Beginning to End Hunger by M. Jahi Chappell

Author:M. Jahi Chappell [Chappell, M. Jahi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520293090
Amazon: 0520293096
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2018-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

CONCLUSIONS

What, then, enabled SMASAN to form and bring its comprehensive approach to the Five A’s to BH, when so many other attempts in the history of Brazil failed to form or to last the nearly twenty-five years SMASAN has? The answers to these questions are, of course, linked. The conditions that allowed SMASAN’s creation were, as we have seen relying heavily on the multiple streams approach (MSA), the interactions across the semi-independent streams of problems, policies, and politics. That is, there were numerous different conditions evolving from many institutions and societal impulses that fostered the agency’s creation. Clearly one key, vis-à-vis the problems stream, is found in the societal and national institutional memory of decades of efforts to address food security nationwide. As an issue, widespread recognition was primed by this history and a reformulation of the problem that redefined not just what the problem of food insecurity was—inequality and lack of access and agency—but the appropriate ways for the government to address it. That is, seeing the problem as going beyond the Malthusian “there’s not enough food” allowed the PT and Betinho’s Citizens’ Action Movement Against Hunger and Poverty and for Life to develop a definition of the problem calling for actions that improved the rights of citizens and changed structures of inequality rather than relying upon emergency-oriented or assistentialist welfare programs. The backgrounds of BH mayor Ananias and SMASAN secretary Nabuco prepared them to focus on the problem from this perspective and to place food insecurity at the top of their agendas.

Conversely, the movements of the problems stream eventually acted against the institutional sustainability of SMASAN. Positive comparisons to earlier conditions can be seen as a significant part of the difficulties in maintaining organizationally progressive approaches. As problems are addressed and decline in impact, the pressure to keep addressing them diminishes. In examining its founding documents and interviewing the people who work there, we discover evidence that SMASAN’s objective is to address, in effect, the Five A’s. Yet there is still much to be done to accomplish this broader objective. According to the MSA, in halving some of the problems in BH in relation to food security—infant mortality and malnutrition—and changing the structure of accessibility with visible and popular programs such as School Meals, Popular Restaurants, and the ABCs, the likelihood that SMASAN’s items reach (or remain at) the top of the city’s administrative agenda declines. The dynamic actually raises a startling question: Should food security be kept at the top of the agenda? And if so, how, as indicators improve but remain problematic?

Problems remain in BH. Comprehensive coverage for the very poorest citizens who cannot afford the minimal costs of the food security programs, such as the ABCs and now moribund Workers’ Convoy, is still needed. The evidence implies that SMASAN and the local community lack the resources to fully implement the assistentialist programs, such as Big Popular Basket, or the “self-assistance” programs such as Urban Gardens. Do the decreases in infant mortality and malnutrition, important successes

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