Tag: supermarkets

Public food programmes are a powerful tool for food sovereignty, if done right

Posted on by Amanda Cordova Gonzales

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.

Read here

Banner: Quezon City, Philippines. 28th July, 2018. Children queue during a feeding program community service event. Alamy

Data is power: understanding the complexities of violence against women street vendors

Posted on by Tom

Women constitute a majority of market and street vendors worldwide. Every day, we can see them at the marketplace and on the streets, making a living to support their families, and making a significant contribution to the local economy – who we focus on in this edition of Supermarket Watch.

According to data from the Street Vendors Barometer, a participatory research led by StreetNet International with the Global Labour Institute (GLI), 64.2% of women vendors in Zimbabwe experience physical abuse from customers, with many reporting harassment and intimidation that jeopardise their safety and dignity. Some of the women are survivors of domestic abuse who turned to vending as a means of survival rather than choice. Gender specific economic precarity exacerbates their vulnerability, as only 7.8% of the women have maternity coverage, and most of them work long hours under insecure and exploitative conditions. Overall, vendors in Zimbabwe lack access to basic infrastructure. For one in five of them, the ground is their workplace with no shelter. Extreme weather has been disastrous for the incomes of these vendors, especially for those selling perishable goods like fresh food, fruits, vegetables or fish.

Meanwhile the survey found that 56.9% of women vendors in Argentina do not have access to toilets at their workplace, a problem that disproportionately affects women. Of those who have access to sanitation facilities, only 32.9% have access to gender-separated toilets, an invaluable source of safety and comfort for women vendors, posing concerns for their health and problems with menstruation. The survey also found that 40.9% women vendors face violence and harassment, frequently from police authorities and fellow vendors. From the findings, the lack of sanitary facilities, insecurity and extreme weather intensifies both economic and psychological stress, reinforcing women’s exposure to physical and emotional harm.

The data detailed above paints a grim reality, yet it might also help change it. The participatory research carried out by the Street Vendors Barometer is meant to visibilise and empower women vendors and market traders facing gender-based violence. Participatory research transforms women vendors from subjects of the research into equal partners of the process, which generates lived-based data to expose the gendered aspects of economic exclusion. It provides a practical organising tool, strengthening solidarity and uncovering shared experiences across countries.

The Street Vendor Barometer has confirmed two important issues faced by market and street vendors, particularly by women vendors: one is the fight against harassment and evictions of small traders; the other is the fight for social protections, such as access to health services and income security. And it has amplified the demands of women vendors for the right to formalise their work and to live free from violence. In this edition, we also share a case of how women from Uganda’s lakeshore communities showcased the influence of transforming data into compelling evidence to support women’s engagement in policy debate and building solidarity to fight for just food systems.

Read the latest issue here.

For more information contact Laura Michéle michele@fian.org

The health and nutritional costs of supermarkets

Posted on by Tom

As supermarkets expand, traditional food systems shrink, endangering heritage diets and the benefits they offer to human health. This is the focus of our September bulletin.

Research carried out in Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro region found that the shift to a Western diet resulted in negative health outcomes like elevated inflammation, poorer immune function, and weight gain, while a return to traditional foods produced anti-inflammatory benefits and reduced markers of metabolic disease. The push for supermarkets across the world is causing an exponential rise in highly processed and refined foods that have a long shelf life and a rapid decline in the availability of nutritious, fresh and more perishable foods particularly fruits and vegetables.

These ultra-processed foods are associated with an increased risk of obesity and other chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, and even malnutrition among children. They are mostly composed of ingredients derived from industrial agriculture and global trade chains, leading to excessive chemical pollution of water, air and soil. On the other hand, local circuits of food distribution, with local markets and small-scale food vendors, provide more access to a diverse variety of fresh healthy foods that are affordable and easily accessible. Street food vendors play a critical role in many of these traditional food systems.

An estimated 2.5 billion people eat street food every day.  Most of these street food vendors do not have large storage capacities, so they often have to buy small quantities of fresh ingredients from traditional retail markets or directly from local farmers.  Food quality is assured by strong social ties and trust between producers, food vendors and consumers. The food is then prepared using simple processing facilities. In contrast, ultra-processed foods are commonly referred to as “junk food”, due to their high levels of free sugars, refined starches, sodium, saturated and trans-fats derived from substances or additives that make these products more appealing and enhance their shelf life.  In places where communities have a strong food culture, one of the marketing strategies of food corporations and retail chains is to mimic and recreate traditional foods using industrial food ingredients to expand their markets.    

This month, the third global Nyéléni Forum will be held in Sri Lanka.  The Nyéléni process emphasises the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods.  Food production, distribution and access form a cohesive socio-cultural fabric that supports people’s nutritional and mental wellbeing, and people’s food sovereignty. In this edition, we highlight how local food systems should be the entry point for addressing issues like nutrition, labour conditions, and community strengthening, and we look at examples from a healthy food procurement policy in Brazil’s school networks and the ways in which Africa is resisting supermarket expansion.

Read Supermarket Watch here

For more information contact Laura Michéle michele@fian.org