The impact of public calamity on the PNAE: Family farming purchases and financial reprogramming in the southern region of Brazil

Abstract

The National School Feeding Program (NSFP) aims to provide school meals and nutritional education for all students in the national public basic education system. The government, through the National Educational Development Fund, transfers to cities and state and federal school’s financial amounts to supplement the school feeding. During the pandemic was authorized, on an exceptional basis, the distribution of food purchased under the NSFP to students' families as a way to continue the Program. The objective of this work was to evaluate the cut of the purchase of food from family farming and financial reprogramming in southern Brazil. Data were collected from 1,180 Executing Entities (ExEs). When analyzing the data of the reprogramming of the Southern Region, we concluded that 1,109 municipalities were adequate with the resolution in the year 2019, in 2020 this number decreased to 601 and, in the last year, it grew to 887, symbolizing respectively 94%, 50.9% and 75.2%. Regarding the purchase of family farming, 1,063 ExEs used at least 30% of the resources in the purchase of products from family farming in 2019, in 2020 this number became 515 and in 2021 it reduced to 371 ExEs, respectively 90,1%, 43,6% e 31,4%. From these data, it was possible to see that the state of public calamity caused by the COVID-19 pandemic caused changes in the management of the National School Feeding Program when it came to financial reprogramming, especially in the first year of implementation during the pandemic, changing the pattern of food purchases from Family Agriculture as well as the dynamics of using the financial resources sent to the cities.