A comida invisível: representações sociais sobre a alimentação escolar entre a comunidade escolar e os agricultores familiares na região de Pelotas, RS

Abstract

The last ten years decade coincide with important changes in public policies of Brazil, with emphasis on the creation of programs aimed at the social consumption that ensures the purchase of products from family farming and, especially, the provision of healthy food to children from public schools. This is the case of the School Feeding National Program (PNAE in Portuguese), whose emphasis is to conciliate food education for students who attend the public teaching network and market access for family farmers. Facing this scenario the thesis on screen is about the social representations concerning school feeding, from food produced by family farmers in the region of Pelotas, RS. The study was centered on understanding how are given the unfoldings of PNAE which aim to ensure food and nutrition security in the municipalities of Canguçu, Cerrito and São Lourenço do Sul. In order to embrace it we conducted an eminently qualitative research by conducting focal groups in six schools of the municipal network, with students from rural and urban area, as well as in-depth interviews with 42 actors enrolled with the program (family farmers, city managers, school servants, MDA delegate, and EMATER technician). The collected data were analyzed through Content Analysis methodology with the aid of the software QRS NVIVO10. Among the main results is the lack of importance given to school feeding inside the schools, a fact that reinforces the rates of nutritional transition and aggravates the dangers caused by poor diet. One clearly perceives that the operationalization of the program is tied directly to the interest of public managers and the understanding that their actions should happen in a joint and cross-sectional way. The results also demonstrate that this program has become a potential tool to ensure food and nutrition security. However, the social representations around the value of a healthy eating and of ecological family farming production need to be incorporated beyond discourses into practices that ensure effective operationalization of this important program.