Graziano's five major challenges


The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the world's flagship agency for food policy, has elected Brazil's José Graziano da Silva as its new head. He replaces Jacques Diouf, who has declared his interest to run for president of Senegal.

Nearly 18 years ago, Diouf inherited an agency starved for funds and bedevilled by patronage. Graziano takes over at a different historical moment. We now have a world food system that delivers hunger reduction for 6 billion people and leaves 1 billion hungry. Unless we find ways to produce more food so that hunger is reduced and the planet's natural resources are properly managed, we may well find ourselves with 3 billion hungry in the 9 billion world of 2050.

Addressing this triple challenge (more food, less hunger, less environmental degradation) will require more than just funding. For the FAO to continue to serve as the world's leading authority on food and agriculture policy, it will need to reinvent itself, becoming a thought leader in ending the hunger of ideas on how to end hunger. For example, what is the role of advance market purchasing in hunger reduction? What should be done about foreign direct investment in agriculture and large-scale land acquisitions? How should food price spikes be managed? What are the benefits and risks of emerging food and agricultural technologies? The FAO needs to be leading the debates in these and other areas.

Graziano has already pledged that he would focus on reforming the agency, strive for consensus in decision-making and tackle food price volatility. These are obvious pledges given the circumstances. The trick is how he will actually do that.

His first challenge will be finding a credible role for the FAO in a radically transformed global ecology of actors. The FAO's strength is its convening authority in the area of "food and agriculture diplomacy". But helping governments to formulate and implement credible policies can only be effectively done if it finds internal mechanisms for staying at the frontiers of scientific and technical knowledge. This has not always been the strength of diplomatic agencies. Doing so will require FAO to complement its diplomatic work with closer links to knowledge-based institutions, such as universities and research organisations.

Second, it is farmers, not diplomats, who grow food. This truism demands that FAO finds new ways of engaging farmers, both as sources of ideas of better policies but also as champions of policy reform in their own countries. The rise of social media and advances in information and communications technologies can help the FAO benefit from the input of farmers while inspiring them to champion their own interests and to assert their own autonomy of action.

Third, the FAO will need to work closely with wider civil society to amplify advocacy on hunger. The FAO is a large organisation, but small in relation to the challenge of hunger. Civil society needs to be supported in getting their governments to do something more about hunger. For example, we need real time updates to help all of us see how the hunger picture is changing, month to month. We need to be constantly reminded that hungry people exist and are affected by decisions taken or not taken. We also need more transparency as to the commitment of different organisations to end hunger; who is just talking and who is actually doing?

Fourth, direct government support will be needed to tackle hunger. Ending hunger is hard. There are hundreds of actions that could be taken. But there are no blueprints, every context will differ in terms of the nature of the problem, the capacity to deal with it and the political commitment behind it. Playing to its strengths, the FAO should be developing "hunger diagnostics" tools that help governments prioritise.

Finally, the FAO needs to become an outward-facing organisation, one that people would like to work with. That is not the case now. The many excellent FAO staff members are stifled from expressing themselves and from taking risks. Bureaucracy drags the organisation down with anyone who works with it. Building strategic partnerships is going to be key if a relatively small organisation is to leverage the world's resources and energy in the fight against hunger.

Graziano was a key player in Brazil's successful Zero Hunger initiative. He had the full backing of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was recently awarded the World Food Prize for his leadership in making a dent in Brazil's hunger, and he benefitted from a growing economy.

But ending hunger in the most stubborn places, without the backing of a president and from the front of an organisation that needs to win back the confidence of many, will be a very different kettle of fish. That is why getting the broader civil society onside will be so important to the new FAO director-general. We wish him well and we all need to help him.