to gain conditions to live well, to have access to services that they need, deliver food for their schools, I think that's really also important. So it's a program that has different good results in different dimensions.

28:24

It's interesting, Raj, because you know, we've been talking, haven't we, about this dichotomy between you've got at one level, sort of smaller agroecological and indigenous farmers and people within Brazil. And then at the other end of the spectrum you've got those big multinationals and the impacts that they have. We've also talked about whether this is an inherently left wing issue, whether it can be a right wing issue as well. Do you think that large companies can ever be part of the solution to hunger elsewhere in the world?

30:00

Frankly, no. And the reason why is because the job of large food companies is to make money. And the way they do that is to make food. That's what, that's what the business is all about. You know, the food here for large firms is a commodity and it is a means to profit. This is why food companies have had such excellent success in being able to get society to pick up their tab. There was a fantastic KPMG report a few years ago that observed that there was no other business in the world that generates more externalities than revenue and even the fossil fuel industry. And it's huge externality responsible towards for the end of the planet. And, and still as a proportion of them, the amount of money they generate, it's still the externalities are less than the money that they generate. But whereas the food industry requires the rest of society to pick up the tab to the tune of for Example here in the United States, for every dollar we spend on food, we spend a dollar on healthcare to treat only diet related disease. All the other diseases, extra cost, but just the diet related disease is a one to one thing. If the food industry paid washing the damage it would do, then prices would have to raise threefold. It's $2 of externalities to $1 of revenue. So can the companies that have designed and profited from a system that generates that kind of inequity, are they part of the solution? How can they be? In what world is it where the architect of a system that is responsible for destroying the planet and immiserating people can somehow earn a merit badge? I'm sure, yeah, they can earn a merit badge, but are they a systemic part of the solution? I don't think so. And this gets back to what lessons can we learn from Brazil? I mean, actually what's interesting about Brazil is the movements that Beto was talking about are all along the food chain. I mean, it's not just that there is enlightened government and there is, you know, there are enlightened people like Beta who are helping to coordinate all of this. There are people on the ground making a ruckus and fighting individual fights around land reform, around improved school meals, around agroecology, around, around climate change. And it is that sort of concert against these large corporations that makes possible the exploration of the kinds of policies that ultimately deliver the result of reduced hunger, but also a range of other good things.

30:27

I want to play devil's advocate just for a moment because I think food systems and food companies are often compared with renewable energy companies or energy companies more broadly, that the energy system has sort of gone through this transition or started to go through the transition perhaps 20 years ahead of the food companies and the food system. And it's certainly the case that big companies, multinationals that were very invested in fossil fuels have begun to become much more invested in renewables, that they can see a future for themselves where renewables are a key part of their business going forwards. And I wonder if you can conceive of large companies, whether it's JBS or whatever, clearly what they're doing at the moment is extremely challenging. But whether there are ways of pivoting and using the, of networks, the power that large food companies have, whether there is a way that they might ever be able to deliver regenerative agriculture, might be able to deliver the agroecological change that we're talking about and to help eliminate hunger.

32:44

Well, I mean, if we look at just, you know, the basic calculations around emissions from livestock, for example, and look at something like the eat Lancet diet, which, you know, we can argue around, around the sort of parameters of which bits of the, you know, the ecological donut we've overstepped and how much meat is responsible for that. But it's pretty clear that a meat company can't really be part of the push to reducing the amount of meat we consume to what, 15 to 30 grams a day. There's no sort of alignment of incentive there that gets JBS onto the bandwagon. Plus, at some level, we've got to take Donald Trump, Trump's apothem seriously. When the scorpion stings us and we try and say, well, no, we'll be nice to you and we'll try and get you across the river and then it stings you again and the scorpion's been telling us what they are all along, it's sort of on us to be responsible and not get stung. So I don't see a way in which these institutions, some of which have been around for centuries, profited from the remnants of slavery, at least are well designed to move into a world where, I mean, all of these companies, by the way, are interested in renewables. They're just not sustainable. Renewable means they just come out of the ground year after year and they can put as many solar panels as you like on Walmart. But ultimately the data suggests that of course they'll switch to all electric Walmart, but that still is a system that's defined by exploitation. I don't see the end path, but perhaps better does.

33:44

Let's sort of pivot back towards that sort of conversation, I guess around the left of center, sort of more socialist approaches. And as we face into the ecological crisis, food availability will become critical to maintain healthy and thriving societies. Now Brazil's food challenges are being solved through direct government intervention. Do you expect that more national governments around the world will have to take control of food supplies in the future?

35:09

That's really difficult to answer. I think that considering what's happening now, I think that things like sovereignty are increasing their importance and countries are seeing that they, of course it's important, international commerce, of course, etc. Etc. But we need to have capacity, for example, thinking about food security and nutrition, we need to be capable to feed our population in a healthy way and sustainable way, etc. So I think that what's happening now, if you are all the time depending on international contests, we are very fragile. So I think that maybe we have the opportunity for countries to governments to think that they need to reinforce their public policies. And also just thinking about what has just said. When we talk about agroecology or organic products etc. In terms of agroecological movement, it's not only the way that if you are using or not pesticides or if you are you not using this seed or another seed, but it's more than that, it. It's how all the gains of this process is shared or not shared, how the knowledge, not only money, not only economic results, but the power, how it's distributed or not. So if you think about the agribusiness and the predominant food systems, the concentration is the low now the parent. And in the agroecological movement, the diversity of knowledge, of people, of ways of living and etc. Is the law. It's the opposite because we need not only to share food, we need to share. We have here in Brazil to say it's a good living, it's a way to live. Now it's another perspective of life and another perspective of words. You can think this is a utopia, of course it is. But if you don't have this kind of utopia, we are living in a way very bad.

35:33

Yeah. The way that you frame that of course is with regenerative agriculture being a way of producing food and a way of working with the environment. But agroecology being about social change as well, having that sort of economic and social element sort of wrapped up in it too. Which is really interesting just Raj on that point around national gap governments because I guess this comes back to people's sort of view of what shape the ecological crisis and the impact that it will have on human beings will be in the future. But do you expect that more national governments elsewhere in the world might have to sort of take this sort of more socialist approach, this take control of food supplies in the future if people are going to get fed?

38:03

Well, I mean do bear in mind Finland, I mean the largest purchaser of food in the United States is the United States government. In the most capitalist sort of market driven economy that people care to point to, the question is what bits of the food system do we allow large corporations to profit in and what bits do we have to publicly pick up the pieces where there's no profit to be made and so the government has to do it. And that's really the question that you're asking. If there is increasing amounts of crisis and therefore profits get eaten into, then there will be a withdrawal from certain kinds of market and then the government will have to step in if there is popular movement and pressure to make them do it. Because right now, of course, as I say here in the United States, when we last collected hunger statistics, which was a couple of years ago now, we were heading towards way over 40 million people food insecure. That number is certainly higher now. But because the particular pressures that this government is open to do not require the government to step in to fill that. That the government isn't doing the work that it needs to. And so what we have is just an entire failure and people are just going hungry in America. So we need the government to step in here because the private sector is not giving away food for free, but the government at the moment is not doing it. So I do think that it is this dance not just between the private sector and the government, but also between this third force, the social movements that really have characterized Brazil's success in ending hunger.

38:40

Yeah, just imagine if those ICE agents were actually out feeding people instead of doing what they are doing. It's a way that you can mobilize these sort of vast resources. The governments have a little better because Brazil has chosen to solve its hunger crisis by working with local and agroecological farmers. You're delivering on a number of things at once, aren't you? You're feeding people well, providing economic opportunity, mitigating climate change and regenerating biodiversity. Now, Brazil hosted COP30 last November, which is partly why we've been waiting until now to regain record this podcast. What were the key messages in relation to your work around hunger and agroecology that you took to the conference when.

40:02

You thinking about cop? I think we need to think about what happened outside the Blue Zone. We have a lot of life happening in Green Zone and also in People's Summit, but also in Blue Zone. Also not only the official rooms where the negotiations are happening, but it was really interesting because we have a lot of meetings to evaluate what happened in the lane.

40:41

Just help people out with. Because not everybody will be familiar with the terms Blue Zone and Green Zone.

41:10

Blue Zone is the place where governments are in meetings. Where the official negotiations are happening are the Blue Zone. But of course there are the official meetings, but also a lot of other activities where NGOs and also countries have pavilions with thousands of activities. It has very lively weeks. We have the Green Zone where civil society organizations and it's not official meetings with different kinds of activities, of course, related with the agenda. And this year, last year actually in Belay, we had also a People Summit that was organized in a very independent way where civil society organization and social movements from all around the world came to belay and they did two weeks of activities and discussions to settle the agenda in the popular perspective, people's perspective, and they deliver a manifesto to the president of COP with their priorities and their indications what we need to be happen in Blue Zone. Of course a lot of things that they deliver didn't happen and we need to wait a lot of years to see the results. But it was mark, it was a sign that the civil society is organized. It was the first time, for example, that we have thousands of indigenous peoples, not only from Latin America but other regions of the world. So we have different kinds of the results. And so that's what I am saying. If you saw the formal and official results, of course we are not optimistic because, because it's so, so slow because we need consensus and everything else. A lot of interesting, a lot of lobby, industry lobbying, agribusiness lobby inside the official negotiations. But in the evaluations meetings that we made here in Brazil with different sectors, we were quite optimistic. Why, why, why you were at miss because we have no thousands but hundreds of activities that were discussing about the just transition of food system, agricultural perspective, different kinds of practice, different kinds of experiences. And in a way we are feeling that we are, we are nurturing the moment, that we are open, we open the door for the official negotiations for the just transition of food systems. We have a lot of power outside the rooms and we put this power inside the room, I don't know in the third first or the third second cop, but we will do that.

41:15

It's fascinating to sort of hear, you know, how things work behind the scenes. Quite a part of Men of the Gas, so thank you for that. Raj, Just a sort of final question for you I suppose, which is it feels as though the international processes for climate mitigation and adaptation are getting stuck between different worldviews at the moment, between, you know, this sort of movement for agroecology, a movement from the Global south, movement for indigenous people and then this sort of people who are harnessed in some way to multinationals and the market in the way that it is business as usual. Usual. Why do you think it is that national governments, particularly in the Global north, feel so entirely beholden to large corporations and multiple retailers.

44:23

I think part of it is the structure of the political system and the way in which centre left governments have generally been pulled over to the right. And so whether it's labor in the UK or Whether it's the various coalitions that sort of dots at some of the larger European powers in Canada, I think what we're seeing is, is a sort of moment of transition between the old neoliberalism that we had before and something new and weird. We were talking just before we pressed record about the sort of supine response of European powers to Donald Trump and his advances on Greenland. But, I mean, I think historically the only show in town was to export and to listen to these large agribusinesses. But what we're seeing increasingly, and I think Mamdani in New York is a really interesting beacon, and I know people in Europe are talking about him quite a lot, is the idea that all of a sudden, what governments might hope for is something far more robust, particularly when it comes to the food system, than just discounts from your local large retailer. And so what Mandani is considering, and I'm excited that some of our IPAIRS members are involved in this as well, is that we're going to thinking through what it is for a city to run grocery stores and thinking through what it might be like for the government more robustly and more explicitly to be the largest food purchaser, for example, in the United States. As I say, we are already. The government is already the largest food purchaser. What is it then, to embrace that kind of knowledge and recognise that actually there are public services that the government could do? My answer, I guess, Finlay, to your question, well, why are governments so beholden? Is because the folk who used to think that way don't know any better.

45:02

Better.

46:38

And now Trump is providing, is provoking the question, which is, here's Trump with 10% in intel and ready to start being the multinational. And when the state and the multinationals sort of coincide, then we're into some really interesting politics of, well, where does the government belong? Where is the right place for competition? Where is the right place to recognize that we need certain kinds of shared infrastructure to be able to make sure that everyone's fed and that the planet survives. And I think these conversations are ones where Brazil and, you know, the next few cops are going to be very revealing indeed.

46:38

Fantastic. So interesting. Elizabetta, we've just got a few minutes left, but I'm speaking to somebody who's sort of involved in delivering and representing a government where you have had such incredible success. So I want to get some advice from you. And in Britain, our government appears to believe that if push comes to shove, we can import food, just get rid of hedges, make our fields Bigger. At the end of the day, everything's going to be solved by the big stuff supermarkets that we've just been talking about. And yet Brazil has delivered this super successful blueprint of an entirely different kind. What would you say to the head of our government, to our Prime Minister, the heads of other governments, to help them understand that a successful future lies in community and agroecology?

47:06

Well, let's thinking about what happened few years ago during the pandemic of COVID The best examples that we have where from cities that have connections from urban areas with rural areas, cities that have independence on autonomy and food supply and short circuits of food supply. So of course the pandemic was. I hope it was an exception. But if you think about what's happening in the global atmosphere, about the political and economic one, I think we need, I come back from the meaning of sovereignty. We need to put food sovereignty in the first place and first priority for us. We need connections, we need international commerce, etc. But we need to guarantee that we are capable to feed our population and our community, but not, not only for one people or one industry is responsible for this because we need to share the gains of this process. We need to remember that food, it's a human rights. So every people without exceptions have the right to be free of hunger, having access to healthy food. So I think this, it's like commitment that we need not only from the government, but all the society needs to be.

47:47

And just finally clearly Brazil has achieved a great deal. But there is still a way to go to get everyone, to lift everyone out of food security. So what's next?

49:20

Well, I think all the good results that we have, we celebrate all the time this. But we know that we not have a high 100% guarantee that we are comfortable with this. We still have a very huge inequality society. So we have specific communities, special traditional communities and indigenous people that are suffering from hunger now. So we need to reach this kind of people and we need to reach them with different kinds of policies. Because. Because it's really different to have a policy in urban areas and in indigenous peoples communities. So we need specific way to reach these people. And also we need to establish a stable condition and we need to address the roots of inequalities in Brazil. Racism, gender inequality. And we need to guarantee access to terror territories. So we need to address the roots of our poverty. And that's not easy. And we still trying to do this. And sometimes we step two steps ahead and we come back. So we have a historical commitment with this.

49:30

Well, look, that's it. That's all we've got time for. But gosh, that was, it was just a fascinating conversation. And, you know, in this world where there is so much bad news, news, you know, sort of almost every hour there's something new. It is so good to talk to people who are involved in delivering, you know, such a positive thing, such a good news story. And so thank you both for your time. I really appreciate it. And I'm sure that everyone listening has got a huge amount from the conversation. I'd like to thank my guests, Elizabetta Racine and Raj Patel. If you've enjoyed listening, please come back and listen to more. Tell your friends like us, Review us us and share our links. Farmgate is the world's highest ranking food security podcast. And we're part of89.com, the land use news channel, which is supported by First Milk Pelican AG, the nature friendly farming network, Friars Moor Livestock Health, aggrollo, and individual donors. I've been Finn locustdain. Bye for now.

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