Do leite em pó à agricultura familiar: a trajetória histórica do Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar no Brasil

Abstract

This work intends to understand how the studies about hunger and school alimentation realized during the decades of 1930 and 1940 and the international intervention influenced the National Program of School Alimentation (Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar - PNAE) consolidated in 2009 through the Law N° 11.947. The proposition to create a national policy of feeding, elaborated by health professional, in special by physicians, comes from the need to face the diet problems as a result of hunger and malnutrition. From this social-historical context, researchers in those decades gave the scientific grounding for a broad governmental plan, whereupon was the School Lunch Program (Programa de Merenda Escolar). The Program of School Alimentation focused in the development of a complex system, due which we choose to realize a conjunctural analysis of the facts that happened in Brazil, emphasizing the decades of 1930, 1950 and 2000. The approach of such issue, at first sight, does not represent a direct relation to History; however, it shows its relevance as the hunger, the agricultural production and the own PNAE, represent the relation among important themes of Brazilian historiography. The earth problems, the alimentation and the governmental policies that goes beyond the decades and the own name of the Brazilian oldest public policy cannot be seen with praise. Through the more than 70 years, the Program has its development pointed by the straight relation with the Brazilian political history and the social problems due the difficulties to attend the population nutritional needs, which are still present in many regions nowadays. The questioning from different disciplines in front of the presence of hunger in Brazil and world connects the health, agricultural, social, historical, political and economic sciences. In this work, it will focus only in the research related to the Social Historical perspective. The studies about public policies in Brazil are represented by the theoretical and empirical contribution, contemporary, a field of analyses of multiple dimensions and topics. In this scope, the present study has the purpose of analyzing the Brazilian policy of school alimentation. The general objective of the present work is verifying the process of historical constitution of the National Program of School Alimentation (PNAE), through the analysis of the social-political conjunctures of the Government in three decades (1930 – 1950 – 2000) according to the social demands.