By Melissa Reynolds

What began in 1993 as a simple declaration that food be a right to all of its citizens has resulted in a city that has wiped out hunger while spending very little of its budget.

Hunger, a deficiency of calories and protein, results from many causes, like poverty, land rights and ownership, diversion of land use to non-productive use, war, famine, drought, poor crop yield, lack of democracy and rights, inefficient agricultural practices, among a long list. According to GlobalIssues.org, "approximately 1.2 billion people suffer from hunger and over 9 million people die worldwide each year because of hunger and malnutrition. 5 million are children." With so many people hungry and dying all over the world, including the US and Canada, and with poverty on the rise, how is it that the city of Belo Horizonte, the fourth largest city in Brazil, was able to accomplish what seemed impossible?

The city of Belo, at 2.5 million people, once had almost 11% of its people living in poverty and almost 20% of its children going hungry. In 1993 though, a newly elected administration changed all of this by declaring food as a right, not something attained by a special few. In short, its government became accountable to its citizens and their food supply.

In creating a federal anti-hunger effort, Belo has managed to cut its infant death rate, a measuring stick for hunger and poverty, by more than half, all at the cost of about $10 million annually, or about 2% of Belo's budget.

Belo's mayor, Patrus Ananias, began by creating a city agency where an assembled group of representatives for citizens, labor, business and church advise, develop and implement a strategy to feed everyone. The creation of a new food system brought about innovations that nurtured the relationship between farmers and consumers, such as offering local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space to sell their products to the public. This helped farmers' profits to grow and gave a wider range of people access to good food.

The city also offers people the opportunity to bid on the right to use well-trafficked plots of city land for low-priced food markets, with the food sold at these markets coming mostly from in-state farmers. The city would then set the price of about twenty healthy food items at two-thirds the market price while everything else sells at the market price. Today there are 34 such markets.

In addition to using the most popular spots, farmers are also required take their produce to poor neighbourhoods to provide everyone access to good food. As a result, Belo became a city where fruit and vegetable consumption has increased instead of decreased.

Another innovative concept from this system is "People's Restaurants," which serve daily locally grown food for the equivalent of less than 50 cents a meal. The People's Restaurants allow anyone, poor and higher income, to eat at these establishments, creating a community, rather than separated class systems.

Other initiatives include community and school gardens, nutrition classes and a partial government funded school lunch program that provides whole, unprocessed food for children, helping the community, yet encouraging them to find solutions for themselves. In one example, the city's residents discovered that they can make use of materials they would usually throw away, like taking egg shells, manoic leaves and other materials and grinding it into flour for bread.

While in many parts of the world, when asked what could be improved in our communities, we respond with better sidewalks, better roads or improved garbage collection, food is not something that is often thought of as an item to add. Belo Horizonte's decision to make food a priority of the government shows how positive change can come about.

Belo's attitude towards food as a right for every citizen is a heartwarming example of how a city has, by creating a system that allows everyone the opportunity to afford food as well as helping in the cause by providing government assistance for different food programs, empowered its residents to think differently and ultimately change their habits.