According to Ipsnews, she said she was impressed with how organized it is, the resources available to each school and "the role of played by nutritionists, in direct contact with the lunchrooms, training the cooks in hygiene and nutrition, educating everyone while fulfilling a key educational function.”
Montenegro and 22 other visitors from throughout Latin America and the Caribbean met with Brazilian representatives in the city of Vitoria, for a tour through schools and centers of production and distribution of food that supply the municipal schools.
The May 16-18 technical visit was organized by the Strengthening School Feeding Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean program implemented by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), as part of a cooperation agreement signed with the Brazilian government in 2008.
“Families adopt our habits, even though we only eat dinner at home. Now we eat more vegetables at home. I used to be fat, but I lost weight doing sports and eating food with less calories, and today I have my health under control.” -- Marcos Rodrigues
The aim was a first-hand look at the implementation in Vitoria of the Brazilian National School Feeding Program (PNAE), which has become a model replicated in a number of countries around the world. The program serves 43 million students in public preschools and primary schools, which are municipal, and secondary schools, which are the responsibility of the states.
The PNAE was first launched in 1955. But the significant impact it has had in terms of food security, nutrition and social participation has been seen since a 2009 law established that at least 30 percent of the funds received by each school had to be devoted to buying food produced by local family farms.
“This decentralization favors local producers and students gain in better-quality, fresh food at a lower cost. It promotes cooperatives and stimulates the local economy, through small-scale farming, while benefiting the environment by reducing transportation time,” said Najla Veloso, the regional project coordinator for FAO.
“In most of the municipalities, the suppliers are parents of the students,” which help forge closer ties between local families and the schools and improves the quality of the food. All of this constitutes an important help for keeping people in rural areas,” Veloso told IPS.
Buying local could rekindle the ancestral agricultural knowledge of the Ngäbe and Buglé people, who live in western Panama, said Montenegro. Since 1997, the two ethnic groups have shared an indigenous county with a population of about 155,000.
“They provide 80 percent of the food for four schools, but they have not been able to expand, because of the system of purchases by tendering process, and are almost limited to producing for their own consumption,” lamented the Panamanian nutritionist. More school purchases could “rescue their traditional methods of harvesting and preserving their typical products,” she said.
The technical visits organized by FAO “show successful experiences for building knowledge in other countries, stimulating innovation,” said Veloso.
A new generation of school feeding programs is emerging in the region, combining healthy nutrition, public purchases, family agriculture and social integration.
Vitoria, the capital of the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo, was chosen to receive technicians and authorities from 13 countries because of “its strong implementation of the PNAE, its organized team, and because it has been a pioneer in this area,” explained Veloso.
Before the new law went into effect in 2008, Vitoria already prioritized healthy food produced by small-scale local farmers, said Marcia Moreira Pinto, coordinator of the School Food and Nutrition Sector in the Municipal Secretariat of Education.
It also always surpassed the minimum proportion of purchases set for family agriculture, she said. In 2016, 34 per cent of the purchases were from small-scale farmers.
This aspect has only recently been recognized as key to food security.
“This integration between education and family agriculture benefits society as a whole, it’s fantastic. I will try to do it in my town,” said Mario Chang, director of education in the department of San Marcos, Guatemala.
“The visit gave me new ideas,” said Rosa Cascante, director of Equality Programs in Costa Rica’s Ministry of Public Education.
The challenge, she said, “will be to adapt Brazil’s local purchases system” to her country, where all supplies for public institutions go through the state National Production Council.