Public food programmes are a powerful tool for food sovereignty, if done right
When governments steer these funds toward nutritious, locally sourced foods from small farmers and food vendors, these programmes can provide a powerful way to tackle malnutrition, poverty, climate change, and biodiversity loss all at once.
Every year, governments spend more than US$84 billion on national school meal programmes, with 99% of this funding coming directly from domestic budgets. Such public food procurement and distribution schemes, which buy and provide food to schools, public hospitals, care homes or prisons, represent a significant portion of the overall market for food sales.
By sourcing from agroecological farms, local food hubs, and small enterprises, public food programmes can support community kitchens while ensuring decent livelihoods for small-scale producers and distributors, including street and market vendors, and other marginalised groups. They can also provide people, particularly those most in need, with fresh, culturally appropriate, nutritious food. These initiatives can greatly improve public health and uplift the local economy. Plus, they can create a space for community involvement, bringing together parents, students, local producers, officials, and health professionals to co-design programmes.
Public food sourcing also has the potential to positively influence eating practices while sustaining local food cultures. Through thoughtful menu designs, schools and other institutions can procure local fruits and vegetables without blowing their budgets, all while creating a space for collective learning on why short distance food supply matters. The programmes can even address supply chain issues, for example, working with food providers to use plant-based materials, like banana leaf, instead of plastic packaging.
Unfortunately, the potential benefits of public food programmes are often stifled by the way they are designed and implemented. Top-down, centralised public food programmes lead to corruption and nepotism and favour powerful agri-food companies. Public food programmes often rely on pre-made, ultra-processed foods because of convenience, which suppresses the demand for fresh, local ingredients. Furthermore, public tender contracts involve extensive paperwork and strict audits to prove accountability, which can make it difficult for smaller local suppliers to participate.
To unlock the true potential of public food programmes, we must view food as a vital public good, building on already existing local food sourcing networks–from small-scale producers, to informal food vendors, to consumers. A decentralised procurement system is key – one where local governments play a central role and beneficiary communities have a direct say in the programme’s design and implementation.
Some public food programmes are leading the way in this direction. In Brazil, civil society successfully pushed for the passage of a recently enacted law that increases from 30 to 45 percent the amount of the national school meal budget that has to be spent on family farms practising agroecological methods, prioritising Indigenous, Quilombola, agrarian reform settlement, and women producers. In May 2025, the Philippines’ municipality of Nueva Vizcaya launched the Healthy Public Food Procurement Ordinance, which promotes whole, nutritious foods by partnering with local fishers and farmers.
In this edition, we look at the importance of involving street and market vendors in public procurement and at the challenges faced by two public food programmes that underline the importance of decentralisation and diversity: Indonesia’s free meals programme for children and India’s public procurement system.
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Banner: Quezon City, Philippines. 28th July, 2018. Children queue during a feeding program community service event. Alamy