The Food Acquisition Program (PAA) will receive, from this Tuesday (18), proposals to buy food from family farmers and family farmers. Proposals must be sent by March 20 to the National Supply Company (Conab) through the PAANET system. The funds for purchase total R $ 500 million.
Acquisitions will be made in the purchase mode with simultaneous donation (CDs), where food will be intended to supply popular restaurants and solidarity kitchens, as well as other equipment of the social assistance network and public food and nutritional security equipment.
Proposals submitted to PAA must have at least 50% female participation. In addition, priority will be given to agroecological and organic projects, as well as the proposals with the participation of indigenous people, quilombola communities and traditional (PCTs) and agrarian reform settlements.
Each supplier organization could reach the limit of R $ 1.5 million per year, and the limit per family farmer is R $ 15 thousand.
The initiative is from the Ministry of Development and Social Assistance, Family and Hunger Fighting (MDS) and is supported by the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Family Farming (MDA).
“On the one hand, the transfer of income and the other the food complement, with healthy food of family farming,” said Minister of Development and Social Assistance, Family and Hunger Fighting, Wellington Dias, during the launch of this year’s program, in Brasilia.
During the event, Teixeira recalled that food purchasing programs were practically extinct in the previous government, which was one of the elements that contributed to the country to return to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) hunger map (FAO) .
“They ended the food acquisition program. President Lula took over with 33 million Brazilians on the hunger map, because they are not government policies, they are state policies that were disjointed, and this resulted in the inclusion of Brazil on the FAO hunger map, ”he said.
The minister said that one of the Federal Government’s strategies was to recover public purchasing programs that, combined with other public policies, such as microcredit, the financing of agricultural machinery and the increase of the National Family Farming Program (Pronaf), helped in the resumption of public policy.
“Public purchasing programs have the virtue of increasing food production, while encouraging farmers to produce and makes us be able to perform a short food and consumption cycle, as these foods will be produced and consumed in them regions where these farmers are, ”he said. “We want to expand those who produce food in Brazil,” he said.
PAA is one of Conab’s strategies for promoting food and nutritional security, with a view to promoting family farming, rural development with income and employment, contributing to the reduction of rural exodus and the generation of capital in Agricultural Sector.
Conab President Edegar Pretto recalled that the program is an important instrument for the eradication of hunger in the country.
The last call of the program acquired and distributed 1,132 tons of food. Of this total, 40% of purchases were family farmers from the Northeast region; 19% of the northern region; In the Southeast were 13%; In the south, 21% and 7% in the Midwest.
“We are consolidating the return of PAA. We are here to say that the food acquisition program is not only a reality, but a great instrument to help produce more food in our country, ”said Pretto.
