One of this year’s World Food Prize winners is H.E. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former President of Brazil. His work fighting hunger included developing the national school feeding program. An excerpt from the World Food Prize web site reads:
“The national School Feeding Program has had a far-reaching impact on reducing child malnutrition by providing nutritious meals to children in all grades of Brazil’s public schools across the country. Forty-seven million were being served in 2010, with a minimum of 30 percent of the food supplied from local farms. Child malnutrition fell 61.9 percent between 2003 and 2009, and all age groups experienced improved access to quality food.”
Brazil has come a a long way in its fight against hunger and developing its school feeding. Back in the 1960s Brazil got help from the U.S. Food for Peace program. Here is a photo of a milk shipment leaving for Brazil. George McGovern, a World Food Prize winner himself, is to the far right.
1962 Photo of the largest milk donation under the “Food for Peace” program leaving from Brooklyn, NY heading toward Brazil. Left to right is the Brazilian ambassador Roberto de Oliveira Campos; Capt. Timothy Harrington and George McGovern, the Food for Peace director. The milk will be used for maternal feeding and the school lunch program. (Library of Congress)
Today, Brazil supports school milk programs such as the one in Haiti. See my article Got Milk? Haiti’s Farmers and Now Schools Do.
Author William Lambers 