Bettering school nutrition has obvious benefits that no one can deny; however, if someone were to play devil's advocate, they might just ask whether diversifying the food and local sourcing for school meals really does that much good.
I can answer that in a couple of ways: one, feeding children a diverse diet teaches them in a way that whiteboards and lectures never could, and two, that enhancing local markets does a better job of improving dietary diversity than having a lot of species grown on any one farm.
Shibhatu & Qaim (2018) and Jones (2017) both came to similar conclusions. Jones conducted a review of 21 studies and found that in 19 of them there was only a slight positive association between on-farm diversity and dietary diversity. Shibhatu & Qaim examined dietary diversity and on-farm species diversity of 1,482 households in Indonesia, Kenya, and Uganda and found that market access was a better determinant of dietary diversity than diversity on the farm.
This is because what is grown on the farm isn't necessarily what is eaten, which makes sense, even though it's not the first conclusion we might jump to. But when you think about it, you can think up any number of plausible scenarios where this happens: think of cocoa farmers in west Africa who have never had chocolate. They grow chocolate not for their own consumption but to make money for their families, and the amount of money they make depends on their access to markets.
The challenge for agrobiodiverse ecosystems is that having an incredibly diverse farm can be economically disadvantageous, as it can foster subsistence livelihoods, lower income, and lower diet quality, running against one of the main goals of agrobiodiversity: food security (Shibhatu & Qaim 2018). The key, then, is to support diverse farms by giving them a market for their production that enables them to buy food that helps them eat well.
If someone's still playing devil's advocate they could say - the point of school meals is to feed children nutritious meals, not to save whole communities of vulnerable farmers, so why not just fortify food?
I'll return to my first point. If you feed children fortified foods (like the biscuits that are given to Afghan children), you're not teaching them what they will need to know later in life when they no longer are participating in a school meal program. If you show a child that the school approves white rice, cookies, and sugary drinks, they aren't learning habits that will benefit them for their rest of their lives, and you can't guarantee that they will buy fortified foods in the future. (For that matter, one of the things I learned when I was in Capilla was that the children don't like the texture of fortified rice.)
On top of this, if you buy local food for school meals - if it has the full and proud support of the school and the planners of the program - you are also sending a powerful message to the children that the food produced by the community has real value, and that there could be possibilities for them if they stay in that community.
I was in Peace Corps in Peru for about a year and a half; I was placed in the small town of Capilla Central in the district of Olmos in the department of Lambayeque. I was there for a little over a year, and grew to love the place and the people who lived there. Naturally, since I'm in Peru there was no way that I could come to the country without visiting Capilla, so that's where I went last weekend.
Capilla is inland on the northern coast, in the dry forest (bosque seco) ecosystem.
A great many things remained the same - including the warm welcome I received - but there were a few changes, such as the huge new park, still establishing its seedlings:
The birds in front are pavas aliblancas (in English, white-winged turkeys), an emblematic fauna of the zone. I've never seen one, but I'm told they're quite graceful in flight.
Also new were the changes made to the dry riverbed since the 2017 El Niño: the Department of Transportation has lumped up a bunch of the sand into a long hill. I'm not sure what this serves, aside from ensuring that the river channel is deep enough for the deluge of water in the next fenómeno. (Seems to me that it makes more sense to truck away the sand so that it doesn't clog anything up downriver, but that's probably prohibitively expensive.)
I took this picture standing on the sand heap.
I mainly spent my time trying to ensure that I caught up with as many people as possible, handing out maple candies from Maine, gossiping like mad, and enjoying the slower pace of life out in the country.
The world's most beautiful chicken, and Modesto under the ciruela/plum tree.
However, because I stayed from Saturday afternoon to Monday afternoon, I was invited to see what Qali Warma looks like in Capilla. On Saturday, Nelly and Fanny were putting away the recent shipment of food they had received for the month, and talked to me about their experiences with Qali Warma.
Pictured is part of the delivery, and includes quick-cooked oats with things like maca, quinoa, and amaranth, wheat flour, amaranth flour, oil, rice, noodles, sugar, cornstarch, bars of chocolate for hot chocolate, cans of milk, cans of chicken or fish, galletas of various descriptions.
This opportunity gave me the answer to one of the mysteries plaguing me during my research: what, exactly, is a 'galleta'? Galleta in Spanish can translate to any number of things: cookie, cracker, biscuit. I've been using 'biscuit' in my thesis as it is ambiguous - they can be either sweet or savory. Nelly and Fanny showed me that the galletas they receive can be either, and that it depends on the rotation of things that Qali Warma send them. (And, of course, the kids like the sweet ones better - go figure.)
This 'rotation' is something new this year: so the kids don't get crazy bored with the school meals, the deliveries are on a three month rotation. There's something different for each month for three months, after which point the cycle restarts. This is something that the Buying Committee gets to decide; they stay within the regulations of Qali Warma but provide what variation they can.
This is the kitchen where the food is prepared; there's a covered dish rack behind where the photo was taken, so that dust/sand doesn't dirty the dishes before they're used again.
The cook arrives at the school around seven a.m. to start cooking the breakfast, and serves breakfast from around 7:45 to 8:30, depending on when the kids arrive. There's a dedicated place for the children to eat (which not all schools have), though considering that some kids arrived late, they had to eat their breakfast in the classroom.
On Monday, the menu was milk with cornstarch, sugar, and vanilla with a cracker that had either quinoa or maca in it. I was given a portion, and can tell you that the milk was very sweet, slightly thickened from the cornstarch, and had a nice vanilla taste; most of the kids drank all of theirs. The crackers...those mostly went into pockets. I was told that a lot of the kids don't eat the crackers given to them, instead pocketing them and giving them to their family or to pigs or dogs.
Maca is an Andean tuber, and has no English translation.
On days when there's a rice or noodle dish with some protein in it, kids may or may not eat that as well - this is because Qali Warma doesn't give money for things like condiments or spices, so it doesn't necessarily taste great. (Though I'll also note that a couple people blamed the cook for the taste of the food - but considering what she has to work with, I think she's doing fine). The parents put together money every month (4 soles/parent, ~1 USD) to buy things such as extra ingredients - this can be more of something they run out of (they usually run out of sugar, and considering how sweet the milk was that morning, I can understand why), spices, or vegetables (usually onion) - or to refill the tanks of gas that they use for cooking.
Qali Warma gave them the stove (though the cook noted that when it was delivered, one of the burners broke, so there are only two burners working), as well as the two tanks of gas. Qali Warma doesn't repay to refill the gas, but considering the large initial investment for the tank itself, that they gave the tanks is a huge advantage.
It was also good to see some of the signage that was posted in the kitchen - numbers to call in case there was anything wrong with the food, a poster on fortified rice (which, by the way, the kids don't like because of the texture), amounts of different foods to give per kid, and details on the three-month rotation. I gawped at all of it between talking to the cook and taking sips of milk.
Details of the rotation - my apologies for the abysmal photo quality.
When I asked people what they thought about the program, there were some who figured it was just fine and those who thought it was pretty boring. I think there's consensus that they would like improvements to the program, and I don't think anyone in Qali Warma asked their opinion on the matter. I'm mainly worried about how much sugar seems to be necessary to get the kids to eat their portion of milk, and how sweet the galletas need to be to get eaten in school.
In short, my weekend was a tremendous gain for me personally (I missed Capilla even more than I thought I did), and for my thesis.
One of the strategies used to inject nutrition into school meals is to incorporate local food into the menus. Local food has a different definition depending on the application - for some, 'local' meas that it comes from within the country, others withing the region, others within a specific range (for example, I worked for a store where 'local' meant a radius of 30 miles).
Local buying enables producers to secure a predictable demand for their products and can, in some cases, allow farmers to diversify what they grow: if schools demand an array of fruits and vegetables and buy that produce locally, this can change how agriculture is conducted in the area.
Valencia et al. (2019) drew a flow chart to describe how local buying can impact markets, households, agriculture, and resilience to climate change:
There are a great many ways to put a concept like this into effect; not only does the definition of 'local' need to be clearly defined, but the roles of different actors should also be clearly defined. What, for example, is the role of the central government? What social groups (women's groups, agricultural cooperatives) should bear some of the responsibility? Do farmers have direct contact with the schools?
Local buying for school meals is therefore a plastic model that can be shaped to fit the unique circumstances of each country or region in which it is implemented. Bundy et al (2012) illustrates this:
This diagram shows only three out of scores of examples - and is distilled down to the most fundamental elements - but it does show the heterogeneity and flexibility in these programs.
These initiatives are challenging to implement because there are high levels of uncertainty - whether farmers can supply the demand, whether the food will be safe, et cetera - on the other hand, highly centralized programs in which food is bought from non-local sources can be brittle but have assurances as to the amount provided and the overall safety of the products.
In some cases, centralized programs work better - in places where, for example, the agriculture of the zone can only support household use - and in others, decentralized programs with local buying are better. It seems to me that most of the time, a mixture of the two works best: local buying for a portion of the food and deliveries 'from away' for the rest. As with anything, the answer isn't simple.
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.
