Publications and resources

School gardens and farms can offer a solution. When children are involved in school garden and farming programs, it can improve food literacy, increase academic engagement, teach children practical agricultural skills, and support the dissemination of more sustainable and regenerative farming practices. 

When recognized as platforms within national food, education, agriculture, youth, and resilience strategies, purpose-led school gardens and farms have the potential to strengthen students’ nutrition, learning, and future livelihoods, while delivering wider benefits for local food systems.

This advocacy brief highlights the powerful role that school meals play at the intersection of nutritious meals, clean water and hygiene for children and their communities. Countries continue working to secure sustainable financing, improve infrastructure and better integrate education, health, nutrition, agriculture and water policies.

This advocacy brief positions school meals as climate-smart investments. It showcases how programmes in Brazil, Kenya, Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bangladesh are advancing climate action through local food sourcing, clean cooking, and resilient supply chains. The brief calls for stronger integration of school meals into national climate policies and financing strategies, emphasizing their role in delivering co-benefits across education, nutrition and sustainable food systems.

Cambodia has implemented school feeding activities since the late 1990s, with staggered adoption across ten provinces and with varying components, including on-site meal provision and takehome rations ; and a home-grown school feeding (HGSF) program has been piloted since 2014.

Schools can be an effective platform for delivering key interventions. For example, school feeding programs (SFP) represent a school-based intervention that can efficiently target vulnerable populations, including children from rural areas, poorly performing schools, and regions presenting with high food insecurity.

This study looks at School meal provision in Cambodia and how it can generate important multisectoral benefits, along the sectors of education, health and nutrition, social protection, and local agriculture economy. While important variations in the extent of benefits were estimated across provinces, the school feeding program remains cost-beneficial in all regions of Cambodia. 

The Belem Declaration on Hunger, Poverty, and Human-Centered Climate Action (COP30) commits countries to address climate impacts through inclusive strategies that safeguard food security and end hunger. It prioritizes climate-responsive social protection linked to nutrition and school feeding, support for small-scale food producers, and just transitions for vulnerable communities, backed by scaled climate finance.

Learn more about the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty. 

The 4th Annual Statement of the Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition expands the global evidence base on school meals and explores its implications for policy. Prepared as an input to the School Meals Coalition for parliamentarians and policymakers, it aims to strengthen the reach, quality and comprehensiveness of national school meal programmes towards 2030. The statement draws on the Consortium’s Global Academy network of over 1,200 experts across 120 countries, offering insights to guide decision-making and accelerate progress.

This report, by Prof. Mariana Mazzucato & Sarah Doyle and colleagues at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, explores how school meals can serve as a lever for industrial strategy and food system transformation. It argues that public procurement of school meals can catalyse innovation and investment across the food value chain, shaping markets to deliver food that is healthy, sustainable and accessible.

Drawing on case studies from Brazil, Sweden and Scotland, the report highlights the social, ecological and economic benefits of school meals and their potential to drive structural change when designed as part of a mission-oriented industrial strategy. It calls on governments to reframe school meals as an investment in growth and development, not a cost, and to align procurement and financing tools accordingly.

The State of School Feeding Worldwide is the United Nations’ official reporting mechanism on school meals, produced biennially by the World Food Programme, as a flagship publication, as secretariat of the School Meals Coalition. It presents the most comprehensive global assessment of how countries support their children through effective school meal programmes worldwide, highlighting trends in coverage, financing, policies and impact.

The 2024 edition reveals unprecedented expansion, with 466 million children now reached worldwide—80 million more since 2020. It highlights governments’ investments of US$84 billion annually, evidence of multisectoral impacts across education, health, nutrition, jobs and food systems, and the role of the School Meals Coalition in driving progress. This edition also highlights a clear shift: school meals are no longer just seen as a donor-driven priority but as a nationally owned and powerful policy lever. Around the world, governments are elevating school health and nutrition in their agendas—recognising school meals as a smart investment in children’s futures and stronger food systems.

The report draws on draws on the best available data sources to present a global picture of school meals coverage, implementation practices, emerging research and costs of school-based health and nutrition programmes from direct government reporting, global surveys, WFP estimates and World Bank data.