Eighth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

National School Feeding Programme (NSFP) is part of a public policy that institutes that every student in public schools is entitled to healthy and nutritious food in Brazil. The objective of the program is to promote growth and biopsychosocial development, learning capacity and the formation of healthy food habits of students, through actions of food and nutrition education and the provision of meals that meet their nutritional needs during the school year. In recent years a law has determinate that part of the provision should be purchased from local family based farmers or its organizations. With this resolution, NSFP is capable of generating income, promoting access to market and alleviating rural poverty for family farmers. The programme should be positive for both sides, suppliers and consumers. However, several challenges are observed when we address the operation of the program at municipality level and several municipalities are not able to comply with the law. This paper aims at describing those challenges as well as the effects of the programme on family farmers’ commercialization process. We have developed a descriptive study under an exploratory approach in municipalities located in the west part of Sao Paulo State. We have observed that even though the bureaucracy is a challenge for farmers and payment is frequently delayed, the farmers are motivated to participate of the program because it is a less uncertain marketing channel. The results also indicate that there are some information asymmetry between agents involved in the process, resulting in barriers to efficiency in some cases. Partnerships with local agents and government are expected in order to support infrastructure and farmers organization.