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HGSF Working Paper Series #12 Osun State Home Grown School Feeding Program: Improving Sustainability through Increased Local Farmer Participation 

In Nigeria, Osun State is the only state that has a school feeding programme (SFP) due to the strong insistence of local communities and support from current state government leaders. However, the programme’s major challenges include securing ongoing funding and increasing local smallholder farmer participation. It is believed that improvements in these two areas will enable the Osun programme to be sustainable in the future. The eventual hope is that the Nigerian federal government will roll out legislation for a national school feeding program and Osun State’s successful model will be the standard.

This report contains the findings and recommendations from a study performed by MBA students from the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business in Spring 2012. The Berkeley team’s role was to assist Partnership for Child Development in determining ways to increase the integration of local farmers into the SFP. The team explored various options that allow the SFP to accomplish this goal while ensuring no disruption to the delivery of nutritious meals to the schools. Two weeks of fieldwork in-country included visits to numerous state government ministries, public schools, farmer’s associations and food distribution centers within the six health zones of Osun State.