Abstract
Brazil had donated food abroad on previous occasions, but an institutionalized humanitarian food aid policy was something innovative in its history. The original goal was to connect the produce of the small family farmers to an international humanitarian policy. However, in practice, the donations privileged the commodities of the large agribusiness farms. This article explains the political economy that diverted the policy from its original social purpose and made Brazil one of the five biggest donors of food to the World Food Program for a short period of time.
Introduction
The governments of Lula da Silva (2003–2010) and Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016), both from the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores [PT]), were committed in making Brazil a global leader in the fight against hunger. In fact, Brazil became a main voice in the field under the emblem of the Zero Hunger Program (ZHP) and a relevant supplier of technical and humanitarian international cooperation (Leite et al., 2014; Tambourgi, 2017). This article focuses on humanitarian food cooperation in the period 2003–2016. Brazil had donated food abroad on previous occasions, but an institutionalized humanitarian food aid policy was something innovative in its history. The magnitude of this policy was also noteworthy as the country became one of the five largest donors to the World Food Program (WFP), although only for a few years.
The aim of this study is twofold: to examine (a) why Brazil played that specific role in humanitarian affairs and (b) why it did so in a controversial way. If there were many ways to be a protagonist in international food and nutrition security issues, why did those PT governments choose to donate parts of the state’s food stocks when specialists consider such aid which is ‘tied’ to one’s own food stocks to have more cons than pros (Barrett & Maxwell, 2005; Clapp, 2012; Clay & Stokke, 2000)?
It is consensual that international food aid was a cornerstone of the second food regime (1940s–1970s; Friedmann, 1982; McMichael, 2013). Tied food aid was used to dump surpluses created by the highly subsidized agro-industrial complexes—first from the United States and later from other northern countries—and was largely accepted by Third World governments for humanitarian, economic, or developmental purposes. However, international food aid lost centrality with the demise of the second food regime. Many factors seem to have diminished the role of food aid since the 1970s: the dismantling of the structures of the Bretton Woods system (Friedmann, 2009), the transformations of the multilateral trade regime, the fiscal crises of the developed countries, the professionalization of humanitarian assistance, the reforms of the foreign aid and food aid regimes, and the end of the strategic imperatives of the Cold War among others (Barrett & Maxwell, 2005; Clapp, 2012; Lancaster, 2007). Regarding the main actors, one notable change has been that since the 1990s traditional donors such as Australia, Canada, and the European Union (EU) ‘untied’ their food aid from their own food stocks and began to purchase food from markets near the populations to be assisted (Clapp, 2012). This untying is in large part the result of those factors.
The United States, however, continues to donate a significant amount of food purchased in its national territory and deliver it in US ships. In fact, Presidents Bush Jr. and Obama tried to reform the system so as to ‘untie’ food aid, similar to other traditional donors, but they were blocked by protectionist interests in Congress (Diven, 2006; Lima & Dias, 2016). Besides the United States, other countries such as Brazil, China, India, Russia, Saud Arabia, South Africa, and South Korea appeared as ‘new donors’ in the 2000s (Clapp, 2012). All of them were recipients of food aid and now tend to provide in-kind, tied food aid to foreigners. The exception, in both cases, is Saudi Arabia. In this context, the analysis of the Brazilian experience shows how some dynamics related to the second food regime may still fuel the traditional-style food aid channeled by the WFP, that is, food aid based on eventual surpluses that could not be sold in regular markets. The role of the WFP as a constraint to the Brazilian preferred policy is also explored in this article.
As regards policy design, studies of foreign food aid have long criticized the potential negative effects of the donations on the receiving countries, which can be subject to the dismantling of domestic markets, increased import dependency, and change in local diets (George, 1978; Portillo, 1987). Of course, food aid may be the difference between life and death in many cases and it should not be demonized (Ziegler, 2013). In this sense, discussions on how to design more efficient food aid policies from the humanitarian, economic, and developmental points of view have been carried out for decades (Barrett & Maxwell, 2005; Clapp, 2012; Clay & Stokke, 2000). The analysis of the Brazilian policymaking process shows how domestic politics interfered in the policy design and demonstrates the conditions under which Brazil ended up practicing a policy similar to that of the traditional donors in the second food regime.
Finally, this case study contributes to the comprehension of the contemporary politics of international food aid because it demonstrates why Brazil had to conform with the standard practices of the WFP. Since the early 2000s, there has been a debate about the power of attraction of hegemonic international institutions over the emerging donor countries’ policies and resources (Manning, 2006; Quadir, 2013; Smith, 2011; White, 2011). This article shows that among the reasons for Brazil becoming a partner of the WFP were, first, the lack of domestic instruments to carry out the humanitarian policy by itself and second, the imperative of participating in the humanitarian food system with the resources available.
This study was designed on the basis of a pluralist perspective of foreign policy analysis (Hudson, 2007; Moravcsik, 1997). The study investigated how three independent variables, namely, the interests, ideas, and interactions of domestic actors, mediated by two intervening variables, that is, political institutions and processes, shaped the foreign policy (the dependent variable). Evidence and information was collected about those variables through primary sources such as official memos and reports, laws, bills of law, and records of parliamentary debates. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with agents at different levels: from the principal policymakers to those implementing them daily, with representatives of the board of the National Council on Food and Nutrition Security (Conselho Nacional de Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional, CONSEA) and of the WFP. A total of 11 interviews occurred in person, in Brasília, and two by web conference. It is important to emphasize that the interviewees had different views on the policy in terms of protocols and efficiency, and enthusiasm for it. Therefore, the series of interviews cannot be classified as biased in favor or against the policy. In fact, most of the interviewees reflected critically on the policy process, and its goals and results. Secondary information was gathered from media sources and a literature review was undertaken mainly for contextualizing and identifying the general directions of Brazilian foreign policy.
This article is organized as follows. The first section shows official figures and concepts concerning Brazil’s humanitarian food aid. The second section presents the main actors, interests, and ideas underlying the policy. The third section describes three different phases of policymaking during the 2003–2016 period. The fourth section analyzes interests, ideas, and institutions in the policymaking process. The final section presents some considerations relating to Brazil’s role in the humanitarian food aid and its future.
Some Figures and Concepts of Brazil’s Humanitarian Food Aid
It is very difficult to systematically analyze data on Brazilian humanitarian cooperation (Tambourgi, 2017). There is no unified database, the reports of the bureaucracies are not released regularly, and the methodologies may differ. The objective in this section is only to point out the change in the types of food donated over the period based on available data. The change is the result of the failure of the intended social policy and South–South cooperation, and the prevalence of traditional politics and forms of tied food aid that privileged large-scale agribusiness.
The Brazilian model of humanitarian food aid was largely based on the donation of national public stocks. 1 It was a form of tied food aid originally envisaged to connect the food security programs directed at family farmers at home with humanitarian needs abroad. However, for reasons discussed in the following paragraphs, the bulk of the donations ended up coming from large-scale agribusiness.
Before showing some official figures, a conceptual note: ‘family farmer’ and ‘large-scale agribusiness’ are not terms that can be used to describe two clearly distinguished actors. The literature is evident about the distinct farming styles and extra-farm connections that each term may have across countries (Schneider, 2014). For instance, Niederle (2018) provides contemporary data and examples of the different types of small and large family farms and agribusinesses and uses them to criticize the homogenizing approach of the food regime’s perspectives. Besides, there are different discourses in dispute within and around each term too (Cabral et al., 2016).
Bearing in mind the conceptual tensions, the terms ‘family farm’ and ‘large-scale agribusiness’ will be used to distinguish between two general alternatives as understood by this author through the interviews with the main policymakers. First, family farm is the unit that falls under Law 11,326 of 2006 for public policy purposes. It must have the following features: (a) not hold, in any capacity, an area greater than the four fiscal modules, (b) use, predominantly, family labor in the economic activities of the establishment or enterprise, (c) have a minimum percentage of family income derived from the economic activities of the establishment or enterprise, and (d) direct the establishment or enterprise with the family. The law also considers the following as family farmers: extractivists, fisherfolk, fish farmers, forestry workers, quilombolas, and indigenous peoples, under certain specifications. Second, besides these legal criteria, the policymakers interviewed often associate family farmers with the beneficiaries of the agrarian reform programs, which come from a history of marginalization and association with landless movements (Fernandes, 2013b). In other words, when referring to family farmers, we are not referring here to those small producing units that are highly capitalized, managed under corporate principles, and tightly integrated into agro-industrial complexes. On the other hand, by large-scale agribusiness we mean those units producing monocultures in big tracts of land, using capital-intensive techniques, and mainly wage workers.
We now turn to the official figures. The main source of Brazilian food aid was the stockpiles of the state. Almost all of it came from the public institution called National Supply Company (Companhia Nacional de Abastecimento [CONAB]). A residual part came from the ministries of health, social development, and agrarian reform (Fernandes, 2013a). The foods donated until 2010 were mainly composed of grains, and diversified commercial and industrialized foods that were already in the public stocks for national emergencies (CONAB, 2011). 2 Note that, until 2010, rice and beans were not on the list, and maize in natura was a small part of the donations. From 2011, the data shows that beans, maize, and rice became the only foods donated (Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada [IPEA], Agência Brasileira de Cooperação [ABC], 2016), that is when Brazil became one of the top five donors in the world.
Brazil also practiced untied food aid, that is, it bought food overseas for attending humanitarian emergencies abroad (MRE, 2009). However, the budget of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministério das Relações Exteriores [MRE]) was too limited to make that a standard practice. Besides, the primary goal was to link Brazilian family farmers to international populations in hunger, and that was to be done through the donation of food from national stocks composed of food acquired from family farmers. However, in addition to the short budget for humanitarian actions, Brazilian legislation made it extremely difficult for the MFA to purchase and deliver food abroad. Those limitations, to be discussed later, were fundamental for the partnerships between Brazil, the WFP, and foreign governments.
The amount spent on freight for the transportation of foods and medicines in 2011–2013 by Brazil and its partners (WFP and foreign governments) totaled to R$ 319.1 million (US$ 136.3 million), of which R$ 3 million (US$ 1 million) were paid by the MRE and R$ 97,000 (US$ 33.700) by the Ministry of Health. In comparison, the monetary value of the food donated totaled R$ 280.6 million (US$ 97.6 million) and all Brazilian financial contributions to humanitarian agencies and operations totaled R$ 77.3 million (US$ 26.9 million; IPEA & ABC, 2016).
Critics of tied food aid usually argue that too much money is spent on freight. If the foods were procured in markets closer to the targeted populations, the money saved on transportation could be converted into more food (Clapp, 2012; Clay & Riley, 2005). However, while developing donor countries may have budget limitations for freight, they may have lots of foods available for donation. Specialists, like Ziegler (2013), argue that leaving those foods out of the humanitarian circuit would be inhumane.
The WFP (2013, p. 12) reported that Brazil became one of the top five donors of food in-kind in 2012, along with the United States, Canada, Japan, and China, accounting for 70 per cent of WFP’s food aid deliveries. The United States is historically the biggest contributor since World War II. In 2001, for instance, the United States donated six million metric tons (mt) of food to the WFP, while Japan, the second major donor, contributed one million mt, followed by China (450,000 mt) and Canada (300,000 mt). In 2012, the United States drastically reduced its contributions to 2.2 million mt, but it was still much higher than those of Japan (0.5 million mt). In that year, Brazil contributed 334,000 mt, thus becoming the WFP’s third major donor of food in-kind (Figure 1). 3 This data differs considerably from the Brazilian official records of humanitarian cooperation, which reports the donation of 309,312 mt of food in 2011–2013 and 29,627 mt in 2014–2016 (IPEA & ABC, 2016, 2018). 4 Nevertheless, it is clear that they were the peak in contributions.
The Zero Hunger Program: The Two-track Strategy and the Need for International Cooperation
The Brazilian international food aid policy cannot be understood outside the scope of the ZHP (Aranha, 2010; Tomazini & Leite, 2016). The roots of the ZHP were deeply related to social movements, academic researchers, and other actors gathered around the PT’s agenda (Albuquerque, 2013). Even though the ZHP was a proposal for a national policy strategy, its principles were considered to be of a universal interest, as a human right. To fulfill that human right, any government should have the appropriate tools and policy space to intervene in the market, thus challenging the dominant neoliberal international context (Graziano da Silva, 2009). In this sense, international cooperation (including humanitarian) was seen—not exclusively—as a strategy to garner foreign support for interventionist state policies. The support of foreign governments, NGOs, international organizations, and other civil society organizations would strengthen Brazil’s soft power in the call for a new vision to fight hunger globally. The election and re-election of Brazilians José Graziano da Silva as the FAO’s Director-General (2012–2015/2016–2019) and Roberto Azevêdo as Director-General of the WTO (2013–2017/2018–2021) is evidence of the soft power Brazil accumulated in the agri-food domain. Graziano’s case is of utmost importance as he was one of the main minds behind the ZHP before PT achieved the presidency in 2002 and once Lula took office, Graziano was the minister in charge of putting the ZHP in motion (January 2003 to January 2004).
The ZHP had a two-track strategy (Brasil, 2013). One was fostering the so called ‘structuring policies’, such as the Food Acquisition Program (Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos [PAA]), through which the government purchased the produce of family farmers to, for example, serve meals in hospitals and schools (Grisa et al., 2010; Peraci & Bittencourt, 2010). Structuring policies was necessary for poor farmers and communities to have more resilience, income, and also to diversify local food supplies for nutritional reasons. The other track was the emergency policies to solve immediate food insecurity of vulnerable populations. Programs such as Bolsa Família and the National School Feeding Program (Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar [PNAE]) are examples that combine both strategies (Takagi, 2010). They offer immediate ways to access food by providing cash and school meals, respectively, while fostering basic education—a structuring policy. The former demands mothers to keep children at school and with their vaccines updated (another structuring policy) in order to receive the grant and the latter serves meals prepared with some ingredients procured from local family farmers at school. The stable procurement of food from local family farmers through institutional markets was also a structuring policy.
The governments of both Lula and Dilma worked to consolidate the ZHP into laws and regulations. Law 11,346 of 2006 created the National System of Food and Nutritional Security. As regards international cooperation, Article 6 established that ‘the Brazilian state must engage in promoting technical cooperation with foreign countries, thus contributing to the realization of the human right to adequate food at the international level’. The Decree 7,272 of 2010 states that the National Food Security Policy has as one of its ‘specific objectives… [to] incorporate into state policy the respect for food sovereignty and to guarantee the human right to adequate food, including access to water, and to promote them in the ambit of international negotiations and cooperation’. The same decree provided that the Inter-ministerial Chamber for Food and Nutritional Security (Câmara Intersecretarial de Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional [CAISAN]), together with the National Council of Food and Nutritional Security (Conselho Nacional de Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional [CONSEA]), 5 include in the first National Plan for Food and Nutrition Security the guidelines for ‘international humanitarian assistance and South–South cooperation in food and nutritional security’.
In this context, the MRE’s General Coordination for Actions to Fight Hunger (CGFome) adopted the concept of ‘structuring humanitarian cooperation’. Fundamentally, it meant that food donations should be part of some structure-building objective whenever possible. Usually, humanitarian actions are palliative measures aimed at alleviating an urgent catastrophe. However, it was the intention of CGFome to provide resources that could build local resilience too. For example, Brazil donated vegetable seeds, in some cases, so that people could cultivate part of their own food, even in refugee camps. In that sense, procuring food nearby the disasters could also be a structuring humanitarian cooperation if it helped to build resilience in foreign local markets.
The National Plan for Food and Nutritional Security was first published in 2011 (CAISAN, 2011, p. 106). Among its priorities were to: (a) elaborate a legal framework regarding the provision of international humanitarian cooperation by Brazil, (b) expand actions that protect, promote, and provide the Human Right to Adequate Food in international humanitarian operations through emergency actions, complemented by initiatives aimed at contributing to food autonomy and sovereignty of foreign countries, and (c) promote international humanitarian assistance, through donation of food from national public stocks located in the International Humanitarian Warehouse, to countries victimized by adverse social–environmental events.
Note that in 2011 humanitarian food aid was already at historic levels. Nevertheless, the Plan reflected the crucial need for an adequate legal framework. The CAISAN reported in 2013 that it was ‘at the final stage of elaboration of a regulatory framework for the provision of international food assistance’ (CAISAN, 2013, p. 104), but this new framework was not to be found. In fact, the next section of the article points that the lack of that legal framework was critical for the design of the policy over the years.
The coordinator of CGFome, Milton Rondó, and CONAB’s manager, Claudio Dalla Costa, both affirmed in interviews that the backbone of the humanitarian food policy was to donate products acquired from Brazilian family farmers whenever possible. The CONAB was to procure food through the PAA or use its stocks. In doing so, Rondó and Dalla Costa explained, a foreign population would receive relief while supporting family farmers in Brazil. That would be South–South cooperation for development, providing benefits for both sides. That is, while contributing with foreign partners, it would be legitimate for a developing donor to work on its own poverty and food problems (Milani, 2012). 6 Moreover, the ZHP would be fully contemplated: the two-track strategy plus international cooperation.
Yet the reality turned out to be very different. From the original intent to the general policy outcome, the lack of an adequate legal framework pulled policy in the direction of the traditional food aid operations, that is, donation of commodities acquired from the surpluses of large-scale farmers. It is important to say that not all food aid came from large-scale agribusiness. However, the bulk of it, which was rice and a large amount of maize, was from those sources. Donations of beans and other foods probably came from family farmers and cooperatives. Powdered milk was from farmers’ cooperatives. 7
It is important to stress that this study did not find an original interest in the government or the Congress to support the exports of large-scale agribusiness, neither an interest by large-scale agribusiness to discharge surpluses through food aid at first. In the Brazilian case, and contrary to the main reasons for food aid in the second food regime (Friedmann, 1982), the origin was rooted in fostering family farming. In terms of policymaking, the bureaucrats were the main actors, especially the MRE’s CGFome. The next section, however, demonstrates that the support of the Parliamentary Front of Farming and Cattle Raising (Frente Parlamentar da Agropecuária [FPA]), 8 which mostly represents large-scale agribusiness in Congress, was fundamental for Brazil to become a major player in humanitarian affairs.
The Struggle for Institutionalization and the Politics of the Possible
The 2003–2016 period is divided into three different phases during which the CGFome struggled for an adequate legal framework to implement its preferred policy. The analysis evidences that the policy was an ‘adjust while doing’ process, instead of a rigorously planned policy put to work with the appropriate financial and institutional resources. To use a Brazilian old saying—it was ‘changing the car tire while driving’. This section will also show the centrality of the CGFome in the process.
2003–2006
Two dynamics at different levels of analysis are fundamental. The first and more general one was the opening of the policymaking process at federal level to actors related to family farming during Lula’s mandate (Leite, 2016). Lula’s comprehensive social agenda had important supporters and constituencies in agrarian reform and in family-farming movements, such as the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra [MST]). President Lula granted top institutional access to those groups through relevant channels (Albuquerque, 2013; Brasil, 2013). The most important was the Ministry of Agrarian Development (Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário [MDA]), created in 1999 and strengthened after 2003. Under Lula, the MDA became part of the foreign trade policymaking process, with the mission of defending the interests of family farmers and rural populations in international negotiations. Thereafter, the almighty Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (Ministério da Agricultura, Pecuária e Abastecimento [MAPA]), which represents mostly large-scale agribusiness, would have an agrarian rival in the federal government for the first time (Fernandes, 2010). 9 The CONSEA was instituted as an advisory committee to the president for matters related to the Human Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition and had a mandate to monitor and issue position papers on international negotiations.
Although Presidents Lula and Dilma did provide relevant incentives for family farming, neither advanced the agenda of agrarian reform with land redistribution. Both were also deeply aligned with the interests of large-scale agribusiness and the FPA (Leite, 2016; Sauer & Meszáros, 2017; Welch, 2017). Nevertheless, in the PT governments, actors committed with family farming had institutional access to the policymaking table, including that of the MRE. Created in 2004, the MRE’s CGFome was responsible for advocating and promoting abroad policies inspired in the ZHP. This was an institutional innovation as the MRE’s tradition and esprit de corps are more associated with wealthier urban classes and agribusiness than with the rural poor. 10 This takes us to the second dynamic mentioned earlier: the role of CGfome’s coordinator, Milton Rondó. His individual role was of unique importance for the whole trajectory of the CGFome and, therefore, for Brazil’s humanitarian food policy in the period covered by this research. Rondó was invited to integrate the high ranks of the MRE after Lula became president. He had good relations with Samuel Pinheiro Guimarães, the Secretary-General of the MRE, a position below only to the minister. It was Rondó’s proposal to install a General Coordination for Actions to Fight Hunger (CGFome), an office that would be the international arm of the ZHP at the MRE.
The CGFome was formally created in January 2004 and was inserted at the top of the MRE’s organogram. That unusual position gave CGFome direct access to the MRE’s Secretary-General Guimarães and to Foreign Minister Celso Amorim. Rondó himself would even have some direct access to Presidents Lula and, to a lesser extent, Rousseff.
Some critical events contributed to shape CGFome’s role in humanitarian food cooperation: the 2004 coup d’etat in Haiti and the Lebanon War in 2006, when many Brazilians had to be evacuated. The MRE realized that Brazil had no adequate structure to deal with those scales of humanitarian operations (Amorim, 2016). In 2004, Brazil was already coordinating the UN peacekeeping operation in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which naturally imposed obligations regarding humanitarian aid towards the Haitian people. However, the humanitarian work—not only with food—of the CGFome really started with the floods in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Suriname in the first half of 2006 (Fernandes, 2013a). Those experiences were very much new to the diplomats managing it. They did not have previous training or expertise in large-scale humanitarian operations and protocols were not available.
On one hand, the Brazilian officials and the CGFome did an important humanitarian job by improvisation. On the other, improvising is hardly ever the best way to provide humanitarian assistance. As part of the lessons learned regarding the lack of intragovernment coordination to formulate and implement humanitarian policies, the CGFome managed to create an Inter-Ministerial Task Force for International Humanitarian Assistance (Grupo de Trabalho Interministerial de Assistência Humanitária Internacional [GTI-AHI]) through the Presidential Decree of 21 June 2006.
As the bureaucratic structure and procedures advanced in this period, it became clear that the government needed an appropriate legal framework for international humanitarian cooperation. Actually, there was no legislation for it and this was a major setback for any attempt to respond rapidly to emergencies. The Brazilian Constitution forbids donating any public asset unless explicitly allowed by a law or by the institution called ‘Provisional Measure’ (Medida Provisória [MP]). Both must pass through Congress, but the latter is considered ‘very urgent’ under the legislative procedures and receives priority in Congress, while the former has no deadline at all. In that sense, CGFome made two important movements. First, it convinced President Lula to present Bill of Law 737 to Congress in 2007. 11 Second, for the first time the MFA received a budgetary line for humanitarian actions. The resources allowed CGFome to be part of many humanitarian operations abroad.
2007–2010
The Bill 737 aimed at making the government’s actions more agile and adequate to perform emergency actions. Article 1 would give the government the ‘permission to use or donate movable property, including food from the federal government’s public stock, as well as those that make up the assets of the organs or entities of the federal public administration…as well as the donation of financial resources’. In other words, the ambitious bill intended to untie the government from issuing a provisional measure or submitting a bill to Congress whenever it was to donate public goods for international humanitarian purposes.
The bill’s demand can be exemplified by the case of MP444 of 2008, which made available up to 45,000 tons of rice, 2,000 tons of powdered milk, and 500 kg of vegetable seeds to Cuba, Haiti, Honduras, and Jamaica in response to the climatic disasters of that year. Published on 29 October 2008, MP444 was converted into the Bill 11,881, and finally instituted as a law in 23 December 2008. If the MP had not been converted into law, its effects would have ceased after 60 days of its publication, which meant that the government would have been prevented from sending more humanitarian aid, unless another MP or a law were approved by Congress. Timing is a challenge to plan appropriate assistance to populations affected by sudden natural disasters. In Haiti, for example, hurricane Hanna left hundreds of dead and hundreds of thousands in need of humanitarian assistance in early September 2008, but Brazilian aid was available only in December.
It is important to note that Law 11,881 mandated CONAB to promote the transportation of the foods to the final destinations using its own resources or through partnerships. The government tried to get federal funding for transportation in Bill 737, but it failed. Later, Congress would explicitly prohibit the government to pay for international transportation of Brazilian food aid. That was a major setback for the CGFome’s plans because it limited much of its autonomy in implementing the policy.
While Law 11,881 was case-specific, Bill 737 was a general framework. Introduced in April 2007, the bill slowly passed through four different legislative commissions in the next three years.
12
During this process, the opposition to the government considered that the bill would be an inappropriate ‘blank check’ to the government and that it could actually disguise aid to governments such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia.
13
In May 2010, Deputy Efraim Filho filed an appeal supported by at least 51 deputies demanding the bill to be examined by the plenary of the Chamber before going to the Senate. Since then, the bill 737 was paralyzed. According to Leite et al. (2014, p. 57):
[o]pposition did not centre on the donation of food itself, but on: (1) it being an instrument to affirm the international image of President Lula and his alignment with countries whose governments were found not to be respecting domestic human rights; (2) it being an instrument to promote compensatory programmes abroad, to the detriment of other policies targeting sustainable social inclusion (such as health and education); (3) it being decided by the Executive; (4) the possibility of directing seized merchandise at home to humanitarian assistance; and (5) the quantity and kind of grains that would be destined for other countries, having in mind their impacts on national prices.
Three contextual factors must be noted. First, Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia used to make national headlines because of their socialist/Bolivarian worldviews. Plus, President’s Lula friendly diplomacy towards South American neighbors angered the government’s opposition, as in the 2006 nationalization of gas in Bolivia that expropriated Petrobras properties; the 2009 negotiation to elevate the fees payed to Paraguay for Itaipu’s energy; and the strengthening of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas lead by Venezuela. Second, the price of rice was high and stocks were low. Although there is not enough evidence to say that this factor had been a necessary condition for the bill’s fate in this process, the reversion of signals in 2011 makes it a relevant intervening variable later. Third, a critical organizational change occurred in the MRE. Guimarães left his post in October 2009, being replaced by career diplomat Antonio Patriota. Rondó and Patriota did not have the same kind of close relationship. This resulted in some loss of influence of the CGFome in the MRE and in interministerial relations. Nonetheless, CGFome still had Amorim’s ears, but that would change in 2011, when Patriota replaced him. 14
One last thing should be noted for this period: President Lula did not put his weight in the battle for Bill 787. Why? Was it a sign of the low relevance that the government attributed to the policy? Or was the bill a product of CGFome’s activism, not fully backed by the government’s core? Those are questions that this research could not advance.
2011–2016
Until 2009, most of the Brazilian food donations were bilateral and authorized through MPs. After that, working with the WFP became the regular practice. Many factors contributed to this. One was the legal restriction to pay for international transportation. Another was the convenience of using WFP’s specialized logistics and skills, which contrasted with the Brazilian lack of expertise. 15 A third factor was the interest of the WFP itself in bringing Brazil into its donor base (Fernandes, 2013a; Lima & Santana, 2020). 16
Three of the CGFome’s employees commented that if the government had the capacity to pay for international transportation, Brazil would not have attached its humanitarian cooperation too much to the WFP. The WFP’s standards restricted the CGFome’s preferences in terms of public diplomacy and domestic policy. For example, WFP’s requirements in terms of packing made food aid from family farmers virtually unviable and the publicity protocols would curtail some actions aimed to capitalize Brazil’s image. Plus, the prices charged by the WFP for logistics were higher than the commercial ones. The fact is that the partnership with the WFP was crucial for Brazilian humanitarian food aid.
Another issue that needs to be addressed is the sequence of laws that made that policy possible. In the very end of his second term, President Lula published the MP519 of 30 December 2010. The memo accompanying the MP519, elaborated in July 2010, asked for 300,000 tons of maize, 100,000 of rice and of beans, 10,000 tons of powdered milk, and one ton of vegetables seeds. The MP519 was converted into Bill 12,429 in the first semester of Rousseff’s mandate and approved in June that year. 17 Note that the quick approval contrasted with the paralysis of Bill 737. Why? This time the CGFome had the active support of the government’s opposition and of the Ruralist Bloc.
First of all, Bill 12,429 was analyzed by a joint commission of the Chamber of Deputies in May 2011, having the Deputy Luis Carlos Heinze (Progressive Party from Rio Grande do Sul, PP-RS) as the reviewer.
18
Surprisingly for a far-right politician, his report was against three amendments that sought to prioritize assistance for Brazilian emergencies over the foreign ones. Heinze approved the budgetary and financial structure of the proposal, but he amended the quantities of foods demanded by the CGFome. His justification is of utmost importance (our translation):
[f]inally, as the present Provisional Measure nº 519 was issued back in 2010, a period when very low prices for rice were not observed in the market, causing income loss to farmers, and the high prices of maize, which significantly impacts the production of hogs and poultry, I believe to be adequate, timely and necessary to adjust the quantities to be donated of those products. That is, to reduce maize from 300 to 100 thousand tons, and to elevate rice from 100 to 500 thousand tons.
Heinze also stressed that ‘the sack of rice is valued at R$ 18.00 (US$ 9.62) while the minimum price is R$ 25.80 (US$ 13.79) and its cost is R$ 29.90 (US$ 15.98)’ (our translation). As a huge harvest was expected for the following year, the situation would become even worse. Thus, he argued, ‘it is only natural to match the donation of public stocks to other countries with strategies of price support for agricultural products in the home market’ (our translation). Heinze’s arguments demonstrate some of the perils of tying food aid to prices and harvests of the national market, as that kind of volatility curtails long-term international humanitarian planning (Clapp, 2012).
Other legislators presented three amendments. (a) Deputy Miro Teixeira (Democratic Labor Party from Rio de Janeiro, PDT-RJ) asked for a 12-month cap, which was accepted by Heinze. Heinze and Teixeira agreed that as the harvest would only occur in February 2012, the 12-month deadline would be adequate. (b) Teixeira also demanded an amendment—then accepted by Heinze—to secure that the international aid would not compromise eventual assistance in the national territory (previously considered ‘unnecessary’ by Heinze). Then, (c) what should have been very polemical turned out to be smooth: Deputy Vicente Candido (Workers’ Party from São Paulo, PT-SP) asked for the inclusion of Cuba in the list of receivers and Heinze accepted it without debate. The bill was approved by the Chamber of Deputies in 26 May.
The Bill 12,429 was sent to a Senate Commission and Senator Ana Amelia (Progressive Party from Rio Grande do Sul, PP-RS) issued a positive report on 31 May. 19 The Senate approved her report and the Bill became Law 12,429 on 20 June 2011—about one year after Bill 737 had been basically put aside. There was no roll call vote and it should not go without notice that providing assistance to socialist/Bolivarian countries was something fiercely fought against in Bill 737, but the 2011 law provided explicit authorization for helping Cuba, Bolivia, and North Korea.
The Law was not what the CGFome originally had planned. However, that was the politics of the possible. As Rondó said, it was either that or refraining to help thousands of desperate hungry people abroad. 20 As for CONSEA, the law was a welcome act of international solidarity and they were not concerned with large-scale farmers being privileged by the model adopted. 21
Another issue that tilted CGFome’s plans was related to technical procedures regarding preparation of food aid. Depending on the commodity, the WFP only ships minimum processed foods, but the CONAB’s stocks were composed of foods in natura. As Congress did not grant a budget to process the foods, the government’s solution was to make a ‘simultaneous buy–sell operation’ in the market, through which CONAB would exchange, for example, paddy rice for husked rice already packed. The problem, according to one of CONAB’s employees, was that this process was a kind of public auction that family farmers could hardly ever win. Thus, this institutional mechanism also diverted the policy from its original intent.
Nevertheless, the CGFome finally had a legal framework to work with. Two points are noteworthy. First, Law 12,429 allowed aid to countries not named in the Law, provided that the demand of listed countries had already been served and the quotas were not exhausted. This clause contrasts with the opposition’s preoccupation about using food aid to support socialist/Bolivarian countries during the 2007–2010 period. Second, although the 12-month authorization was not ideal, it was better than the case-specific authorizations that MPs granted. In 2012, however, Law 12,688 repealed any expiry date. Fernandes (2013a) reported that Deputy Jerônimo Goergen (Progressive Party from Rio Grande do Sul, PP-RS) was the amendment’s mentor and that his main motives were to affect rice prices and, more urgently, to empty the stocks and allow space for the new rice harvest (apud Fernandes, 2013a). Later, with the coming exhaustion of the quotas authorized by Law 12,429/2011, the continuity of the food aid took place through Law 13,001 of 2014. Deputy Heinze (PP/RS) proposed an amendment to expand to 500,000 tons of rice the threshold of the donations established in the 2011 law. In this case, there was a clear partnership between the CGFome and the Rio Grande do Sul Institute for Rice. 22
In sum, the legal framework obtained in this third phase, the partnership with the WFP, and the diplomatic ability of the CGFome resulted in a policy that made headlines about Brazil’s new profile as an emerging donor of humanitarian aid. 23 Parallel to that, the CGFome’s prestige inside the MRE was diminishing. Rondó had already lost Guimarães’ institutional support in 2009 and then lost Amorim’s in 2011, when he left the MRE. Minister Patriota (2011–2013) was not close to Rondó, nor were the subsequent ministers of the MRE. CGFome’s employees reported that the loss of influence was expressed physically as the office was moved out of the MRE’s main building to its annex.
Some of the CGFome’s employees also mentioned that the loss of prestige occurred because of Rondó’s intensive combat against the national protest movements initiated in June 2013, and which culminated in the parliamentary coup that replaced Dilma Rousseff for Vice-president Michel Temer in 2016. The MFA’s traditional career diplomats did not approve Rondó’s attitude in that process, leaving him with few allies in the ministry. As the impeachment process advanced, the then interim President Temer indicated José Serra as the MRE’s minister in May 2016. Serra, of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira [PSDB]), had lost two Presidential elections against PT in 2002 and 2009, to Lula and Dilma, respectively. Serra terminated the CGFome in September 2016.
Interests, Ideas, Institutions, and Process
Two questions drove this research: why did Brazil engage in humanitarian food cooperation? And why most of Brazil’s international food aid was tied. After identifying the main actors behind the policy and analyzing their interests and ideas, it is possible to state that the policy was coherently created under the ZHP’s two-track and international strategies. The policy’s design, however, was not conceived before PT had won the presidency. Rather, the policy was work in progress, motivated by concrete humanitarian demands, as well as domestic and international windows of opportunity: it was like ‘changing the car tire while driving’.
But why send abroad food from Brazil? Supporting family farming by procuring food from them, while helping people in hunger abroad, would fit the ZHP strategy: it would strengthen a structuring program for food security at home while assisting hunger emergencies internationally. Although not recommended by specialists that are critical of tied aid, it would fit a two-way South–South cooperation, and that was expected to strengthen Brazil’s image as an important actor in world food issues, which was another part of the ZHP strategy. However, the government did not have enough budgetary resources to buy food for donation abroad in the scale envisaged for the policy, especially considering the dollar’s rising exchange rate. Thus, economic limitations reinforced that the possible policy was to donate what was available at the stocks of ministries and agencies, mainly in CONAB’s stocks.
However, the idea of buying food from Brazilian family farmers did not work as expected and most of the donations came from large-scale agribusiness. Why? (a) The absence of an adequate legal framework, (b) lack of enough political support in Congress, and (c) WFP’s technical standards that family farmers could not reach or outcompete large-scale agribusiness. As the policy was put in motion without an adequate legal framework, many of its objectives were defined without the means to achieve them. This also explains why CGFome did not donate more food purchased in international markets: its budget was too limited for it. The quest for an appropriate law from 2007 to 2010 failed because the government could not get enough political support at a time when (a) Lula’s opposition was resistant to provide any support for foreign leftist governments and (b) national food stocks were low.
The importance of food stocks only became clear in the process that led to the approval of Law 12,429 of 2011. In that period, national stocks of rice were high and prices were low. Fernandes (2013a, p. 45) concluded that ‘the [Ruralist Bloc’s] congressional support in the first semester of 2011 was a contribution, though eventual, for the evolution of the humanitarian cooperation’ (Fernandes, 2013a, p. 145). That contribution remained effective in the 2012 and 2014 laws. In 2015, the support of rice agribusiness was withdrawn as the market prices were high and stocks were low. 24
In this phase, the Brazilian experience partially matches that of the United States: the excess of grains, plus low prices, created a political economy force composed of producers, bureaucrats, and legislators that fed a humanitarian policy or, as critics would say, a dumping policy. Scales differ a lot between the operation of Brazil and the United States. However, the setbacks in terms of humanitarian long-term planning are very similar.
In recent years, Canada and the EU untied their food aid and the United States went through domestic debates about untying it, but, as Diven (2006) explained, the political economy of iron triangles resists change. This question was not present in Brazil. This study did not find any criticism about tied food aid in the legislative processes, and there was no sign of a stable and cohesive coalition like the iron triangles in the United States. What happened was an ephemeral coalition. Hypothetically, the status of the coalition could change into a more stable one if Brazilian rice farmers became structurally overproductive and national rice stocks became too high.
After 2010, the coalition formed by the CGFome, the Ruralist Bloc led by legislators from the state of Rio Grande do Sul, and rice agribusiness was strong enough to pass a major bill around a year after the defeated Bill 737. It must be highlighted that the resistance of the opposition to cooperating with socialist/Bolivarian regimes disappeared and that countries like Cuba, Bolivia, and North Korea were nominally included in the 2011 law.
The WFP’s technical procedures for preparing food aid intervened in the CGFome’s original plan. The WFP’s standards created a dynamic within CONAB that family farmers usually could not meet. Large-scale agribusiness, on the other hand, was more prepared to put together large amounts of rice or maize in the WFP’s standardized sacks and to deliver them at the port. If family farmers could have been more organized and prepared to address the WFP’s standards, the policy would probably have been more like the CGFome’s original preference.
The WFP has a special place in this debate as that organization was one of the main receivers of the resources of the emerging donor countries since the 2000s. White (2011) and Smith (2011) pointed out several reasons for the prominence of the WFP among the emerging donors, including the relevance of food insecurity on the international scene due to recurrent economic, environmental, and humanitarian crises; the good reputation of the organization, and the legal and operational domestic constraints that led countries to use WFP instruments to carry out their international cooperation. All of them were present in the Brazilian case (Lima & Santana, 2020).
Conclusion
At first, the government’s proposal was to connect the produce of Brazilian family farmers to an international humanitarian policy. The plan was to foster food and nutrition security at home by supporting family farmer’s income through government purchases destined to alleviate hunger abroad. In this sense, the international humanitarian policy would also be a domestic social policy. However, the government did not manage to get the necessary legal framework for that plan from the National Congress. Instead, Congress passed a law that, in practice, privileged the donation of the food produced by large agribusiness farms. The agreement between the two branches allowed Brazil to become one of the main donors of food and to accomplish some objectives of the PT’s social policies but resulted in a public policy very different from that which was originally intended and short lived.
What about the future of this first Brazilian experience in the area of humanitarian food aid? The deep economic crisis initiated in 2015 was a heavy setback for a foreign policy of that kind. Plus, the independent variable radically changed with the parliamentary coup of 2016 and even more with the government of President Jair Bolsonaro inaugurated in 2019.
However, the experience suggests that if national grains stocks grow and prices plummet, Brazil’s food donations may be boosted again. The question is whether Brasília would find countries or international organizations willing to pay for the logistics if the diplomatic power of the president and its ministers are low. The case also shows that having a committed bureaucratic force in the government may be very important to turn ideas into policies.
Finally, with the problems of tied aid in mind, policymakers and the public should evaluate if donating food from national stocks, whether from family farmers or from large-scale agribusiness, is a desirable way to establish a reliable and efficient international humanitarian food policy, as well as a viable program to foster family farming at home. Comparative case studies on the experiences of emerging donors of humanitarian food aid may help clarify this question.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Camilo Burian, Daniel Antiquera, Haroldo Ramanzini Jr., Henrique Menezes, Liliana Froio, Pedro Feliú and Xaman Korai for commenting on earlier versions of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
This work was supported by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development under Grant 470642/2014-9 from the Human Sciences Edict of 2014.