The article below is the full interview with José Graziano da Silva. An abridged version of the interview was originally published by IPS News on April 6, 2021 with the title "Transforming global food systems: José Graziano da Silva on the path to Zero Hunger."
José Graziano da Silva has been one of the world’s most influential leaders in the fight against hunger. After leading Brazil’s Zero Hunger program nearly twenty years ago, he was appointed Director-General of United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, where he served from 2012 to 2019. During his tenure, he helped transform an institution known for its promotion of agricultural practices associated with the “Green Revolution” – reliance on commercial seeds, fertilizers and pesticides – into one that also welcomed the growing calls from farmer and indigenous groups for more sustainable approaches.
With climate change contributing to five consecutive years of rising levels of “undernourishment,” according to FAO estimates, the institution for the first time recognized and began to support agroecology. The move was controversial, and Mr. da Silva has been personally criticized for allowing the FAO to veer from its traditional promotion of industrialized agriculture.
That controversy is on full display as the Committee on World Food Security debates a set of policy recommendations on agroecology and sustainable food systems in negotiations taking place March 29-31. At stake are recommendation from an expert panel to promote agroecology as one of the central strategies for achieving sustainable food systems. Rich country governments, including the U.S. government, have consistently tried to weaken the recommendations for a transition away from fossil-fuel-intensive high-input agriculture. Similar controversies surround the U.N. Food Systems Summit, scheduled for October. The conference was called by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Gutierres to address the alarming failures to meet targets set by the Sustainable Development Goals, including the goal to end severe hunger by 2030.
I interviewed Mr. da Silva by email about agroecology, the Food Systems Summit, and the battles over the future of food. Since leaving the FAO he founded and directs the Zero Hunger Institute in Brazil.
You presided over some significant shifts in your tenure at FAO, including the "Scaling Up Agroecology" program. Why did you think that was important?
As FAO’s Director General, I had the opportunity to hold the First International Agroecology Symposium in 2014, the second one in 2016 and seven regional meetings between June 2015 and November 2017. As I said at the closing of the first Symposium in 2014, we opened “a new window in the Cathedral of the Green Revolution” that can help to achieve the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.
Agroecology is based on a common set of principles, defined and identified by the FAO, which guide countries “to transform their food and agricultural systems, to mainstream sustainable agriculture on a large scale, and to achieve Zero Hunger and multiple other Sustainable Development Goals.”
After extensive meetings and consultations, FAO delegates voted to promote and facilitate agroecology based on our “Ten Elements of Agroecology,” a guide to support Member Countries to operationalize it as a key sustainable agriculture approach. We launched the “Scaling Up Agroecology Initiative” to provide technical and policy support to countries that request it.
Agroecology became part of FAO’s regular work programme, initially supporting agroecology transition processes in three countries: India, México and Senegal. Nowadays many other countries are testing the approach. Agroecology is growing but not as rapidly as it should be if we are to avoid the climate disasters caused by the invasive practices of the Green Revolution.
Former U.S. representative to Rome Kip Tom accused you of allowing FAO to be transformed "from a science-based development organization into a champion of agrarian peasant movements supported by well-funded NGOs that condemn trade as neo-colonialism and equate property rights with oppression." How do you interpret and respond to such criticisms, not just of you but of FAO?
These kinds of ideological accusations came from an “agribusiness cowboy” who lost an election in Indiana and received an assignment as U.S. representative to the Rome-based agencies as a consolation prize during the Trump administration. This was part of the same game that took the United States out of the Paris Agreement and other multilateral organizations and mechanisms. Thanks to the American people, that game is over.
During my tenure, I reinforced FAO's role as a technical organization with its feet on the ground. We increased FAO's technical capacity in its regional and national offices, which helped countries to better understand their own needs. And we mainstreamed FAO’s strategy into five concrete objectives: eradicate hunger, promote sustainable agriculture development, reduce rural poverty, ensure fair food systems, and build resilience in rural areas. If you look closely, these are the basis for the five Action Tracks of the U.N. Food Systems Summit.
Critics such as former representative Tom portray agroecology as backward-looking and as rejecting innovation, as condemning poor farmers in developing countries to poverty by denying them access to advanced agricultural technologies. Do you see agroecology as a rejection of innovation?
Agroecology should not be seen as a movement backwards that rejects new technologies. It is a different way of producing food that requires innovation, respecting local conditions and the participation of producers in the innovation process. There is a need for specific policies and resources on science and innovation to legitimate and improve producers’ knowledge so that agroecology can lead the transition of current agri-food systems towards sustainability. What agroecology rejects are the invasive practices of the Green Revolution, in particular the overuse of chemical inputs like pesticides.
FAO is an inter-governmental international organization, but researchers have documented the combination of internal support from some FAO member countries and external support coming particularly from civil society organizations that made agroecology one of the important alternatives to overcome the challenges posed by the Green Revolution to the future of current food systems.
The U.N. Secretary General called for the World Food Systems Summit, now scheduled for October 2021. The call was controversial from the start, in part because of the partnership with the World Economic Forum. Does the Summit have the potential to transform food systems in needed ways?
The U.N. Food Systems Summit was launched amid controversy over the appointment of Mrs. Agnes Kalibata as Special Envoy to the U.N. Secretary-General. She leads the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an institution that promotes the green revolution approach in Africa. Gradually, the Secretariat of the Summit began a movement to open up the process, with the nomination of a Champions Group, which represents different sectors of the society, and a multi-stakeholder outreach platform to spread dialogues at national, regional and global levels.
The dialogues are meant to produce a series of reports, which are expected to feed into the Summit's deliberations. While I still don't know how those conclusions will be absorbed by the real-decision makers of the Summit, I hope that those dialogues can serve at least to express the diversity of opinions about how to move forward.
U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Michael Fakhri, has raised concerns about the framing of the summit, arguing that it fails to integrate a rights-based framework and that it marginalizes important work, such as agroecology. Is this a shortcoming of the current UNFSS approach?
The UNFSS needs to have at its foundation the right to adequate and healthy food. So Michael Fakhri makes a valid point. During his speech at the U.N. Human Right Council, he said the Summit is focusing discussions around scientific and market-based solutions, and he called on everyone to make human rights central to their work. I concur with his vision. I also think that poor people need be empowered to regain control over their own food systems and get a better understanding of how food is governed.
I hope that his engagement and call can create the needed shift ahead of the Summit's main talks. The Summit needs to encompass a clear view that zero hunger and sustainable food systems cannot be achieved without healthy soils, healthy seeds, healthy diets and sustainable agriculture practices.
If we are to meet the goal of zero hunger by 2030, what are the most important changes that need to come out of the U.N. Food Systems Summit?
The most important thing to do is empower the hungry. What makes hunger a very complex political problem is that the hungry are not represented. I never saw a union association that represents the malnourished.
Most of the people who face hunger nowadays are not in this situation due to a lack of food produced but because they don’t have money to buy it. So, give them money or the resources to gain access to food. It is a simple formula. The best would be to increase employment and the minimum wage paid to a level that could allow workers to have access to a healthy diet. And for those who can’t be employed for different reasons, provide them a minimum subsidy through cash transfer programs, as we did in Brazil’s Zero Hunger program during President Luís Ignacio da Silva’s first administration. It is that simple: there is no miracle!
Timothy A. Wise is a senior advisor at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and the author of Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food.
