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The role of Rural Extension in the viability of public procurement for school meals in Brazil Tatiana A. Balem, Sergio Schneider, Marco A. V. Fialho, Isabel C. L. da Silva1
Abstract – Brazilian’s Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar (PNAE), in 2009, changed his politic bases. It’s setting in an important institutional purchasing policy and development of Family Agriculture (FA). The object this paper is discusses the importance of public rural extension service for the viability of the institutional market of School Feeding. The research was conducted in nine municipalities in southern Brazil. Even with a supportive policy environment are still found obstacles to carrying out the institutional purchase, the principal problem are social and productive organization of family farmers. The study showed that farmers need support and technical assistance to relocalizing and reorder the logic of production. But the public rural extension has not been able to do that.1 Keywords – school food, family farmers, rural extension.
INTRODUCTION The PNAE was established in 1955 and has undergone several restructurings. A supplementary feeding policy has become in an important development public policy. The PNAE is a universal program, free and meets without distinction all basic education students enrolled in public schools and philanthropic schools with agreement with public power, through the transfer of financial resources. The program's budget in 2014 was R$ 3.5 billion, benefiting 43 million students. The Federal Law 11.947/2009 determines which 30% of this amount - R$ 1.05 billion - should be invested in direct purchase of FA products (FNDE, 2014). This law reshaped the PNAE, therefore the program aims beyond food and nutrition security, the principles of sustainable development, valorization of food culture, healthy food and relocalization of food system. In this sense the inclusion of local family farmers and building the institutional market is one of the key differentiators actions. According to Belik and Chaim (2009) there is a consensus that social policies, when directed to the support of school feeding programs, can generate 1
Tatiana A. Balem. Universidade Federal de Santa Maria. PhD student
in Programa de Pós-Graduação em Extensão Rural. Professor in Instituto Federal Farroupilha campus JC, Santa Maria-RS, Brazil (tatianabalem@yahoo.com.br). Sergio Schneider. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Professor in Programas de Pós-Graduação em Sociologia (PPGS) and Desenvolvimento Rural (PGDR) Porto Alegre-RS, Brazil (schneide@ufrgs.br). Marco Antônio V. Fialho. Universidade Federal de Santa Maria. Professor in Programa de Pós-Graduação em Extensão Rural. Santa MariaRS, Brazil (marcoavf@hotmail.com). Isabel C. L. da Silva. Universidade Federal de Santa Maria. Master’s degree student in Programa de Pós-Graduação em Extensão Rural. Santa Maria-RS, Brazil (isabel.agro@yahoo.com.br)
enormous benefits in terms of food security, education, health and social development. Morgan and Sonnino (2008) emphasizes that public procurement, especially school feeding procurement, has the potential to induce changes in food habits, making consumers of the products of local agriculture. School food plays an important role in designing a new food equation. In Brazil, even with a supportive policy environment are still found obstacles to institutional acquisition of family farmers, the principal problem is the social and productive organization of farmers. These more creative purchasing structures require new skills, which affects all stakeholders in the process (Morgan, 2006). To access the institutional markets the farmers need to develop skills related to the production, management, scale, distribution, processing and packaging (Morgan, 2006; Sumberg et al., 2011). Authors studying the PNAE say: 1- that local production is not enough to meet the quantity and diversity demanded by institutional markets; 2- a major challenge is the organization of farmers; 3school feeding requires a lot of processed products and the family farmers have difficulties in legalizing the small agroindustry because the legal framework is geared to large enterprises (Froehlich, 2010; Braga, 2012; Gonçalves, 2013). The PNAE is a public policy that requires an intersectorial actions, and many authors have pointed out that farmers have not been able to access the market as they could. A quality service of Rural Extension could be the difference for these farmers develops the skills needed to access the institutional market. Thus, this paper discusses the importance of the public rural extension service for the construction the institutional market of school feeding in Brazil.
METHODS This is a qualitative research that does one interpretative analysis of the limits for the institutional buy of the family agriculture for school food. Datas were collected in 2014 and were from nine municipalities of Rio Grande do Sul (RS) state.
RESULTS: RURAL EXTENSION AND PUBLIC PROCUREMENT The company providing Assistência Técnica e Extensão Rural (ATER)2 public in virtually all municipalities in the RS state is Emater/RS, an institution founded in 1955. There are approximately two thousand extensionists presents in 480 municipalities and the 2
Technical Assistance and Rural Extension
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hiring is related to two areas: technical and social welfare. In the study, it is perceived that Emater-RS has not a clear institutional guideline able to guide and empower the action of the extension to the institutional market's construction. The action of the extension seems to be guided by extensionist's desire and personal commitment to public policy. The Municipalities studied have human potential and agricultural to meet the demands of PNAE because they have 8,857 farmers with DAP. DAP is a document that characterizes the family farmer. This means a universe of almost 9000 farmers with conditions to access the institutional market. The PNAE require a differentiated action of ATER otherwise will be able to concentrate on some stronger farmers or be appropriate by large cooperatives with institutional Declaração de aptidão ao Pronaf (DAP), which we denominate distortion of public policy. According to the legislation and PNAE's guiding documents the ATER should act only in the research of FA products in the municipality and in the preparation and execution of sales projects. But we consider that the action of ATER should be more strategic. So it is directed in three main lines: 1- social organization; 2- organization of production (technical assistance focused on the cultivation and processing, product quality, rescue and appreciation of food culture, preparation of projects for access to public policies); 3- and construction of market. In addition, the ATER can contribute to the creation of synergies among the various stakeholders involved with the public policy and among other policies. In the municipalities studied is a disorderly and punctual performance of the ATER, unable to build a process focused on the development of skills to farmers from production to delivery of products to the institutional market. Because of the historical action of the extension, we expected a more focused effort in production, but this is the area that receives less attention and one of the main problems of the institutional market is the lack of production. Of the nine municipalities only four achieves 30% of FA purchases recommended by law and only one purchase exclusively of municipality's farmers. Two these municipalities exceed 30% of purchases of products by FA. In only four of the surveyed municipalities there is an involvement of public ATER, but this involvement is more related to the organization of farmers and the market, production has not received attention, except in rare and pontual services in some farmers. And the commitment of ATER is always related to one of the technicians. In municipalities studied don't have a technical team activity with public procurement of food school. The farmers marketing for PNAE in these municipalities claim that one of the biggest obstacles is the production, as these had skill for produce one or two commodity's products as tabaco, soybean or corn. The market PNAE requires diversity and scheduling production and although farmers tend to produce products that were produced for consumption, has difficulty to producing in scale. Lack technical information and training for farmers to build greenhouses, irrigation projects, management of protected
crops, plant propagation, driving and management of orchards, use of technologies for organic and agroecological production. The ATER when asked about the deficiencies identified by farmers justifies the insufficient technical assistance at insufficient staff and the lack of appropriate technical training. There is a technical need for farmers and a public ATER institution that is not meeting this need. In five municipalities the ATER is completely absent from the institutional market. With this study it was found that the PNAE is a tool to promote local development and create strategies for the marketing of non-target products by the conventional market, creating possibilities to develop alternative agrifood systems. The creation of innovative public policies for FA requires a new paradigm of rural extension. But the actions of ATER has been below the needs of farmers and the institutional market's construction.
CONCLUSIONS The PNAE's market comes against the discussion of short marketing chains and relocalization of agriculture, where remakes ties between farmers and consumers and new food attributes are valued. A key issue is the ability of farmers to relate to the markets. Before the PNAE they commercialize one or two products to middlemen, now they have to meet a market that requires production diversity, timely delivery, do production in phases and broad product quality. The family farmers have been demonstrated that they need support and technical assistance for the relocalization the production.
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