This fall, children everywhere are heading back to school, where they will learn more than just the basics in math, science and reading. Students also will absorb lessons about food choices, depending on what they find in their school cafeterias. For parents, this could be bad news if unhealthy and processed foods dominate school lunch and breakfast trays. But in a growing number of schools across the country, there is good news: Farmers are also heading back to school. They are bringing their fresh and wholesome foods with them, teaching life-long lessons to children, such as there is more to vegetables than French fries and ketchup. This is not only good news for parents, but for everyone. By selling directly to schools, many farms are becoming more profitable. And by connecting students to local farmers, schools are imparting valuable lessons for whole communities: education about where food comes from and the importance of the farms that feed us all.
Can Farm-to-School Programs Make the Grade?
By Annette Nielsen
With childhood obesity and related health problems skyrocketing, a growing number of parents and advocates are turning to farm-to-school programs that bring local, nutritious farm foods to schools.
Not so long ago, Americans enjoyed meals prepared primarily from local ingredients. They knew how to preserve the family farm or garden harvest, and they regularly sat down to eat meals at home. Now we rarely know the farmer responsible for the food we buy in the supermarket. We’ve lost the connection to our food sources, an important part of our health and well-being.
Against this backdrop, the rising rate of childhood obesity has become a health topic of major concern. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the percentage of overweight adolescents and children has doubled since the 1970s. Some 4.7 million children between the ages of six and 17 are considered seriously overweight, contributing to a host of health conditions that were previously seen almost exclusively in adults, such as Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Although lack of exercise plays a large role, childhood nutrition is a major contributor to the epidemic. In a 1997 study, the CDC found that more than two-thirds of high school students (71 percent) did not eat the recommended five daily servings of fruits and vegetables.
To counteract this growing problem of poor childhood nutrition, many people are realizing the importance of bringing healthy foods back into our nation’s schools, including elected officials, public school administrators, medical professionals, teachers, concerned parents and sustainability advocates. For students from low-income families, especially, schools are a major source of daily nutrition. Major initiatives—such as school gardens and farm-to-school (also called farm-to-cafeteria) programs—are now underway to bring fresh healthy foods directly from local farms into schools across the country. These initiatives promote the use of locally produced foods, reconnect students to food sources and often provide education related to agriculture, cooking and nutrition.
Cultivating a Taste for Fresh Farm Foods 
A successful school garden program can be found in Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard in California, which started in 1995. Waters, a cookbook author and chef, is known for her creative use of organic and sustainable ingredients at her restaurant Chez Panisse. Through her Chez Panisse Foundation, Waters collaborated with teachers and community members to bring a garden to an abandoned lot adjacent to King Middle School in Berkeley.
The mission of the Edible Schoolyard is to create and sustain an organic garden that is integrated into the school’s curriculum and lunch program. Marsha Guerrero, director of special projects for the Chez Panisse Foundation, says that even if a cafeteria serves good, nutritious food, it doesn’t necessarily mean the children will try it. Children need to be participants in the process. If they grow it, they will eat it.
Students at the King Middle School help design and farm the garden, and what they grow reflects the diversity of the school and the community. They learn to prepare the food they’ve grown in an onsite kitchen and enjoy eating the fruits of their labor. The learning continues in the classroom, where the students see their work in the garden carried through to history and science lessons. Parents are invited to visit the school, learning more about how the food is grown and prepared. This kind of integrated and cross-disciplinary approach has played a positive role in the willingness of children to try new types of nutritious food in the school cafeteria.
“Ownership is the key to changing behavior and choices that students make,” says Rebecca Sparks, the Food Program Coordinator in the Department of Nutrition at New York University. “The more hands-on experience students have with healthful foods, the more likely they are to eat that way. When a child owns the experience of working with food, when they see where their food comes from, either from learning how to cook or garden, they’re more likely to eat that food.”
Remaking the Cafeteria Lunch
For many of our nation’s students, the school lunch program provides the majority of their day’s nutrition. The National School Lunch Act of 1946 initiated a federal role in school lunches, as a national security measure to safeguard the health of American children and encourage the domestic consumption of agricultural commodities. Because school meals are supported by federal tax dollars (over $5 billion annually), the government has minimized food costs by using surplus commodities and by sourcing foods from numerous locations. This makes the job of school food service directors easier, as they can order from one supplier, and the economies of scale minimize the cost of the food. As a result, many schools supply prepared foods that only need to be heated and served, allowing them to also minimize labor costs.
In contrast, farm-to-school programs work to connect school food service staff with local farms that can directly supply fresh, healthier products. But it’s not easy to get such programs started. School cafeterias face budgetary constraints. Food service staff may not have the skills needed to work with raw ingredients, and there may not be adequate equipment and sufficient space within the cafeteria to effectively prep, cook and store these foods. “Probably the most important thing for getting a farm-to-school program going is a partnership of key stakeholders who share a clear understanding of goals and the best strategies for reaching them,” says Jennifer Wilkins, who directs the Cornell University Farm to School Program. “The key partners include the food service director (dining director at the college level), area farmers, distributors, school administrators, teachers, parents and students.”
Once these partnerships are established, the school food service staff needs to identify the sources of local foods, select recipes and plan their menus to reflect the availability of local and seasonal food, Wilkins adds. However, there are also many logistical details that need to be worked out, such as how farm products will be transported to the school and stored. “For continued success incorporating local foods into the food service, it is important to establish a dependable delivery system, assess the potential impact on labor and market the changes to students” and parents, says Wilkins.
Making Farm-to-School a Reality
When schools buy their products from local farms, they not only improve the quality of their meals, but they also help to establish important community relationships between consumers, farmers and the land. Marion Kalb, the director of the National Farm to School Program—which offers legal assistance and models for purchasing arrangements—notes that farm-to-school programs first took hold in areas with longer growing seasons, such as California and Florida, but also in areas where processing and storage capabilities existed for farm products. Today more than 200 colleges and 1,000 public school districts in 35 states have initiated farm-to-school programs.
Kalb sees the 2007 Farm Bill as a vehicle for change, where parents and community supporters of farm-to-school programs can play a major role by weighing in with their elected officials. Advocates of healthy diets urge support for pieces in the farm bill that allow geographic preferences in school food purchasing and increased funding for Community Food Projects, a USDA program that helps low-income communities gain access to fresh nutritious food. Farm-to-school programs are often supported with this type of one-time grant, but since 1996, funds for the program were capped at $5 million. A larger allocation in the 2007 Farm Bill would increase the amount of startup funds available for farm-to-school programs across the country.
Parents can also play a major role in demanding change. Amy Kalafa, a filmmaker from Wesson, Connecticut, and Susan Rubin, a former dentist turned nutritionist, collaborated on a film called Two Angry Moms!, which portrays the positive influence that school gardens have and the importance of education in empowering children to make healthful food choices. The duo emphasizes how important it is for parents to get involved. Parents can find out what is being served in the school cafeteria by having lunch with their children, for instance. They should also call on members of congress to support legislation that takes advertising and junk food out of schools, as well as a farm bill that supports healthy diets.
In 2004, Congress established a requirement for all school districts that participate in the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act—schools that receive federal funding for child nutrition programs including school breakfast, school lunch, after-school snack and summer food programs—to create and implement wellness policies by the start of the 2006-2007 school year, adhering to minimum requirements for nutrition and physical activity. This is another vehicle for change, and parents should ask to participate in the process of forming school wellness policies.
Many schools have now adopted policies that address the issue of fundraisers, too. Discouraging fundraisers that promote low-nutrient foods—replacing them instead with local farm products—is another way for schools and parents to create awareness of local food sources while providing healthy alternatives.
By working together, our nation’s parents, citizens and elected officials can help to make farm-to-school a reality for all of our country’s students. By making a place for local farms on our school menus, we accomplish many things: fresh and nutritious food for our kids and reliable markets for our farmers and producers. As students eat more nutritious foods, they are healthier and better able to focus on their school work.And as they eat food with better taste that has traveled fewer miles, and they learn about and make a connection to local farms, they gain the ability to make healthful food choices—increasing the chance that they will grow into healthy and productive adults.
Want to help make the farm-to-school connection? Here are steps you can take.
- Ask your congress members to support a farm bill that makes fresh and healthy foods available in your school and community. Click here to learn more.
- Start, or volunteer in, a school, home or community garden to teach children how food makes it from the seed to the table. Ask your school to incorporate lessons about farms and nutrition into their curriculum.
- Participate in forming the federally mandated wellness policy at your local school. Ask your school board to adopt a policy of purchasing locally grown foods for school meals and events.
- Educate children about where their food comes from by taking them to farm events and tours. Introduce them to farm fresh foods from CSA farms, farmers’ markets and pick-your-own fruit and vegetable farms.
- Support legislation that takes junk food and junk food advertising out of schools, replacing it with fresh food from local farms.
This fall, ask your members of Congress to support a farm and food bill that allows schools, low-income communities and all Americans to eat healthier foods. Learn more!
