Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar (PNAE): controvérsias sobre os instrumentos de compra de alimentos produzidos pela agricultura familiar

Abstract

Since 2003, the National School Feeding Program (PNAE) has been going through changes that involve the reformulation of its goals, principles and guidelines, as well as its operational design from the intersectoral perspective of Food and Nutritional Security (FNS). The legal framework for the program, endorsed in 2009, aims to establish a link between the supply of healthy food in the school, the educational process of learning and family-based agriculture, recognizing school meals as a human right. In accordance with some principles of FNS, innovations in the operating mode of the program are being introduced, principally with respect to the dynamics of public acquisition of food, by making the allocation of at least 30% of the funds for the direct purchase of products of family-based agriculture a compulsory measure, with exemption from public bids. This thesis proposes to analyze PNAE's historical trajectory and recent reformulation from an angle yet not much explored in public policies analysis: its instruments. It aimed to understand, based on an approach that focuses on the Instrumentation of Public Action (IAP), the following questions: i) how the choosing process of instruments to operationalize food acquisition from family-based agriculture took place; ii) which principles from FNS Security were incorporated to the instruments; iii) which actors participated on the process and which interaction were established between them; iv) which public controversies were present. The study has pointed out that that the context of strengthening of the dynamics of social-estate interfaces and the greater permeability of the Estate to public policies reorientation proposals in the light of FNS's principles has created opportunities for actors coalitions (governmental mand non-governmental) that were linked to the defense of FNS causes and family-based agriculture to articulate themselves around that new legal framework. There was an effort both to reorient the guidelines of PNAE and to participate on the choosing of instruments by these actors. The introduction of new acquisition mechanisms in the PNAE involved the conformation of new field of controversies, because the changes affect the interface between public and market action. The mapping process done within the PNAE Managing Committee and Advisory Group (formal spaces aiming at the program's regulaion) has pointed out that the main controversies revolved around the following questions: i) the choosing of the operationalization modality to purchase from family-base agriculture; ii) the adoption of selection criteria bounded to the guidelines of PNAE substituting the purchasing processes that were linked to low-prices; iii) the definition of the price methodology; iv) the definition of a selling limit in a year; v) the connection between the Food Acquisition Program (PAA) and the PNAE. When we investigate the ...