Free School Meals Sourced from Small-Scale Farmers: a Win-Win for Food Systems Transformation

Free school meals can give children across the continent access to healthy and nutritious food daily and support the transition to sustainable food systems.

A quarter of children in the EU was at risk of poverty or social exclusion and encountered barriers to performing well in school and enjoying good health in 2021. This will have long term consequences as those children face a higher risk of being unemployed, poor and socially excluded as adults.

For the 80 million school-aged children across the continent, school food can make up more than 50 percent of their daily intake.

Apart from promoting the health and development of children, free school meals can also support the transition to sustainable food systems by linking school meals to small-scale farmers using organic or agroecological production methods.

Purchasing school meals from small and medium-scale farmers is also a lever for social justice as it provides a steady source of income to those who work the land in our territories.

In new policy brief, Fian International, Urgenci and FIAN Austria, in collaboration with Coventry University, propose four policy recommendations to the EU and its Member States on how to use free school meals as a tool to implement the right to food and nutrition in the EU, and foster a transition to sustainable food systems.

This paper was developed in the EU-funded COACH project which aims to facilitate collaboration between farmers, consumers, local governments and other actors to scale up short agri-food chains and drive innovation in territorial food systems.

For more information or media interviews please contact Tom Sullivan, FIAN International Communication & Campaigns: sullivan@fian.org