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Aligning policy and legal framework for supporting smallholder farming through public food procurement: The case of home-grown school feeding programmes

  • Published on January 14, 2020
Despite an increasing recognition of the importance of a conducive and aligned public procurement policy and regulatory frameworks for the implementation of public food procurement initiatives that target smallholder farmers, very little has been said about how such an alignment can be achieved. This publication aims to contribute to this discussion, bringing an analysis of four country experiences and of the various legal mechanisms that can be used within the school food procurement context.
This paper is organised into 3 main sections: Section 1 explores through a literature review and country experiences how and why standard public procurement rules and practices may represent a barrier to the implementation of public food procurement initiatives designed to support smallholder farmers. Building on the increasing recognition by the literature and international regulatory regimes of the use of public procurement to achieve broader development goals, it provides evidence for recognising the need for alignment and adaptations. Section 2 discusses how such alignments can be made, focusing on the use of preferential procurement schemes and contract lotting in four different countries within those countries’ school feeding programmes ( Brazil, the United States of America, Paraguay and France). Section 3 provides a comparative analysis of the experiences of the various countries. This analysis strives to identify lessons that may help other governments in the development of an aligned public procurement regulatory framework for implementing public procurement initiatives that target smallholder farmers.

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