The global food system is failing on multiple fronts. With more than 2.6 billion people unable to afford a healthy diet, over 500 million are expected to be chronically undernourished by 2030. Worse, at a time when meeting future demand requires a 50% increase in food production, food-system productivity is actually declining, owing partly to rising climate risks. Agrifood industries are not only driving biodiversity loss, land degradation, and a global water crisis, but also generating almost one-third of global greenhouse-gas emissions.
School-meal programmes could brighten this picture. Current annual spending on them stands at $84 billion (2.7 billion baht) worldwide, reaching 466 million children -- an increase of $36 billion since 2022. When world leaders met in Brazil last week for the Global Summit of the School Meals Coalition, they rightly celebrated this progress. Countries from Canada to Indonesia are launching national programmes, creating one of the world's largest social safety nets.
But school meals are about more than expanding welfare provisions. When designed properly, they represent a powerful opportunity to transform entire food systems, achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2 ("Zero Hunger"), drive economic growth, and advance climate and environmental goals. As I argue in a new report with the World Food Programme, realising this potential requires moving beyond social policy to embed school meals in industrial strategies, with procurement serving as a key lever of change.
For decades, the dominant economic-policy approach has been to "fix" markets only after they have already failed. Hence, governments and international aid programmes tend to provide meals in situations of acute need, while rarely challenging the underlying incentives shaping food systems. Public procurement typically rewards low costs and risk minimisation, entrenching short-termism at the expense of a longer-term investment perspective.
The primary beneficiaries have been large agrifood corporations, with the entire sector exhibiting high levels of financialisation and concentration of market power. As a result, many children are served food that is high in calories but low in taste or nutrients, and opportunities available to local, more ecologically sustainable producers remain limited.
Siloed governance reinforces the problem. With education ministries generally overseeing school meals, existing programmes are rarely connected to broader industrial strategies, agricultural policies, or climate initiatives. Billions of dollars are being spent annually without any serious effort to leverage the transformative potential of public investment. That is why more than 150 Nobel and World Food Prize laureates have called for a "moonshot approach" to fix the global food system.
They are right to do so. But I would add that success requires a mission-oriented approach, not just another production push. School meals should be recognised as public infrastructure capable of shaping markets and stimulating innovation throughout the value chain. The evidence shows that returns can be huge, ranging from $7 to $35 for every dollar invested, with the benefits shared across the health, education, social protection, and local agriculture sectors.
However, the even bigger opportunity lies in public procurement's market-shaping power. Stable demand from school-meal programmes can encourage farmers and suppliers to invest in greener, healthier practices. Demand-led growth creates employment along wider value chains. According to some estimates, more than 1,500 direct jobs are created for every 100,000 students fed, plus many more in farming, transportation, food preparation, and monitoring.
Meal procurement can also help catalyse innovation in nutrition, regenerative agriculture, and circular-economy techniques, as well as accelerating the growth of newer markets. Alternative proteins (such as plant-based and lab-grown options), for example, are projected to grow to $417 billion globally by 2034.
While a growing number of countries are implementing school-meal programmes that do integrate economic, health, and sustainability goals through strategic procurement, many others are falling short. To unlock the full power of school meals, governments must embed them in mission-oriented industrial strategies.
The first step is to position school meals as drivers of innovation, sustainability, and decent work -- not as costs but as investments that will generate multiplier effects across health, agriculture, and local economies. Success requires a whole-of-government approach that engages ministries of finance, industry, agriculture, health, and education. For example, Brazil's National School Feeding Programme has been explicitly integrated into its broader mission-oriented industrial strategy, which emphasizes sustainable agribusiness value chains that contribute to food security. At least 30% of budgets must go toward products from local family farms, and the programme also offers incentives for sustainable land-use practices and support for contract bidding. As a result, the gross production value for participating family farms has already increased by one-third.
The second step is to redesign procurement and institutions. Procurement must focus on local, sustainable, and inclusive supply chains, linking school meals to family farms, small and medium-size enterprises, and agroecological producers. Contracts should reward outcomes -- nutrition, sustainability, and economic impact -- rather than the lowest cost. They also should come with conditions to align private-sector behaviour with public goals. Scotland has unlocked the benefits of universal free school meals through procurement reform, sustainability and fair work requirements, and processes that allow councils to collaborate in bulk buying.
Third, policymakers must embrace their role as market-shapers. School-meal programmes can be platforms for innovation, but only with broad stakeholder participation. For example, Sweden's innovation agency has launched a mission to provide "school meals that are tasty, healthy, and sustainable" to all students by 2030 and is prototyping solutions in collaboration with students, farmers, civil society, and politicians, linking procurement to its National Food Strategy and carbon-neutral welfare goals.
The fourth step is to strengthen public-sector capabilities. Mission success requires dynamic state capacity, not risk-averse compliance. Governments must empower agencies to experiment, adapt, and shape markets, rather than simply procuring services.
Lastly, governments must pursue global cooperation. International trade and investment rules may need to be reformed to enable food-system transformations. The G20, climate conferences, the World Bank, and the School Meals Coalition should position school meals as a powerful green-industrial-policy instrument as they look for ways to support governments in building state capacity and creating fiscal space.
School meals represent an enormous opportunity to move beyond incremental progress toward transformational change. The question is not whether we can afford to invest in school meals, but whether we can afford not to harness their full potential.
Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).