This week, governments will gather in Rome for a UN summit titled to incite utter boredom. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) body is marking the second anniversary of the Global Food Systems Summit 2021 with this Taking Stock Time. Instead of taking stock, governments should seize the opportunity to take action. They could start uniting on an initiative that would offer millions of children one of the most effective, affordable, and practical antidotes to a food system that is leaving them malnourished and unhealthy: school feeding programs.
Our food systems are failing humanity. More than 800 million people suffer from malnutrition and the trend is rising. If current trends continue, the malnutrition rate in 2030, the international target date to achieve zero hunger, will be the same as it was in 2015, when the target was adopted. Intensive farming has achieved productivity miracles and made it possible to produce more food from smaller plots. However, it causes devastating effects on the environment, accelerates biodiversity loss and contributes to a third of the greenhouse gas emissions that lead to climate catastrophe. As the world increasingly focuses on high-fat, highly-processed diets marketed by multinational food companies, an epidemic of obesity and overweight is already killing more people than tobacco.
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As the saying goes, “We are what we eat”; The way we produce, market and consume food makes our world an under-nourished, unjust and unsustainable place. Children are the hidden victims of the failure of our food system. Let’s take malnutrition as an example. International surveillance of child nutrition focuses predominantly on children under the age of five and the “first 100 days”, a crucial period for cognitive and physical development. But what about the rest of childhood and the crucial growth spurts of adolescence?
Around 284 million children of primary and secondary school age are starving worldwide. About half of these children live in Africa, but no region is immune. In South Asia progress has stalled and in Latin America things are going backwards. Not only the poorest countries are affected. As the cost-of-living crisis deepens in Europe, household surveys in countries like Spain and the United Kingdom, where families are struggling to make ends meet, have found sharp rises in food insecurity.
It doesn’t take a UN summit to assess the impact of malnutrition on education. Parents and teachers instinctively know that hungry children have trouble learning. As governments meet in Rome, millions of children will be left in classrooms unable to concentrate because they have not eaten a nutritious meal. Many of them, especially girls, are at risk of dropping out and being drawn into the labor market to support themselves and their families.
Hunger is only part of the equation. Children are also at the forefront of a global obesity crisis
Hunger is only part of the equation. Children are also at the forefront of a global obesity crisis. One in three Latin American children is overweight or obese. The numbers are also rising in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. While food companies will no doubt use the “taking stock” moment to publicize their commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, their marketing budgets are overwhelmingly focused on encouraging children to adopt unhealthy diets.
School canteen programs alone will not fix the deficiencies in the food system, but they can change the situation. Already among the largest safety nets in the world, these programs have proven effective in improving nutrition, learning and school attendance, particularly among the poorest. Recent data from India, home of the world’s largest school canteen program, shows its benefits across generations: Children born to mothers who receive meals have better health outcomes. The problem is that this safety net is weakest where it needs to be strongest, namely in the countries and communities hardest hit by rising malnutrition. Currently, less than one in five children in the world’s poorest countries has access to it.
And it’s not like the richest countries have anything to be proud of. In the UK, restrictions on free access to school canteens exclude almost a million children. In Spain, school canteen coverage rates are below the child poverty line in nine municipalities. It cannot be justified.
School feeding programs offer more than just protection against hunger. By providing children with healthy, nutrient-dense meals, along with sugar taxes, stricter labeling laws and stricter advertising regulation, they can help transform consumption and future markets for the unhealthy diet that is killing people today and putting a huge strain on healthcare systems.
School food sourcing offers governments and local authorities a powerful lever for change. You can pull this lever to correct course. In Milan, city authorities now source all food for city schools from local farms and orchards, which has resulted in a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. In Brazil, where there is a universal school feeding program for all public schools, a third of the budget is reserved for small farmers. Many communities, such as São Paulo, the country’s largest, link schools to low-carbon, organic farming.
The Time to Take Stock provides an opportunity to translate these global initiatives and the power of good practice into a global campaign. The change is already underway. Kenya’s new government plans to have universal access by 2030. Rwanda, one of the poorest countries in the world, is already close to this goal. Countries like Bangladesh and Nepal have also set themselves ambitious goals. The impetus for change and most of the funding has come not from donors but from developing country governments, 80 of which have joined a global school feeding coalition.
Expanding school canteen programs in the countries that need them most will not be easy. Slowing growth, unsustainable debt and inflation reduce governments’ fiscal space. Because Africa is heavily dependent on imports, it is highly vulnerable to a further rise in global food price inflation, a prospect made more likely by Russia’s withdrawal from the grain export deal with Ukraine.
Every child in a Bolivian public school receives a meal funded by a small tax on hydrocarbon exports
However, there are ways to mobilize resources. More efficient and fairer public spending and tax systems are an obvious starting point. Specific taxes can also help increase public support. Every child in a Bolivian public school receives a meal funded by a small tax on hydrocarbon exports. Countries like Senegal, Tanzania and Mozambique could follow suit as they face unexpected gains from natural gas exports.
International cooperation can also play an important role. The Coalition for School Feeding estimates that about $2 billion a year in aid is needed to fund a global plan that could extend the reach of school canteens to an additional 73 million of the world’s poorest children. While aid organizations pay lip service to results-based interventions, less than 1% of development aid goes to school canteens, and major European donors and the World Bank are inactive.
Innovative approaches to debt relief offer another avenue. With more than 20 African countries in debt or at risk of debt, repayments to creditors reduce key public spending. Debt-for-school cafeteria swaps, inspired by today’s environmental investment approaches, could turn unpayable debt into investments in school feeding programs that alleviate hunger and provide learning opportunities for millions of children.
Food systems reform is a complex undertaking. This is an area characterized by powerful interest groups, partisan politics and divided opinion. Instead, the fight against hunger among schoolchildren is undoubtedly a concern that transcends political divisions. And for school feeding programs to be successful, you don’t have to be a genius, you just need political leadership.
Kevin Watkins is Visiting Professor of Development Practice at the Firoz Lalji Institute of the London School of Economics.
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