Read at :
http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/home-grown-food-in-schools-for-a-green-economy/
In Brazil, outstanding localized school feeding practices are recognized annually by the government-backed programme known as Zero Hunger Action (Ação Fome Zero).
Over 30 municipalities are nominated each year, providing incentives to improve the quality of school meals. This year, the municipality of Quixaba in the northeastern state of Paraiba, one of the poorest regions in Brazil, has been short-listed for the award, as its local committee started to use local produce procured from family-based small farms.
Since many small farmers, especially those who had been recently given land as a result of agrarian reform, do not have access to infrastructure for effective commercialization of their produce, the school feeding programme provides an avenue to boost local agricultural development and help alleviate rural poverty.
Localisation of Brazil’s national school feeding programme has led to a flexible form of national governance that connects local citizens, including producers and consumers, and various local organizations to municipalities and then to multiple national authorities.
Rather than dictating top-down, one-size-fits-all policies from the capital Brasilia, the central government today acts as a duty-bearer who monitors the transparency of local school feeding committees’ financial operations and compliance with federal guidelines. For their parts, the local committees can always demand that the central government improve basic infrastructure and extension services for family-based small-scale producers and distributors to be able to regularly supply quality foods.
Perhaps as a first step to ensuring that a green economy takes into account social equity, we need to start with the notion, taking shape in Brazil and other countries, that we all have the right to fair and transparent governance that guarantees good quality food.
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