Social protection programmes can help eradicate hunger and break the cycle of rural poverty, especially if they are combined with agricultural policies. This is the main message of „The State of Food and Agriculture 2015“, a report published the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) on Monday. In poor countries, social protection schemes - such as cash transfers, school feeding and public works - offer an economical way to provide vulnerable people with opportunities to move out of extreme poverty and hunger and to improve their children’s health, education and life chances. “Social protection programs allow households to access more food – often by increasing what they grow themselves – and also make their diets more diverse and healthier,” said FAO’s Director-General José Graziano da Silva in a press release. “These programs can have positive impacts on infant and maternal nutrition, reduce child labor and raise school attendance, all of which increase productivity,” he added. According to FAO, such programmes currently benefit 2.1 billion people in developing countries in various ways, including keeping 150 million people out of extreme poverty. However, the vast majority of the world’s rural poor are yet to be covered. Expanding such programs in rural areas and linking them to inclusive agricultural growth policies would rapidly reduce the number of poor people, the report says. Stronger coherence between agriculture and social protection interventions could help protect the welfare of poor, small-scale farmers, helping them manage risks more effectively and improve agricultural productivity. The report stresses that the notion of social protection reducing people’s work effort is a myth. It rather gives beneficiaries greater choice, they can rely more on home production on their own farms rather than on poorly paid agricultural wage work. Social protection strengthens livelihoods rather than fostering dependency, the FAO says. The findings of the report show that social protection is an investment, rather than a cost. This is also clearly illustrated by Brazil's Bolsa Família, a well-integrated scheme that reaches a quarter of the population and costs only 0.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). According to the FAO, some $67 billion a year in income supplements, an amount equivalent to less than 0.1% of global GDP, would – along with other targeted pro-poor investments in agriculture – allow for the eradication of hunger by 2030. (ab)