Food insecurity as a legitimate justification for The National School Meal Plan (PNAE)

Abstract

The objective of this article is to demonstrate the existence of food insecurity and hunger in Brazil – more precisely in the population of school-age children and family farmers – as legitimate justification for the public policy National School Feeding Program (PNAE), which integrates economic actions (creation of an institutional market for family farming) and social actions (education and nutrition for children and young people). The theoretical basis of this study is based on the understanding that the modern economy is marked by the interconnection between food production and distribution processes, which do not operate in isolation, but rather as integral parts of a complex system. In this sense, the relevance of state intervention in a capitalist economy stands out, given that it does not have an inherent capacity for self-regulation. Food situations were characterized based on the analysis of a set of secondary data, published by different institutions, on food production in Brazil, which places the country in the ranking of the largest food producers in the world, and on food insecurity and the risk of hunger , in order to demonstrate that production does not reach all Brazilian consumers in terms of their own survival needs. Thus, food insecurity in Brazil supports the urgency of public policies aimed at food security. The adoption of the PNAE is supported by addressing this challenge among the school-age population belonging to the most disadvantaged social classes, in addition to family farmers, providing a partial integration of food production and distribution/consumption flows.