Keeping an eye on public purchases from Family Farming

By Henrique Marinho
Technician of Centro Sabiá in the Zona da Mata Sul of Pernambuco

The year 2024 marked the 25th anniversary of the death of Dom Hélder Câmara, a great fighter for human rights, who added his voice to those voices that resisted between cries and silences in the most difficult years of recent history: the military civil dictatorship; and then in the so valuable moment of redemocratization. Dom da Paz, a fighter against hunger in Brazil, inspires us to put the issue of public purchases from Family Farming at the center of the debate on strategies for access to healthy food, as a guarantee of the Human Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition.

In addition to access to land, water, production techniques and experiences, and agro-ecological transitions and practices, the battle for access to markets and the obstacles to commercialization in general are a constant in the reality of rural communities; public purchases, such as direct sales, with the resumption of the Food Acquisition Program (PAA), and efforts to make the National School Feeding Program (PNAE) work, demonstrate a range of challenges and opportunities.

We know that, by law, at least 30% of school meals must be bought from family farms. When we look at the figures for the PNAE in the municipalities of Pernambuco, from 2013 to 2022, we see that this amount reached only 22.9%. In relation to the PNAE in the state of Pernambuco, operated by the State Department of Education, this percentage drops to 18.4%. In Mata Sul, in the same period, the total amount transferred by the National Education Development Fund (FNDE) to the region’s municipalities was R$113,744,891.62, but only 20% of this amount was actually purchased by family farming. This means that a market opportunity in the order of R$34,123,467.49 was lost, financial resources which, as well as paying Family Farming, could have circulated in rural communities, in local businesses and generated more tax revenue.

As Dom Hélder Câmara taught us: “You think the people don’t think, the people think”. We are WATCHING.