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Tag: food security

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Last Thursday and Friday there was an event in Junin to show off their pilot program. I went to see what the system really looks like - and to get some sun.

Somewhere between Jauja and La Oroya.

Junin's capital, Huancayo is in the Andes east of Lima, at a high enough elevation that it catches your breath.

The event was attended by representatives of the FAO, Peruvian universities and development organizations, farmers who contribute to the program, municipalities from Junin that participate in the pilot or who are contemplating participation, and the municipalities of Piura, Arequipa, and Lima. Lima had a large delegation and its own photographer; the man leading the delegation was feted everywhere we went, giving me the impression that the event was in part a sales pitch to Lima - this makes sense, as metropolitan Lima houses about a third of the Peruvian population.

The first day was a series of presentations, followed by an excursion on Friday to a preschool, several farms, and the processing plant that the producers use.

The preschool rolled out the red carpet for us: they cheered as we entered the school, and after we saw the kitchen and went into a couple of the classrooms, we were shepherded into their auditorium, where a group of the cutest children danced for us in traditional costumes.

On the breakfast menu that day: sangrecita with potatoes, a drink with quinoa, and flash photography.

It was very obvious that this part of the day had a few purposes: 1. for the municipality of Huancayo to show what it does for its citizens; 2. to impress the attendants of the event. These events make a lot of sense when you think about how 'invisible' this pilot program is - when a mayor builds a park, there's lasting physical evidence, but when you provide good nutrition to a child, the effects of that good nutrition are not immediately apparent. Having an event like this (with pictures to splash all over the newspaper) makes the invisible much more visible.

After the brouhaha at the school, we visited three farms in the town of Pucara:

One Agrepina's tomato houses.
A cuy (guinea pig) farm. I'm told they're delicious.
Cuy is not sold into Wali Warma because all meat provided by the program must be packaged and because cuy is extremely expensive. (We went to this farm because it is part of a strong cooperative in this town.)
A farm run by a cooperative.

The farms are certified under the SGP certification (Sistema de Garantia Participativo, System of Participatory Guarantees), which requires farmers to use certain practices and to process their yield to a certain standard. It takes three years to be fully certified, and not all farmers who sign up make it to full certification. The vegetable farmers of Pucara have their own processing facility in the center aisle of a previously disused market:

Rigorous sanitation procedures are maintained; produce passes from one station to the next in an eight step process.

From here, the food is transported to schools either in the Qali Warma delivery truck or a truck they hire (and clean) for the purpose.

In all, the event was an important look into how the Junin pilot is received in the area and how it functions in the context of Pucara; I can see how the model could be flexible enough to adapt itself to other regions, though it would need to establish itself in areas with a strong agriculture sector capable of consistently providing sufficient quantities for the demand of the local schools. In areas where this is not the case, a different approach would be necessary.

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The history behind locally sourced school meal programs began in earnest in 2009 when Brazil launched its Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar (PNAE).

Generally speaking, when we think of Brazil we think about Carnival or impressive amounts of corruption (think Odebrecht); we might even worry about the nationalistic turn the country has taken. But Brazil has - somewhat quietly - sounded out a resounding victory against hunger, enacting coordinated policies designed to feed Brazilians under the umbrella of Fome Zero (Zero Hunger), an intersectorial push that removed Brazil from the World Food Program's Hunger Map in 2014.

WFP Hunger Map 2018, https://www1.wfp.org/publications/2018-hunger-map

One of their first programs began in 2003, the Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos (PAA), which buys food for public institutions; family farmers and agroecologial practices are encouraged, with the end of strengthening the Brazilian economy and providing food autonomy.

PNAE began a few years later; municipalities establish relationships with farmers and other suppliers and buy food for their schools. (This is a drastically different system to Peru, where menus are decided on a national level and purchases are made according to a strict list of allowed products on a regional level.) Brazilian municipalities are aided by nutritionists to ensure that the meals provided are nutritionally adequate; deliveries are made at the schools, where the people in charge of receiving food check for quality and quantity requirements.

There is a minimum of thirty percent of the food purchases to be made locally, which some of the municipalities are exceeding. PNAE is often sourced from framers with smaller plots of land that produce for local markets (rather than export markets for crops such as corn and soy).

Valencia et al (2019) shows the dynamics between farmers who supply PNAE and those who do not:

Valencia et al 2019.

However, this is not an accurate picture of the entire country; these results are from the state of Santa Catalina, which has a highly developed and diverse agricultural mosaic. Other states have not had the same success, and there are reports of municipalities buying no local food in their PNAE programs - in 2014, 3345 of the 5534 municipalities (60 percent) did not reach the 30 percent minimum of local products; 23 percent did not buy locally at all (Hunter et al 2016). This may be because there is a lack of political will or because the agricultural system in the area is not able to provide both for the usual needs of the community and the needs of PNAE, making external sourcing necessary.

The wide-scale support of the program across sectors has garnered international attention and has been responsible for the inspiration behind the school meal programs in dozens of countries in Africa and the Americas, including but definitely not limited to: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Mali.

Groundbreaking public acquisition programs may not be what Brazil is known for on the street, but it is worthy of attention as a model of what is possible, a model that can be changed to fit the conditions of highly varied countries the world over.

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The accepted definition of food security was established in 1996 at the World Food Summit: "Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life." (Source: FAO, "An Introduction to the Basic Concepts of Food Security.")

The part of this definition that I want to stress is that of food preferences - that people be given the food that they are familiar with and would choose of their own volition.

For Peru and Qali Warma, this means that the food provided has to be palatable enough for children to actually eat it.

So yes, the pickiness of young children does have to be entertained, to some extent. However, there are other considerations: there's a sizable population in Peru that cannot eat or drink dairy, a major problem considering how much milk is incorporated into Qali Warma. The indigenous peoples of the Amazon are lactose intolerant, meaning that for them, Qali Warma's food is not safe, nor is it aligned with their dietary needs or food preferences. And yet, the program spends a lot of money sending milk to the Amazon; I've been told stories of deliveries of milk being left on the side of a river to spoil, as no one wanted to collect it, stories of food meant for schools being fed to pigs and chickens.

Street art in the city of Puerto Maldonado, Peru that I took several years ago.

It's important to remember that some children aren't being difficult because they've never liked milk; some children have to make the decision to refuse the food provided to them (and potentially stay hungry at school).

It's also important to remember that Qali Warma is doing the best that it can - and is striving to do better.

In the following posts, I will show how different programs could better contribute to food security, adapting to local food practices.

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Peru has several food procurement programs that are meant to keep the baseline of poverty at an acceptable minimum; the one in charge of school meals is called Qali Warma (which translates to 'strong child' from the Quechua language). Qali Warma provides meals to schoolchildren in kindergartens and primary schools throughout Peru, and in the Amazon, all children in public schools receive meals.

This program is based around predetermined menus, which have been formulated by nutritionists; everyone on a national level prepares more or less the same meals. These meals often revolve around a milky drink with cereals in it (such as oatmeal, maca, or quinoa), bread, and crackers/cookies. There aren't many vegetables or fruits incorporated into the program, and much of the food has a very long shelf life; additionally, in some places, the milk is powdered or canned milk, which some students do not enjoy - and you can't blame them, as anyone who has had powdered milk will attest.

Common supplies for the preparation of school breakfasts.

I can find flaws in Qali Warma - but I remind myself that the presence of the program is something that can be built upon, and that not having Qali Warma could have truly negative repercussions. However, the government strives to improve its program as well as it can, by working to ensure that the food arrives at the schools safely (without spoiling), and by doing what it can to promote healthy food. For example, there was a directive in 2015 to drastically increase the amount of quinoa in the program, by 85 percent.

For more information on this program, there is a reader-friendly summary of the program and a case study in this report by Health Poverty Action.