Sustainable public food procurement aims at linking public institutions’ demand for food to local smallholder farmers and small and medium-sized food enterprises, in order to advance multiple social, economic and environmental goals. FAO's work in this area covers in particular school food and nutrition, but also other public institutions' initiatives.
FAO has developed or contributed to the development of several tools and materials on this topic:
Tools and publications
- Book on Public food procurement for sustainable healthy diets (two volumes)
- Home-grown school feeding resource framework (FAO and the World Food Programme)
- Online training on Sustainable public procurement for designing and implementing home-grown school meals programmes, developed with the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organization.
Access additional training material here.
- E-learning course on Home-grown school feeding
- Technical study on Leveraging institutional food procurement for linking small farmers to markets. Findings from WFP’s Purchase for Progress initiative and Brazil’s food procurement programmes
- Book on Public food procurement for sustainable food systems and healthy diets (two volumes)
- Working paper on Aligning policy and legal frameworks for supporting smallholder farming through public food procurement: the case of home-grown school feeding programmes
- One-pager on Public food procurement and the support of smallholder farming: the importance of a conducive regulatory framework
Interventions and projects
- Capacity development, needs assessment and technical support to integrate local smallholder farmers in public food markets and develop specific policies for small cities and towns (FMM/GLO/132/MUL)
- Capacity development, data collection and analysis to design and assess public food procurement initiatives within the framework of the project on “Policy support for government-led home-grown school food initiatives” (GCP/GLO/775/ITA)
- Advocacy and technical guidance on the development/review of sustainable public food procurement-related policies and regulatory frameworks (TCP/SFE/3604)
- Capacity development, data collection and analysis to support governments in implementing home-grown school feeding programmes that provide healthy and nutritious foods for improved diets among children as well as protected market space for smallholders, and that integrate with policy frameworks for nutrition and social protection (FMM/GLO/128/MUL)