Food Procurement as an Instrument to Promote Local Food Systems: Exploring a Brazilian Experience

Public food procurement is becoming more relevant among policymakers as a tool capable of supporting family farming, encouraging sustainable farming practices, and promoting rural development. Brazil is recognized as one of the first countries to develop national policies based on food demands from its public facilities to support family farming. Previous research has already demonstrated several positive impacts of programs based on public food procurement that establish new institutional markets aimed at the poorest family farmers. However, there is still a lack of research evaluating the impacts of public food procurements in creating local food systems that bring closer farmers and consumers. In this research, based on primary and secondary data, we sought to verify whether a food procurement-based program, the Brazilian Food Acquisition Program (PAA), contributes to the constitution and consolidation of local food systems in three Brazilian municipalities. On the one hand, our results suggest that PAA is an important instrument for the productive inclusion of family farming. On the other hand, PAA has contributed little to the establishment of more localized food systems, indicating that other drivers beyond the institutional market are critical to build and support local food systems.