Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is the host city for the 19th G20 Leaders' Summit this year. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stated before the summit that the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty will be officially established during the event.

In the Bandeirinha Farm in Goiás, Brazil, agricultural machinery is engaged in soybean harvesting operations. Brazil is currently the world's largest producer and exporter of soybeans.

Lula is the first working-class president in modern Brazilian history to come from a poor family and has personally experienced the pain of hunger. Before his first presidential term in 2003, he stated, "If by the end of my term, all Brazilians can have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I will have fulfilled my life's mission." In the years that followed, he made Brazil a global benchmark for promoting the right to adequate food. However, a few years later, the issue of hunger in Brazil resurfaced. Twenty years later, he once again vowed, "If by the end of my term in 2023, every Brazilian can enjoy breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I will have fulfilled my life's mission."

Since the beginning of his third presidential term, Lula has been actively fulfilling his promise to combat hunger. With the establishment of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, fighting hunger has not only become a significant domestic initiative for Lula but also a prominent international symbol.

From the "Zero Hunger Plan" to the "Brazil Without Hunger Plan," the fight against hunger has been a signature victory of the Lula administration. On the day of Lula's inauguration as president, he announced the "Zero Hunger Plan" and established the Ministry of Social Development and Fight Against Hunger. Centered around the three themes of combating hunger, eradicating poverty, and mobilizing the entire nation for poverty alleviation, the government has been fully committed to addressing issues of hunger and poverty.

The "Zero Hunger Plan" is a systematic political reform. On one hand, the plan emphasizes the effectiveness and transparency of "blood transfusion" for the poor. Under the strategic goal of "Zero Hunger," the Lula government launched the "Family Allowance" program, providing basic living security for impoverished families. Families eligible for this assistance program must register with local governments by presenting identification and income proof, and re-register every two years. The government issues bank cards to qualified families, with subsidies deposited monthly. Cardholders can withdraw cash from banks or shop at any supermarket and store. This direct subsidy distribution method avoids intermediate process costs and potential gray areas. On the other hand, the plan focuses more on "blood production" for the poor. The government encourages the development of family agriculture, creates job opportunities in impoverished areas, increases educational investment, and improves water and sanitation conditions, aiming to enhance the self-reliance of impoverished families through government assistance and integrate them into the social development process.

The "Zero Hunger Plan" has achieved significant results in a relatively short period of time. The family stipend has not only solved the food problems of impoverished families but also entered the circulation field as direct consumption expenditure, supporting economic growth and job creation. Therefore, this plan is widely supported by Brazilian society and has received high praise from the international community. In the year, the United Nations World Food Programme awarded Brazil the "World Anti-Hunger Award" in recognition of its contributions to domestic and international anti-hunger efforts. By the year, Brazil's food insecurity rate had decreased by more than % compared to the previous year, reaching a historical low of .%. In the same year, the yellow light on the "World Hunger Map" of the United Nations World Food Programme was extinguished for Brazil (the yellow light indicates that more than % of a country's population faces severe food insecurity).

However, in the following years, Brazil faced numerous complex challenges, and efforts to combat hunger encountered significant setbacks. In [year], [percentage]% of Brazil's population faced severe food insecurity, and over [percentage]% of the population were threatened by "intermittent hunger." The United Nations World Food Programme re-flagged Brazil with a yellow light on the "World Hunger Map." Research by the Brazilian Network for the Study of Food Sovereignty and Security also showed that in [year], 10.5 million Brazilians (占总人口的[percentage]%) occasionally experienced hunger, and approximately 1.1 million Brazilians (占总人口的[percentage]%) did not have enough to eat every day.

Lula remarked, "I never thought hunger would return to this country." For this reason, in his new presidential term that began in the year, he once again made addressing domestic and international food insecurity a top priority, launching the "Brazil Without Hunger Plan," aimed at coordinating development goals with public policies to safeguard people's right to adequate food.

The goal of the "Zero Hunger Brazil Plan" is to eliminate severe food insecurity in Brazil within a year. Domestically, the plan reorganizes the national food and nutrition security system, establishes a tri-level linkage scheme involving federal, state, and municipal levels, and sets up a dynamic monitoring mechanism to continuously evaluate and adjust strategies. The plan amends the family stipend, emphasizing additional conditions such as monitoring health indicators for children under the age of six, pregnant women, and women aged 18 to 29. The government also formulates a food procurement plan to promote the purchase of agricultural products from farmers and traditional communities by the public. At the international level, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has established a General Coordination for Food Security and Nutrition, actively participating in international discussions and calling for the establishment of a fair, inclusive, and highly sustainable global system for the production and distribution of food.

The "Zero Hunger Brazil Plan" achieves success once again. Official surveys indicate that Brazil successfully helped millions of people escape from hunger last year, enabling them to enjoy three meals a day. The proportion of the population facing severe food insecurity and malnutrition in Brazil has also dropped from .% to .%, achieving a record-breaking new milestone.

Lula's "Politics Against Hunger": Since the last century, successive Brazilian presidents have emphasized the simultaneous pursuit of economic growth and social development. At the same time, Brazil possesses abundant arable land, labor, and sunlight resources, and is rich in biodiversity. These factors should seemingly have protected Brazil from the scourge of hunger. However, the Brazilian government's efforts to combat hunger demonstrate that fighting hunger in Brazil has never been a simple economic or social issue, but rather a systemic political project.

On one hand, the root cause of hunger in Brazil is inequality. Brazilian renowned historian Josué de Castro once pointed out that hunger is a "homegrown, endogenous crisis unique to Brazil and unrelated to other countries," whose primary components are not external factors or objective conditions, nor are they closely related to wars or crises. The deeply ingrained cause is "severe concentration of wealth and outrageous state inaction." On the date in this year, the Brazilian Network for the Study of Food Sovereignty and Security released the "Brazil Report," which pointed out the existence of so-called "structural hunger" in Brazil: the poorest % of the population experienced a food insecurity rate of %; women's food insecurity rate (%) was much higher than men's (%); the traditional backward regions in the north and northeast had much more severe hunger problems than the national average (with population proportions of %. and %, respectively); rural hunger was more severe than urban ( % of rural households were food insecure, %. in the most severe state of hunger, and %. of small agricultural producer households affected by hunger); the hunger problem among people of color was much greater than among whites ( %. of white households believed "there is no hunger problem," with %. daily going hungry; while the corresponding proportions for black households were % and %, respectively).

On the other hand, the root cause of Brazil's hunger problem lies in the domestic transmission imbalance. Since the last century, Brazil has gradually established a development strategy for becoming a major agricultural country, but has failed to effectively balance the relationship between "large agriculture" and "small farmers." Brazil's food production relies heavily on "large agriculture," forming a development model oriented towards food exports. However, "large agriculture" also consumes a large amount of natural resources and poses potential harm to "small farmers," who account for about % of the Brazilian food market and are the core of the government's anti-poverty and anti-hunger policies.

On the date, Lula set the tone for the fight against hunger in his speech launching the "Zero Hunger Plan," emphasizing it as a political issue and giving it priority. Under this policy direction, the Brazilian government strengthened public food policies and designed new ones, establishing a positive传导 between "large agriculture" and "small farmers" through measures such as increasing public spending and social welfare. This has, to some extent, alleviated the wealth gap and mitigated "structural hunger."

However, due to Brazil's economic crisis after the mid-1980s, the government repeatedly made significant cuts in public spending and social welfare, creating a vicious cycle with economic stagnation. According to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the average price of food in Brazil increased by % in a year, reaching the highest level in 20 years; the price of a basket of basic necessities in the Federal District of Brazil was as high as . reais (1 real is approximately . yuan), more than half of the monthly minimum wage ( reais). This vicious cycle undoubtedly affected the government's direct efforts to correct inequality, ultimately leaving middle and low-income families once again unable to afford enough food.

Today, in his third term as president, Lula reaffirmed his commitment to combating hunger and poverty. The "Zero Hunger Brazil Plan" has already shown results, and more and more Brazilians will be able to enjoy three meals a day.

"Hunger requires political decisions." Hunger is discomfort or pain caused by the lack of food, and its severity is greater than that of food insecurity, which refers to the inability to regularly access safe and nutritious food, hindering normal development and leading to an active and healthy life. Since a certain year, the global issues of hunger and food insecurity have shown a startling growth trend. It is projected that by a certain year, more than 1 billion people worldwide will face hunger, making the task of achieving the United Nations' 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda goal of "Zero Hunger" extremely challenging.

The Brazilian government believes that eradicating hunger and poverty is a common challenge faced by countries in the "global South," and while many nations have their own poverty reduction plans, there is a lack of a unified, experience-sharing global initiative.

Lula summarized his anti-hunger experience as "the political decision to include the poor in the budget." Against the backdrop of having accumulated certain experiences, he is now committed to internationalizing these experiences, aiming to generate positive spillover effects. During his tenure,