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Food security and food sovereignty: Connecting sustainable agriculture with the right to food through urban school feeding programs in Canada and Brazil

Le sommaire ci-dessous est présenté dans la langue de la demande soumis par les demandeurs du concours SCR-CALA.

Responses to the links between contemporary food, energy, and environmental crises have focused on the challenges of “feeding the world while cooling the planet”, in a context where the global food system contributes up to 1/3 of total greenhouse gas emissions and over 1 billion people continue to face hunger and malnutrition. This project examines the potential of initiatives to connect urban food security with rural agricultural development policy concerns through homegrown- school feeding (HGSF) and sustainable public procurement programs. These initiatives aim to support local economic development and improve school nutrition through the institutionalization of public food procurement programs linked to regional small-scale sustainable farming systems.

We propose to examine the institutionalization of the “right to food” in school food programs through a comparative analysis of Brazil’s National School Feeding Program (PNAE) in western São Paulo and the Think&EatGreen@School program in Vancouver, British Columbia. The PNAE requires the supply of 30% of municipal school food procurement from regional small-scale farmers, with additional policy supports for organic and agro-ecological production. The Think&EatGreen@School program works to involve teachers, students and parents in education around sustainable food choices and food production in school and community gardens. This exchange project will compare the distinct social, economic, ecological and political drivers of the initiatives, which each include goals of food system sustainability, food security, and food sovereignty. This exchange will also serve to initiate a larger-scale comparative assessment of school-feeding programs on both urban food security indicators and rural livelihood and land management outcomes in the Metro Vancouver region of Canada and western São Paulo region of Brazil.