In countries like the Republic of Congo, school meal programmes are ensuring children attend school and have the energy to focus on their studies as well as creating markets for local smallholder farmers. Photo credit: WFP/Gabriela Vivacqua
By Tsitsi Matope
The Rockefeller Foundation hails the School Meals Coalition as the leading platform for launching ambitious school meal initiatives and accessing global support. He refers to the Coalition as a hub for sharing insights, best practices, and innovative solutions. In a conversation with Mr. Mehrdad Ehsani, Vice President of Africa Food Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation, he provides in-depth insights into school meal programmes, highlighting the opportunities they create within food systems, enhancing students’ health, community well-being and stimulating local economies. He shares these perspectives ahead of the inaugural School Meals Coalition Global Summit in Paris on October 18-19.
Q: Why is the school meals agenda so important now in the work of The Rockefeller Foundation?
A: Our historical focus on agricultural development aimed to fight hunger and boost smallholder farmers’ productivity. While we saw successes in Latin America and in Asia, Africa lagged behind. We realised the need to enhance overall community wellbeing, avoiding a value-destroying food system. This meant integrating environmentally friendly agricultural practices, health and socioeconomic factors impacting millions of smallholder farmers.
Recognising the importance of food security, we expanded our scope to include nutrition, sustainability, and regenerative agriculture. We believe that demand-driven changes could signal a necessary shift in food systems. However, influencing a vast number of decision-makers and consumers was costly and challenging. Instead, we strategically targeted key institutional markets, demonstrating the benefits of nutritious, inclusive and climate-resilient supply chains. By leveraging the power of school meals, we not only aimed to provide children with nutritious food, crucial in times of hunger caused by extreme weather events, but also to use school meals to drive a significant shift in food systems.
Q: Looking at The Foundation’s history and your vision for a holistic approach, how are you working to ensure that shift in the food systems happens?
A: The first step was to partner with the World Food Programme (WFP), one of the world’s largest food procurer. Leveraging WFP’s trusted capacity and influence with governments, we aimed to drive a people-and planet-friendly food procurement agenda.
In school meals, we focus on system-wide impact. This includes measuring menu quality in schools to inform investors and funders about health impacts and developing food-purchasing standards to guide countries. At the country level, we create budget-neutral demonstrations showing how governments can enhance school menus. This approach improves nutrition, fosters sustainable agriculture, and promotes local procurement, thereby strengthening investment in school meals.
Q: What global trends and opportunities are you seeing, and what is The Rockefeller Foundation bringing to the School Meals Coalition?
A: The urgency of planet-friendly school meals is growing, with new data showing increasing food insecurity and undernourishment among children in sub–Saharan Africa and Asia. School meal programmes serve as effective safety nets, tackling child-malnutrition and building community resilience by supporting smallholder farmers and using schools as markets for their produce. We know that extreme weather events are worsening and seeing that 87% of cereal calories are coming from the big three – wheat, rice, and maize. These are produced by a few countries. But let’s also not forget that the global food system is highly vulnerable to weather related shocks. Supply shocks lead to unhealthy dynamics such as hoarding, speculation, and export bans, inflating food prices and disproportionately affecting low-income families. Advocating for planet-friendly school meals, means providing vulnerable children with a social safety net while using school meal demand to drive strengthening of the food system. This includes helping farmers adapt to extreme weather conditions, such as switching from farming only rice to also include millet, which requires 22 times less water. Local procurement reduces the carbon footprint and brings economic resilience to households in need. We promote efforts and support smallholder farmers in conservation and rehabilitation practices, aiming to build resilient, nutritious, and inclusive production and consumption patterns. The discussion around climate finance incentivises countries, and our goal is to integrate these learnings into the Coalition, influencing the global community to drive change at a planetary scale.
Q: What would you say to countries that deprioritise school meals, and what are the potential consequences of such a decision?
A: Deprioritising school meals would be a short-sighted decision. History teaches us valuable lessons, such as the drought in Syria that preceded the armed conflict. Farmers, driven to cities by drought, found no work, leading to unrest and conflict. The World Food Programme spent US$1 per day to feed one person in Syria and when they migrated to Germany, it cost the government USD 70 per day for housing, education, and other social assistance. Frequent occurrence of extreme weather events can trigger hunger, instability, and migration crises. In the Coalition, we share these analyses and would like governments to always remember that prevention is more affordable than cure. School meal programmes are a stabilising factor offering far reaching socio-economic benefits. Science-based evidence supports this, showing that investing in school meals yields significant returns for countries.