School food policies and the transition of urban food systems in Brazil and France: insights from São Paulo and Greater Paris region case studies

Abstract

IntroductionFor many promoters of alternative food systems, scaling up local food provisioning holds the promise of mitigating the negative environmental impacts of the corporate food sector by stimulating regional agricultural diversification. Although these initiatives challenge the dominant model, the question remains of their transformative power and their place in the dynamics of change, at the meso and macro levels. Scholars as well as social and political movements often identify school catering as a sector where such doubts can be overcome. In this paper, we seek to explore the role of public policies encouraging sustainable school food procurement in framing the possibilities for scaling up alternatives' impacts on agricultural landscapes and possible diversification dynamics.MethodsOur work is based on the analysis of the day-to-day governance of school food procurement in 21 case studies located in large cities, Greater Paris (France) and São Paulo (Brazil). In total, 33 semi-structured interviews were conducted with different types of actors (managers of school catering services, representatives of agricultural cooperatives and advisory organizations). The interviews transcriptions were processed using thematic analysis. The purpose was to examine whether these 21 cases shared common logics, regardless of their technical facilities, management methods and national contexts, in order to assess which of these commonalities could be interpreted as specific to metropolitan territories.ResultsIn highly urbanized countries, larger cities' urban food strategies are expected to contribute significantly to bending the curve of landscape simplification. Such hope is mitigated by our findings: we show that most cases relate to the trend of a dominant alternative pattern that relies on a renewed agro-industrial system which does not challenge the regional specialization dynamics.DiscussionNevertheless, most of the cases that deviate significantly from this model are found in the São Paulo metropolitan area; this suggests–as Brazil is a pioneer in strong public policy promoting direct procurement of school meals from sustainable family farming–that national framework can still set the conditions for local innovations.