By Yuri Simeon
From the School Feeding Observatory (ÓAÊ)
The Brazilian government announced last Sunday (08) a R$ 1.2 billion (US$ 230 million) increase in funding for the National School Feeding Program (PNAE). With the increase, the program’s annual budget will reach R$ 6.7 billion (US$ 1.29 billion) starting in 2026.
The announcement was made in a nationwide address by Minister of Education Camilo Santana. The amounts are calculated on a per-student, per-day basis, with different rates depending on the level of education. The adjustment was based on food inflation accumulated over the past three years — the period since the last update.
The measure responds to longstanding demands from civil society organizations such as the School Meals Watch (ÓAÊ) and FIAN Brazil, which have advocated for restoring the program’s budget in line with inflation. According to ÓAÊ, the new amounts are consistent with projections presented in technical briefs prepared by the organization.
For the Right to School Meals
PNAE is one of the largest public school feeding programs in the world and serves approximately 40 million students daily in every municipality across the country. In addition to federal transfers, states and municipalities must supplement the funding with their own resources. However, more than 30% of municipalities in Brazil’s North and Northeast regions face difficulties in providing this additional funding.
The increase has a direct impact on guaranteeing the right to adequate and healthy school meals, explains Luana de Lima Cunha, a family health nutritionist and public policy advisor at FIAN Brazil.
“The school environment is where students spend most of their days, influencing, among other things, the formation of their eating habits. For many students, school meals are the main meal of the day,” she says.
In a statement, the Watch congratulated the federal government and emphasized that the increase is “more than fair — it is necessary” to ensure the quality of school meals and to comply with new program rules, which raised the minimum percentage of the budget allocated to purchasing food from family farmers to 45% and limited spending on processed and ultra-processed foods to 10%.
Campaign for a Permanent Annual Adjustment
Despite welcoming the increase, experts and civil society organizations stress the need to establish an automatic annual adjustment mechanism in law, based on food inflation. To this end, ÓAÊ launched the campaign “Adjust PNAE Always”.
“Ideally, these increases should not depend on the will of a minister, the president, or the political composition of Congress. It is essential to create an automatic annual adjustment mechanism for the per-student amounts,” says Mariana Santarelli, coordinator of ÓAÊ. Bills aimed at achieving this have already been introduced in Congress but are still under consideration.
Since 2010, the program has received only five funding increases — an average of one every three years. These adjustments have not always matched accumulated inflation, resulting in a gradual loss of purchasing power.
According to data from the Watch, fully offsetting the losses accumulated since 2010 would require a 90.3% increase. For example, the per-student, per-day amount for elementary and high school students — who account for 70% of beneficiaries — would need to rise to R$ 0.95 (US$ 0.18). With the current adjustment, the amount increased to R$ 0.57 (US$ 0.9).
According to the specialists, the “Adjust PNAE Always” campaign will continue advocating for legislation to ensure automatic annual updates, “consolidating PNAE as a state policy and as an effective guarantee of the human right to adequate food.”