Brazilian José Graziano da Silva elected as the Director General of FAO

On 23 June 2011, Brazilian José Graziano da Silva was elected as the Director General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). According to the website of the FAO, He received 92 votes out of 180 which helped him to beat the other candidate, former Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, who collected 88 votes. Graziano da Silva is FAO's eighth Director-General since the FAO was founded in Quebec City, Canada on October 16, 1945. The term of the new Director-General, succeeded Senegal's Jacques Diouf, will start on 1 January 2012 and run through 31 July 2015. The election took place on the second day of the biennial 191 member nation Conference of FAO, which also is set to vote on the Organization's budget for 2012-2013.

About Graziano
•    Graziano was Brazil's Extraordinary Minister of Food Security and Fight Against Hunger. He was responsible for implementing the Brazil's highly-successful ‘Zero Hunger’ (Fome Zero) programme, in whose design he also played a leading role. The programme helped lift 24 million people out of extreme poverty in five years and to reduce undernourishment in Brazil by 25 percent.
•    Since 2006, Graziano had served as FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean.
•    Graziano da Silva was born on 17 November 1949.
•    He is Brazilian and Italian by nationality.
•    He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Agronomy and a Master's Degree in Rural Economics and Sociology from the University of São Paulo as well as a Ph.D. in Economic Sciences from the State University of Campinas.
•    In addition, he has two post-Doctorate degrees in Latin American Studies (University College of London) and Environmental Studies (University of California, Santa Cruz).