Sustainable Government Purchasing: evaluation of the São Paulo school meals program

Abstract The city of São Paulo’s School Meals Program stands out as one of the biggest in the world. This study underscores the potential of sustainable government purchasing for school meals based on the already instituted municipal program and seeks to understand the frailties in the process of implementing the legislation. The study used primary and secondary sources with the secondary data obtained from documental research and primary data from semi-structured interviews with public agents implementing the program. Despite the provisions of the Program implementation legislation, the study analysis reveals various problems and challenges family farmers and the municipal government face to implement this program, ranging from conditions imposed by the Federal legislation for recognizing the São Paulo city producers as family farmers to the insufficiency of their production to meet the demand.