Compras públicas sustentáveis da agricultura familiar: um estudo multicaso dos processos de compras para a merenda escolar

Abstract

Public procurement is important to move the economy in Brazil and in the World. If they are carried out seeking to integrate social, environmental and economic criteria, they are called sustainable public procurement. When applied to the acquisition of school meals, they are an important instrument to stimulate the development of sustainable family agriculture. Although it does not correspond to the traditional design of public policy, public purchases, due to the significant volumes of financial resources that they circulate, can be understood as tools through which public policies take place. In this sense, the value sent through the FNDE to the IFEs to carry out their purchases of food for school meals directly from family agriculture, preferably local, innovated the mechanisms used in the purchase and sale of foodstuffs. This new market of products derived from family agriculture favors economic and regional development, encourages the organization, the formalization and the social and economic inclusion of the rural man. The objective of this dissertation is to discuss the difficulties of the IFEs in attending to the article 14 of Law No. 11,947 of June 16, 2009 – which obliges them to purchase foodstuffs directly from family farms and the rural family entrepreneur or their organizations for school meals, prioritizing agrarian reform settlements – and proposing solutions to bring buyers and sellers closer together. To achieve this goal, a qualitative research of a theoretical and empirical nature was carried out in a descriptive and structured manner through a multiple case study. The data of this research were obtained through semi-structured interviews with eleven family farmers, six of which participate in the PNAE and five which do not, and with public managers of four IFEs participating in the analysis. Content analysis was adopted for the interpretation of the data. The results indicate that PNAE is a comprehensive program, apt to be used by both public administration and family farmers, and, thus, highlights the importance of approximating supply and demand, a key action for a satisfactory result of the process of public procurement from family farming. In conclusion, it is possible to reconcile the legislation on public procurement of foodstuffs from family farming, since the legal texts do not overlap each other. However, the success of public policies related to the sustainability of purchases and of the rural man depends on the appropriation of knowledge. Thus, a fundamental question to support the insertion of family farmers in the PNAE public policy is to provide training to the actors involved in the public procurement process and to promote the training of family farmers so that they can satisfactorily meet the enumerated demands of the Federal Institutions of Education.