Successful initiatives involving school feeding in the cities of Copenhagen, New York, Maceió and other municipalities in Alagoas state (Brazil) were presented during the panel “Food in schools: fostering local food systems and biodiversity use”, coordinated by Embrapa Foods and Territories and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO Brazil). The event was part of the 8th Milan Global Forum on Urban Food Policy (8th MUFPP), which takes place in Rio de Janeiro, from October 17th to 19th. With the theme “Food to Feed the Climate Justice: urban food solutions for a fairer world”, the Forum was held for the first time in Latin America. The purpose of the Panel was to debate initiatives with potential to be shared and implemented in distinct countries, contributing to the development of people and territories. “The panel reinforced the importance of initiatives emerging from cities around the world, including Brazilian municipalities, and pointed to the urgent need to build and consolidate an approach favoring people and agriculture, in which sustainability and healthiness are key. In the case of school meals, the participation of local products is increasing and has allowed not only impacts on food education, health and nutrition, but also on the socio-productive inclusion of urban and peri-urban farmers”, observes Ricardo Elesbão, head of Research, Development and Innovation of Embrapa Foods and Territories. The director of the New York City Food Policy Office, Kate MacKenzie, spoke about actions taken by the city to facilitate access to healthy school meals. The focus of the developed program is based on the connection between sustainable habits, responsible consumption and the role of the community. Thus, it seeks to involve both educators and children, as well as their families and farmers, involving the entire community, in order to also value the local production system, prioritizing the purchase of food grown in New York state. Citing the Food Forward NYC plan, a strategic vision of how the city can expand access to healthy foods for the population, MacKenzie said the goal is to "integrate health, climate and equity into the urban food agenda”. The representative of FAO Brazil, Rafael Zavala, highlighted the importance of actions, which are already being carried out in the country, in order to give preference to the purchase of food from smallholders for school meals, in addition to efforts to strengthen the food identity and territories, so that children also learn to value their cities traditions. He also mentioned the school feeding monitoring program in Brazil, which involves about 3,000 nutritionists, responsible for public school menus. Professor Bent Egberg Mikkelsen, from the University of Copenhagen, showed initiatives that can be done in Denmark, Brazil or any other country, according to him, to teach children to understand food systems, keeping them engaged with sustainable food. “Young students can be co-creators of fairer and more sustainable food systems that we aim to promote”, he emphasized while illustrating the value of food literacy programs. The business intelligence analyst at Sebrae Alagoas, Harrison Freitas, presented the School Cooks Contest, held in the Alagoas state by Sebrae, with the participation of Embrapa, Senac, WWF and 21 municipalities, and the support of FIDA. The purpose of the contest is to encourage the purchase of smallholders’ products and improve the quality of the school menu in the municipalities that are part of the “Entrepreneurial Cities” Program, also valuing the work of lunch ladies and nutritionists. From 2019 to 2022, the contest, which is in its fourth edition, has already trained more than 2,800 cooks. There are 360 cooks participating in the initiative, with 50 trained nutritionists and more than 700 schools directly impacted, in 21 municipalities, and the winning recipes are selected for the schools' menu. The representative of Instituto Comida do Amanhã Francine Xavier joined the debate, addressing the importance of thinking about school meals from production to distribution and consumption. According to her, initiatives such as the ones reviewed in the Panel demonstrate how important it is for society and governments to support this cause. Xavier mentioned the Brazilian school feeding program, which promotes the inclusion of smallholders and traditional peoples, contributing to local development, circularity, food and nutrition education, and guaranteeing the right to food for all people. “We are able to transform society with this tool” she said, recalling that there are great challenges for the implementation of this policy, mainly due to the territorial dimensions of Brazil, which is how to make the valorization leave the paper and enter the reality of the counties. “The debate showed us that strengthening school feeding policies and programs is also about boosting local economies through food procurement, strengthening the connection between food and health and, above all, giving dignity to all people involved in the virtuous circle that is formed, such as small producers, cooks and thousands of students”, says Gustavo Porpino, analyst at Embrapa Foods and Territories, who coordinated the Panel. According to him, “school feeding is also an educational tool, capable of changing children's food choices, to be healthier and to make each student an agent of change, in the sense of promoting a fairer and more sustainable food system based on quality local food”. Held on October 17, the panel was supported by Embrapa Food Agroindustry, Instituto Comida do Amanhã and Sebrae Alagoas. It relied on resources from the Dom Hélder Câmara Project (PDHC), coordinated by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply (Mapa) and co-financed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (FIDA). The supervisor of Innovation and Technology at Embrapa Foods and Territories, Aluísio Goulart, highlights the importance of partnerships to overcome the challenges and reach the global goals of sustainable food. “Integration and cooperation are essential. It is not possible to build public policies for food without this perception. In other words, it is necessary to combine the efforts of public, private and third sector initiatives”, he emphasizes. “This is the objective of participating in the Forum with the Panel in which Embrapa and partners shared national experiences and joint proposals that can be configured in public policies”, he adds.