In late Victorian Britain, “splendid isolation” was celebrated as a testament to the nation’s imperial strength. Today, seclusion from global events is not an indication of power but the world’s indifference to Brexit Britain’s inward turn. A decade ago, the UK would have been at the forefront of anti-poverty efforts. Now it offers the world neither money nor ideas. The upshot is that China, the EU and the US are part of the School Meals Coalition, led by developing nations to push for universal access to free school meals by 2030 as a response to rising hunger. Britain is nowhere to be seen.
The coalition was at centre of debates at Monday’s UN food summit in Rome. Rising global food prices have left much of the planet poorer. But the main UK parties avoid saying that the state can combat poverty. The Tory indifference to hardship in a cost of living crisis rests on spurious anti-government arguments. Sir Keir Starmer’s crippling electoral caution means he won’t back universal free school meals for state primary schools in England. It is political arrogance to think that Labour has a right to the support of progressive voters regardless of what the party says and does. Labour’s Sadiq Khan knows what’s at stake. The London mayor is offering the capital’s primary-school children free school meals from this September.
The British parliament is unplugged from global trends. This country, which imports about 45% of its food, is reshaping its farm sector via ruinous trade deals that will lower environmental standards. Many MPs don’t seem to think it important that the US president, Joe Biden, wants a return to across-the-board free school meals following the policy’s success during the pandemic. He thinks, correctly, that healthier school meals – with less sugar, more whole grains and lower sodium – will help to tackle rising obesity rates and recast his nation’s agricultural base.
This lesson has not been lost on developing nations struggling with obesity rates. The poor world is building up unpayable ecological debts due to extractive patterns of land use. Cheap food also comes at a cost; just ask sub-Saharan Africa, where a farm-based economy now imports 40% of its cereals – diverting $40bn in foreign exchange.
School meals can help overhaul food systems that are failing people and the planet. Relying more on national farming rather than importing from abroad boosts incomes and creates jobs. No country, says the Sustainable Financing Initiative for School Health and Nutrition (SFI), better illustrates the transformative role of school meals than Brazil. Its government feeds 40 million children via a procurement policy that sees up to a third of state funding for school meals spent on produce supplied by local family farms, to encourage less intensive agriculture.
With improvements to crop yields, reductions in food waste and changes in consumption patterns, 95% of people could live in countries that would be self-sufficient in food. A first step would be to back the SFI proposal to spend a $6bn (£4.6bn) a year to extend free school meals for poor nations. Creative financing could seed some of the money. In May, creditors wrote off $1bn of Ecuador’s debt in return for the country spending $12m annually to protect the Galapágos Islands. If debt relief can be mobilised to save a precious ecosystem, then why not for potentially transformative school meal spending? In Westminster there would be a riposte, but the rest of the world is not listening.
