Governments worldwide have long offered free school meals as part of social welfare strategies aimed at child nutrition and reducing hunger. However, a groundbreaking study conducted by researchers at University College London (UCL) reveals that this practice could transcend its traditional role, emerging as a catalyst for sustainable transformation within global food systems. The research underscores that through strategic procurement policies, school meal programs have untapped potential to simultaneously combat child hunger, foster local economic development, and promote environmentally sustainable agriculture, thereby reimagining these programs as powerful instruments in shaping a resilient global food economy.
The UCL report titled “A Mission-Oriented Approach to School Meals: An opportunity for cross-departmental and multi-sector industrial strategy,” developed in collaboration with the United Nations World Food Programme, critically assesses how governments can leverage school meal procurement. By focusing on the examples of Scotland, Sweden, and Brazil, the study examines existing frameworks and explores innovative approaches in utilizing public food purchasing as a strategic lever for ecological stewardship, nutrition enhancement, and economic inclusivity. The report advocates a shift away from treating school meal procurement as an administrative or reactive policy tool, towards embracing it as an active mechanism for market shaping that aligns agricultural practices with broader public goals.
School meal programs represent one of the world’s most expansive social safety nets, with coverage reaching approximately 466 million children globally. The annual global expenditure on these meals is estimated at around US $84 billion, making it a significant component of governmental purchasing power. Such sizeable financial commitments provide a unique opportunity to influence agricultural production patterns and supply chain dynamics. However, current school meal procurement practices often fall short, at times perpetuating environmentally damaging food systems that contribute extensively to greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, land degradation, and water scarcity.
The global food system accounts for roughly one-third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, positioning agriculture and food production as pivotal arenas for climate action. Despite this, procurement policies for school meals frequently fail to prioritize sustainability, instead conforming to entrenched supply chains which neglect the long-term ecological consequences of food sourcing decisions. UCL researchers argue that it is imperative to reorient procurement strategies to emphasize nutritious, sustainable, and locally sourced meals. This reconceptualization would mean public institutions actively guiding private sector behaviors toward societal benefits, shifting from a reactive market-fixing approach to a proactive market-shaping industrial strategy.
Professor Mariana Mazzucato, founding director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose and lead author of the study, elucidates the transformative role school meal programs can play. She articulates that well-designed procurement policies can foster diverse and innovative supplier ecosystems aligned with public health and sustainability objectives. By generating demand for food that is healthy, sustainable, and culturally appropriate, governments can incentivize local producers to adopt sustainable farming practices, stimulate regional economies, and ultimately “change the structure of local economies” in ways that reflect societal values. This mission-oriented approach reframes food procurement as a strategic investment rather than a mere expenditure.
The Scottish school meals program exemplifies the progress and challenges in deploying these principles. Since its inception in 2007, Scotland has expanded free school meals progressively, targeting health inequalities and improving nutritional standards for children in early primary school years. The program’s estimated budget of £238 million annually reflects significant political commitment. Nevertheless, the study identifies that the program could be optimized to better facilitate market opportunities for local producers and integrate sustainability targets aligned with Scotland’s broader net-zero ambitions. The decentralized procurement structure, managed by 32 local councils, presents coordination challenges but also opportunities for harmonized industrial strategies that leverage centralized policy frameworks to yield wider social, economic, and environmental dividends.
In Sweden, a different yet complementary approach is observed, where innovation agencies collaborate with municipalities to prototype meal programs designed around a mission-oriented framework. Here, student engagement in program development is a notable feature, fostering grassroots innovation and ensuring meal offerings meet local preferences and sustainability criteria. Sweden’s example highlights that bottom-up innovation can drive meaningful change but also underscores the necessity for robust national coordination. Without integrated policies connecting school meal initiatives to comprehensive food system reforms and industrial strategies, the scaling of sustainable practices remains limited, highlighting a delicate interplay between local autonomy and national leadership.
Brazil’s National School Feeding Program (Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar – PNAE) represents one of the largest and most mature models globally, serving over 50 million meals daily during the school year. Established in 1955, PNAE operates under a decentralized but nationally regulated framework that mandates a minimum of 30 percent of procurement funds be allocated to family-run farms. This provision, alongside the allowance for increased spending on sustainably produced food, has catalyzed significant shifts toward domestic agricultural production, diversified markets, and enhanced livelihoods for smallholder farmers. The program effectively blends social objectives with industrial strategy goals, demonstrating how school meal procurement can drive extensive economic and environmental benefits when backed by coherent policy and implementation mechanisms.
Despite these promising case studies, the UCL report emphasizes that school meal programs remain severely underfunded relative to their potential. Co-author Sarah Doyle notes that the prevailing view of school meals solely as benefits for children limits the recognition of their broader role in the food system. By reframing school meal procurement as a vital element of green industrial strategy, governments can design policies that amplify food system transformation, economic growth, and environmental stewardship simultaneously. Doyle stresses that as the world’s population increases and ecological challenges mount, utilizing school meal procurement to nurture sustainable agriculture and resilient local economies is not merely advantageous but necessary.
The UCL study urges policymakers to consider school meal programs as mission-driven industrial policy instruments capable of promoting systemic change. This necessitates cross-departmental coordination, from health and education sectors to agricultural and environmental agencies, ensuring that procurement policies are embedded within wider developmental and sustainability strategies. Embracing such an integrated approach will require political will and institutional capacity to harmonize objectives and implement mechanisms for monitoring, evaluation, and continual refinement.
Critically, this mission-oriented paradigm also has implications for supplier markets. By fostering a competitive and values-aligned supplier ecosystem, governments can stimulate private sector innovation toward healthier, more sustainable food products. Such market-shaping policies could encourage investment in sustainable farming technologies, diversification of crop production, reduction of food waste, and healthy dietary patterns, contributing directly to climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts.
In conclusion, the UCL study advances a compelling argument that school meal programs represent a critical nexus point where social policy, economic development, and environmental sustainability converge. This convergence provides a unique policy space where governments can exert significant influence to address the intertwined challenges of hunger, climate change, and sustainable development. Realizing this vision will require reimagining school meal procurement not just as a welfare expenditure, but as a strategic instrument of industrial transformation capable of generating multifaceted public value for current and future generations.
Subject of Research:
School meal procurement policies as transformative tools for sustainable food systems, economic development, and climate change mitigation.
Article Title:
Governments Harness School Meal Procurement to Drive Global Food System Sustainability and Economic Renewal
News Publication Date:
Not provided
Web References:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/publications/2025/sep/mission-oriented-approach-school-meals
Keywords:
Economic development, Economic growth, Education policy, Education, Sustainability, Sustainable development
