With the Law No. 11,947, at least 40 million public school students have healthier and more adequate meals, contributing to their physical and cognitive development.
*Najla Veloso, coordinator of the project Regional Agenda for Sustainable School Feeding in Latin America and the Caribbean, executed under the Brazil-FAO Cooperation Programme.
Brazil’s school feeding programme, which provides food to more than 40 million public school students in the country, has gained greater breadth, colors, and flavors in recent years with the signing of Law No. 11,947, approved on June 16, 2009, known as the School Feeding Law.
This law, which turns 15 on June 2024, guarantees access to healthy and nutritious food at school every day, highlighting the importance of respecting culture, traditions, and eating habits, based on the principle that proper nutrition contributes to physical and cognitive development, and to improved school performance, in addition to being a food and nutritional security strategy for children and young people.
One of its innovations is universality, that is, the guarantee of food provision for all students, as well as the implementation of food and nutrition education (FNE) actions. These actions ensure that the programme provides food and is committed to building healthy eating habits. This becomes even more relevant considering that there are 9,000 nutritionists responsible for preparing menus, in addition to 250,000 teachers and 150,000 public schools.
An example of these actions is the implementation of school gardens in many schools, which, besides being tools for learning and forming healthy eating habits, also promote values such as collective work, respect for the land, and the appreciation of family farmers’ activities in food production.
Another innovation of the Brazilian law is the requirement to purchase at least 30% of food produced by family farming. In 2022, 45% of the resources for food purchases of the National School Feeding Programme (PNAE) were allocated to family farmers. Over a decade and a half, this has stimulated short production, sale, and consumption circuits, favoring the economic development of families, ensuring income and better living conditions.
The success of the changes promoted by the law has crossed the country’s borders over the years of its implementation, sparking interest from other countries, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean. To promote this exchange of knowledge about the Brazilian normative framework, since 2009, the Brazilian government, through the Brazilian Cooperation Agency of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (ABC/MRE) and the National Fund for Educational Development (FNDE), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), have developed actions to support the strengthening of school feeding programmes in the region through the Brazil-FAO International Cooperation Programme.
These 15 years of international cooperation in school feeding have contributed to sharing Brazilian experiences with other nations, leading many countries to make their school feeding programmes a state policy. Currently, through the technical assistance of the cooperation, six countries have approved their school feeding laws: Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and Paraguay. Additionally, El Salvador, Chile, and the Dominican Republic are processing their bills.
The efforts of the alliance between Brazil and FAO have advanced, and in 2018 the Sustainable School Feeding Network (RAES) was created, an initiative that has already involved 26 countries in the region. These nations discuss school feeding, public policy improvement, and its normative frameworks, capacity building of managers through knowledge generation, and conduct technical missions to observe the policy’s implementation in Brazil and other countries.
The Brazilian School Feeding Law has transformed the quality of food offered to millions of Brazilians and has consolidated a reference for a sustainable and inclusive programme, aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, strengthening an important public policy supporting food and nutritional security.
For all these reasons, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) celebrates the 15th anniversary of Law No. 11,947, especially for building the paradigm that the human right to healthy and adequate food for all students during the school period is inalienable and, today, practically indisputable. This progress represents an important historical construction of our time, not only for its breadth and quality but, above all, for the international impact it has achieved, given its consistency and relevance.
