LOS BAÑOS, Philippines — A new policy brief from the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) says that large-scale public spending on school feeding in Southeast Asia could produce a strong dual benefit: it could help combat child malnutrition as well as create steady, high-volume markets for local smallholder farmers.
The publication, “Integrating Smallholder Agriculture into School Feeding Programs: Addressing the Agri-Health Disconnect,” examines how institutional procurement can advance child nutrition while alleviating rural poverty.
Based on comparative field research in both Malaysia and Indonesia, the brief looks at Malaysia’s Rancangan Makanan Tambahan (RMT) and Indonesia’s Makan Bergizi Gratis (MBG). Dr. Bima Indra from Universitas Muhammadiyah Jakarta did the study with guidance from Dr. Juliana Jalaludin from Universiti Putra Malaysia and Dr. Dewi Purnamawati from Universitas Muhammadiyah Jakarta. The SEARCA Student Mobility Grant supported this work.
In the case of school kitchens, there is a need for regular bulk deliveries, formal invoicing, food safety certificates, and payment terms deferred over 30 to 60 days, whereas smallholder farmers face a completely different situation. Since they have only a small amount of land, keep informal records, and have an immediate need for cash to cover the next planting season, smallholders are regularly excluded from public tenders in favor of large commercial wholesalers.
In order to dismantle these barriers, the brief outlines four actionable policy strategies:
Set up aggregators and cooperatives that are led by farmers so that they can combine local harvests, fulfill institutional demand, and deal with formal tax, invoicing, and quality certification requirements.
Implement state-backed revolving funds that pay farmers immediately upon crop delivery, insulating smallholders while aggregators navigate standard government reimbursement cycles.
Move away from strict, centralized menus and instead adopt nutritional equivalence frameworks; kitchen staff should be allowed to replace the prescribed vegetables (for example, using amaranth instead of cabbage), as this helps stabilize food costs and incorporates local agricultural surpluses.
Invest in community-level temperature-controlled storage and logistics to minimize postharvest losses and preserve vital micronutrients from farm to school tray.
The brief states that school feeding schemes should not be seen merely as large-scale catering activities, but rather as long-term investments in human capital with the potential to yield broader benefits for rural development.
It asks national nutrition agencies, the ministries of education, and the regional agricultural departments to carry out pilot programs for local procurement systems that combine community-based aggregation, financing mechanisms, menu flexibility, more effective nutritional monitoring, and investment in the cold chain.
This initiative is in line with SEARCA’s 12th Five-Year Development Plan: SUSTAIN Southeast Asia, emphasizing academic mobility as a key means of turning cross-border field evidence into significant regional policy.