The 2009 law that obliges Brazilian city halls to use 30% of federal funds allocated to school meals to purchase family farming products created a market that has helped organize small farmers and gain more space in the food supply. , but these producers still need auxiliary public policies and the goodwill of city halls to take advantage of the opportunity, says doctoral thesis defended at Unicamp's Institute of Economics (IE) by Armando Fornazier.

“The program is working well in small cities,” the researcher told Journal of Unicamp. His thesis evaluated the effects of the law on family farming in 20 municipalities, ten in the State of São Paulo and ten in Espírito Santo, all of them included in the federal Território da Cidadania program, which seeks to bring economic development to poor regions of Brazil.

Fornazier further explains that, although the resources generated by school meals in these markets are few – “there are cities in which this public expenditure of 30% of the budget does not generate more than R$20 thousand per year for the producer”, he said –, the Organization of farmers into associations and cooperatives, to meet legal requirements, ends up allowing them to compete for access to other, more profitable markets.

“Even if the institutional market is small, it is necessary to take into account that it can be an initial market, which creates an opportunity for diversification”, said the researcher. “You won’t work your whole life for school meals, but this could be one of the markets served.”

In his thesis, Fornazier cites data that show that some cooperatives of family farmers from cities in the Citizenship Territory of Southwest São Paulo have already managed to sign contracts with the city council of Campinas (SP) for an amount of resources that “practically represents the demand of all city halls of the Territory”.

To illustrate, the Nova Campina Family Agricultural Cooperative (Coagrocamp), in the São Paulo municipality of Nova Campina (SP), won a contract worth more than R$1 million to supply the Campinas school feeding system.

Big cities

The inclusion of family farming in school meals in large cities is still a challenge, both for metropolises and producers, said the researcher. “Of the 20 cities studied, all are buying local products. The initial objective of the policy was achieved,” he said. “But there are large cities that have almost no family farming,” he recalled. To comply with the law, these municipalities are obliged to look for cooperatives and organizations located outside their territories – sometimes even in other states. To supply these large cities, however, family farming organizations face logistics and product handling problems.

“The city of São Paulo, for example, divides the city into 12 areas, as if they were education regions, but each region has 170 schools. If the small farmer wants to sell, he will have to do it point to point, deliver to each school. This is the biggest obstacle to entering big cities.”

Furthermore, there is the issue of product processing: “The city of São Paulo will not buy fresh pumpkin, it does not have employees to peel and chop the pumpkin. It all has to come chopped up, in a bag.” Although some cooperatives have developed the means to carry out some processing steps, adding value to products and serving more demanding markets, the difficulty is still real. And there is also the issue of health certification, another obstacle.

“You can only buy a product if there is a process in which someone says that it will not harm people, whether it is a federal inspection, like the SIF, or a state inspection, or a municipal inspection, if the sale is only within of the municipality. Many of these associations, cooperatives, don’t have access to this,” he said. “The majority have been able to sell fruits and vegetables, that is, things that do not need inspection: a banana does not need to be inspected, but a banana candy does. So, family farmers are often unable to add value to the product.”

“You cannot expect family producers to do what a school food company does: deliver point to point, within a strict quality standard, within a tight deadline. This is a difficulty in these larger cities,” he explained. City halls in large cities that decide to support local family farming, or those in nearby regions, need to make concessions and adaptations. 

“As for logistics, most items are made up of fresh food, delivered on Monday or Tuesday to be consumed during the week. Imagine doing this in more than a hundred schools. The small farmer is unable to maintain vehicles and personnel for this. So, either a stage needs to be outsourced, or the city hall adapts: perhaps stagger it according to the menu, increasing the number of delivery days. Because if city halls continue to demand the standards of current outsourced companies, it won’t work.”

In some places, difficulties like this have been overcome, said Fornazier, with the support of city halls and with initiatives from the cooperatives themselves, which seek help from bodies such as BNDES and Sebrae.

“Many city halls may simply think about complying with the law, that is, I will buy from family farming, but I am already looking for more organized farmers, even if they are from another state”, he explained. “But there are city halls that help organize local farmers, who provide employees to prepare the association project, to help with management,” he said.

Dialogue

The majority of success cases in the 20 cities studied, according to the researcher, had direct involvement and support from local public authorities, in addition to constant dialogue between the city hall and farmers.

“The successful municipalities are those in which the city hall saw that it was important and provided encouragement, technical encouragement, help to set up the infrastructure. In the two cooperatives in Itararé, the city hall provided space and employees. In Taquarivaí (SP), there is a technician from the city hall who helps more with the accounting aspect”, described the researcher. “This municipality of Taquarivaí is incredible: Brazil has 15% of the rural population, but in Taquarivaí, 45% of the population is rural. The city council saw that there had to be something for these farmers to have income. The city hall took over, and is now able to serve places like Campinas. So, I think that kind of a model of success is for the city to see the value in this.”

“The main success factor is the articulation between production and consumption, for farmers to talk well with the nutritionist in charge of school meals, for the municipal Education department to contact the Agriculture department: because within the city hall, sometimes, they don’t talk” , he said. “There are municipalities that sometimes say, this is a law for Education. So, for many city councils it doesn't matter if they are including local farmers, what matters is complying with the letter of the law: so it's easier to buy everything from another region, which is sometimes much easier than inducing the local economy”.

“The municipalities where there were fewer conflicts were where the nutritionist responsible for school meals asked the producers: what do you have to offer? What time of year?”, she exemplified. “When we talk about approximation between production and consumption, there is also this approximation of conversation, of agreements”.

Public policies

The future of associations and cooperatives created to comply with the school feeding law will depend on the capacity of these organizations to go beyond the original demand of the municipalities where they emerged, believes Fornazier. But to do so, they will need the support of new public policies.

“Complementary policies to aid inspection, technical assistance and rural extension are necessary,” he said. “The insertion of new farmers depends on complementary policies. Which are technical assistance and rural extension. The federal government seems to have already realized this, because last year a National Agency for Technical Assistance and Rural Extension was created, which is something that the Collor government had put an end to”. The law that establishes the agency, Anater, was sanctioned by President Dilma Rousseff in December 2013.

“When public policies are created, other problems are created. It is necessary to create auxiliary policies”, pondered the author. “In this case of school meals, it’s a bit like that: you can include certain groups, but to be effective, you need a series of other policies. The logic of public policy is this, complementarity. It's not thinking that a law or decree will solve the problem alone. To move forward, complementary policies and greater dialogue between the parties are needed. And local support.”

Publication

Thesis: “Insertion of family rural producers from regions with low economic dynamics into the school feeding market”
Author Armando Fornazier
Advisor: Walter Belik
Unity: Institute of Economics (IE)