June 16, 2014 All news

The governments should use public sources to ensure justice in food systems

Governments must use all their potential of government food purchases and thus make food systems more just and sustainable, emphasizes Olivier De Schutter, UN’s special reporter on the right for food.

“Governments have relatively few options available to influence food systems, which are getting increasingly more globalised – and government purchases belong to these options.  When providing food for schools, hospitals and state institutions, a valuable opportunity opens for governments to support more nutritionally valuable food and to contribute to a more sustainable food system at the same time“, says an independent expert in connection with the publication, The Power of Procurement.

Knowing that on average the member states of OECD give out 12% of their GDP on governmental purchases (in case of developing countries the amount is slightly lower), Olivier De Schutter of the UN identified five principles for how to use government purchases in order to implement the concept of right to food:

• Buying food preferentially from small food producers and help them with access to government procurements
• Guaranteeing salaries above the living wage rate and negotiate fair prices in the whole supply chain
• Setting specific requirements for appropriate food composition
• Buying locally when possible and setting requirements for suppliers which leads to more sustainability
• Enhancing participation and responsibility in the food system

„It can be more expensive for governments to buy food from a number of small businesses instead of from wholesale suppliers, but this investment will pay off. Besides its positive impact in the area of health and education, it will also contribute to a more functional and sustainable sector of small‑scale agriculture,“ adds the UN’s expert. Data from the school meals programme in the UK imply that the benefits of additional expenditures on sustainable and local purchases are three times higher than the costs. Another study estimates that the total benefits of supplying locally produced food for 50 million African pupils might be approx. 1.6 billion USD (approx. 32 billion CZK) a year.

Olivier De Schutter from the UN also appreciated the recent progress in developing countries such as Brazil, where better prices were introduced for suppliers of organic food and where 30% of the budget on school meals is spent on food from family farms. Municipal governments and the governments of federal states were encouraged to make a meal plan for schools, which will affect almost 50 million children.

„Reliable demand for fair prices could improve conditions for small farmers in developing countries where it is hard to succeed in competition with multinational food producers, manufacturers, dealers and marketers. The transformational potential of government purchases must be fully utilised in transition towards the agricultural models that work for the benefit of poor people,“ De Shutter concludes.