The UK-Brazil Policy Learning Exchange on Food and Nutrition is a collaboration between the Institute of Development Studies and the Food Foundation in London, and funded by the New Venture Fund.
The overall goal of the programme is to enable mutual learning on food and nutrition security policy between parliamentarians in the UK and Brazil, as well as other policy and civil society actors working on food and nutrition issues. This will be based on a series of products outlining best practices in food and nutrition policy in both countries, particularly those tackling malnutrition in all its forms. The INFORMAS Healthy Food Environment Policy Index methodology will be used to produce a review of Brazil’s food and nutrition policies, and a series of briefs will showcase how Brazil’s approach to food policy governance impacts national food policy on food and nutritional security outcomes.
The project team include Mariana Santarelli (Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro) and Luciana Marques Vieira (University of the Sinos Valley, Rio Grande do Sul/FGV University, São Paulo) in Brazil; as well as IDS and Food Foundation colleagues.
The IDS-Brazil researchers will focus on showcasing Brazil’s food policy framework and programmes, including school meals, community restaurants, measurement of food security, and breastfeeding support, protection and promotion. The Food Foundation will produce briefs which showcase the UK’s experience of developing the sugar tax, and of policies which regulate the marketing of unhealthy foods to children.
This project represents an emerging trend of multidirectional learning in development cooperation, where developed countries like the UK can learn from Brazil and vice-versa.
This project will generate an evidence base which advances understandings of the factors that block or enable political commitment to be translated to successful food and nutrition security policies, which are fundamental for meeting the objectives of the Agenda 2030.