Daniel Ortega officially announced in early May the beginning of a program known as “Zero Hunger,” to fight extreme poverty. The idea is to use $150 million over five years to benefit 75,000 families in remote rural areas where extreme poverty is prevalent. They are given grain seeds and some yard animals and a “production bond” will be provided them later.

These farming families are to cultivate crops using this “seed” capital and when the harvest comes in, they would pay back 20% of the value of what they were given initially. Those funds are to be used to establish a rural financing agency or Caja Rural, which would ensure continuation of the program.

The solution to extreme poverty here is more than complex, but this government’s plan(s) to eliminate it jive with the stated objectives of every international agency with a stake in this country.

Detractors of the program criticize its assistance-oriented nature, centering on merely giving away some handouts and not boosting the capacity of the people benefited so that they can develop themselves by themselves, thereby only contributing to sustaining an insupportable situation. It did not take long for political critics who have done the same in the past to say it is nothing but a ploy to buy votes in areas where the ruling party has not done well in past elections.