Need help connecting?

At the Farm Aid site there is a Farm-to-School 101 Toolkit that can guide your efforts to establish relationships between your school and local farmers. The toolkit outlines 7 steps for getting started, gives some interesting case studies, has a FAQ section to help brainstorm and has a list of tools and resources.

What's good for lunch?

We all want to eat better and sometimes it’s easy to get into a rut and be bored with the same old foods. Here’s an article from the New York Times that is called The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating. I found I actually had five of them on hand, but I’m going to stock up on the others. They’re all easy to find and easy to eat. In fact, the original article at Men’s Health gives more details and interesting ideas about how to incorporate them easily into your – and perhaps your school’s – diet

Beginning farmers

At the blog Beginning Farmers, there is a wealth of information available to all kinds of farmers as well as educators and supporters of farms. They offer a wide variety of information with special emphasis on sustainable farming, organic farming, direct marketing and local food systems. This is a good resource for farmers and for others who want to know about them. It has a wealth of articles that would be great for student research.

Have you heard about the FoodHub?

What's that? Their site, live November 2nd, defines it as a virtual pantry for Pacific Northwest food buyers and sellers. This is an Ecotrust project made possible in part by funding from the WK Kellogg Foundation, Bullitt Foundation, Newman's Own Foundation, USDA's Rural Business Enhancement Grant (RBEG) program, the Annenberg Foundation, Eugene Water & Electric Board, Farm Aid, Bill Healy Foundation, the Oregon Department of Agriculture, Russell Family Foundation, and the Washington State Department of Agriculture. They are holding informative sessions this month to introduce the new system and get feedback from everyone. Here are some of the questions they anticipate being able to answer in these sessions:

• How is FoodHub different from or similar to other resources such as the Puget Sound Food Network, FarmsReach, MarketMaker, or EProduceSales? Where are the synergies between and among these various tools and you?
• Who is the intended audience for FoodHub? What problem was it created to solve? What is its geographic scope? Who are the partners and funders behind FoodHub?
• Who is Ecotrust? Didn’t they used to produce a Guide to Local and Seasonal Products; whatever happened to that?
• How will FoodHub help me serve my constituents? What is its larger vision/mission?
  What role can I play in influencing FoodHub’s features and services so that it best serves me and my constituents? How will it evolve over time?

Everyone is more than welcome to come. Here are the dates and locations for the sessions:
Wednesday, October 28th
Time: 10-11:30 am
Sodo Park by Herban Feast
3200 1st Avenue South, Suite 100
Seattle, WA 98134

Wednesday, October 28th
Time: 2:30-4:00 pm
Skagit Valley Food Co-op
Community Meeting Room, 3rd Floor, Room #309
202 S. 1st St.
Mt. Vernon, WA

Thursday, October 29th
Time: 10:00-11:30 am
Grand Central Baking (Pioneer Square, business office)
214 1st Ave S
Seattle, WA

Thursday, October 29th
Time: 1:30-3:00 pm
Shorebank Pacific
2720 3rd AveSeattle, WA 98121

As space is limited at all venues, please RSVP to Lola Milholland at lola@ecotrust.org.

Why we need to change school food

The San Fransico Chronicle published an article last week that really underlines the problems with the state of our schools' cafeterias. It highlights the testimony of Chef Anthony Geraci before a congressional panel Thursday. He recounts his experiences as a school chef and why we need to change how we feed children at school and why we need school gardens.
The experience "forever changes the way a kid looks at food," said Geraci. He says that too many children only know fruit as a flavor, that they have not experienced fruit as an actual food. Schools don't have kitchens and cooks, childhood obesity and related diseases are soaring, and we are paying to process our school food in ways that add expense in both dollars and results. The food that is given to children at school is often over processed and unappetizing leading into this vicious cycle of bad eating habits and higher costs.

Building 'Tactical Teams'

The USDA has announced the new ‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ initiative. This article in the Chicago Tribune gives a nice analysis of this new program with lots of useful links. The official USDA press release gives more details and even an official USDA YouTube video on the USDA Youtube Channel.

An interesting read

The School Food Revolution: Public Food and the Challenge of Sustainable Development is a new book about the current debates that revolve around the school cafeteria: nutrition, sustainability, social inclusion, economics, etc.
To the authors it it is becoming clear that the school food service can provide many benefits. The book examines many of the fashionable trends in foods and schools and analyzes the results that have actually been produced in diverse communities including programs like the UN’s Home Grown Program.

Is there a free lunch?

I wanted to pass along this article from Gourmet online about the Red Cloud Indian School, their history of food self-sufficiency and the path to their current lunch service under the National School Lunch Program. I think the author does a good job of describing the complexity around things like child labor issues under the old system and decisions based on what’s available through the commodity program in the new system. I think it’s worth a read.

One interesting passage challenges a common belief that cutting out unhealthy snacks and vending machines will reduce revenue in schools, or that they’ll just bring snacks from somewhere else:

“Then, three years ago, Red Cloud administrators made the difficult decision to eliminate soda pop, candy, and processed snacks in campus vending machines, and that had expensive repercussions. “Our high school students used to hang out in their lounge eating chips and soda for lunch,” explains school superintendent Robert Brave Heart Sr. “When we took out the machines, those students starting showing up in the cafeteria, and that increased the number of lunches we had to provide every day.”

(Note that for the article presents increased lunch participation was an increased expense for the school, but for most, increased participation means more reimbursable lunches, more paid lunches sold, and more money to put back into improving the lunch program)

The article mentions Senator Harkin and the Farm Bill, but doesn’t bring up the Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR). The CNR is the federal law that is updated every five years and is where the nutrition guidelines and reimbursement rates for the National School Lunch Program are set, among other child nutrition decisions. It is currently being debated and hearings are being held in DC now.

The National Farm-to-School Network has partnered with Community Food Security Coalition and School Food FOCUS to summarize the Farm to School Initiatives and their policy priorities for the current Child Nutrition Reauthorization. Some of their priorities are specifically to support farm to school programs, and others are for general improvement of the lunch program by higher reimbursement amounts, funding food service training, strengthening nutrition standards and improved nutrition education. Their document “Nourishing the Nation One Tray at a Time” contains a good overview and history of farm to school, the Child Nutrition Act and then outlines the policy priorities to make it easy for people to contact their legislators to make their opinions known.

Peninsula and South Sound Farm-to-Table Regional Workshop

There's a great event coming up next Monday, May 11th, to bring together farmers with potential buyers for their food. As farm-to-school programs become more popular, I hear from many school nutrition services directors and buyers that they love the idea of supporting local farms and providing more fresh food for their students, but are having trouble finding farms to buy from. This event will provide a friendly, fun and casual venue for meeting with farms and learning about local purchasing.

It's the Peninsula and South Sound Farm-to-Table Regional Workshop at the Little Creek Casino Resort in Shelton, WA from 12:30-5pm, attendance is free.

Light refreshments will be provided by local farms.

We invite you to strengthen our local food system by connecting farmers with buyers and discussing new market opportunities.

Contact Information: Mark McIntyre

The enormous impact of buying local

What are the benefits of using local food sources for schools?
We may just be scratching the surface of understanding the potential advantages according to a study being conducted by Ecotrust and Oregon State University. Preliminary results show that money spent on such programs has great implications in the community. In fact, they estimate that every dollar spent in a grant from Kaiser Permanente to two local school districts resulted in $1.87 of economic activity that reverberated throughout most sectors of the economy, not just in the agricultural industries.
That’s because a multiplier effect includes the impact of buying local food as well as the impact of those food suppliers spending the cash on materials and services in turn. When Portland and Gervais school districts were given funds through a grant from Kaiser they were motivated to reallocate those funds to the local economy. Whereas previously they may have been able to buy food a bit more cheaply, they hadn’t always been able to buy local. With the grant they bought local, sometimes paying slightly more, but the result was a huge boost to the local economy. According to the article in Capital Press Agricultural News, the $66,200 grant generated a total of $225,900.

Make the connection with Farmers Markets

An article in the Bend Weekly demonstrates how local schools have been able to take advantage of the farmer's market to find new opportunities to establish relationships with local producers. This may be a fantastic way to connect with local farmers and to learn about what products they will have available shortly. (Bend Weekly)

What does "Processed" Mean in the USDA Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Program?

This article from Civil Eats tracks the latest developments relating to the policy question of what foods are considered “processed” for the USDA Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Program. School food was apparently the subject of some last minute rule changes by President Bush--which means it's considered important enough for such maneuvers!

The Battle Over Sliced Apples: New York Senators Gillibrand and Aubertine Take Secretary Vilsack to Task on School Food

In a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, Senators Gillibrand and Aubertine said:

The Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program requires these snacks be served outside of standard school meal programs. Therefore, it is illogical to prohibit local produce as “processed” simply because it is in a form that can be served to students outside of the lunchroom.

New USDA Director Vilsack: Thoughts on School Food

From the Washington Post interview, the new director of USDA, Tom Vilsack, spoke with staff writer Jane Black. Here are the parts relating to school meals:

... There are ways we can go do a better job of educating young moms and dads about the vital role they have as the child's first teacher. I think there are ways in which we can partner with local school districts and states to do a better job to provide nutrition options at school. It's our responsibility to get this health-care crisis under control.

What specific ideas do you have about how to move forward to improve nutrition in school lunches?

Part of my responsibility is to find people who share my concern and have more expertise than I do. People we nominate will be people who understand this issue and have the desire to effect change. The specifics of how we can do this will come from the experts. My job is to listen to the president, who is the ultimate vision maker, articulate his vision to the people who work in this department and add my two cents' worth. The vision is, he wants more nutritious food in schools.

Will local foods play a part?

In a perfect world, everything that was sold, everything that was purchased and consumed would be local, so the economy would receive the benefit of that. But sometimes that stresses the capacity: the production capacity or the distribution capacity. Especially since we don't have yet a very sophisticated distribution system for locally grown food. One thing we can do is work on strategies to make that happen. It can be grant programs, loan programs, it can be technical assistance.

Local Farms-Healthy Kids heats up!

Hi, Rebecca here. Now this is exciting! To learn more about what you can do to support Local Farms-Healthy Kids visit www.environmentalpriorities.org/local-farms

Bill aims to put more farm-fresh foods on school lunch menus

Thursday, January 10, 2008
Last updated 11:59 a.m. PT

By JENNIFER LANGSTON
P-I REPORTER

Kia Kozun knew that lugging 40-pound boxes of vegetables single-handedly from a Sequim farm to a friend's bistro wasn't entirely sustainable.

The outreach manager for Nash's Organic Produce wanted to sell to school cafeterias. For five months, she borrowed a certified kitchen to shred cabbage and wash dirty lettuce.

Because of insurance and liability standards, the payments flowed through a maze of regional and national distributors, who all took a cut.

"No one says kids shouldn't have healthy food in schools, but what we're up against is a really huge industrial food system," said Kozun, who recently took a break from those time-sucking efforts to supply a school district five miles away.
Harvesting carrots
Zoom Gilbert W. Arias / P-I
Eloina Najera stacks carrots harvested this month at Nash's Organic Produce in Sequim in Clallam County as co-worker Adam Mihalik tosses others onto a discard pile.

Legislation to be proposed in Olympia next week could catapult Washington to the forefront of national efforts to get more farm-fresh, locally grown food into lunches at schools and at other institutions. It borrows from piecemeal efforts in other states, but would go further.

Farm-to-school efforts are multiplying as parents worry about food safety, states look to cut greenhouse gases, and environmentalists try to preserve land by bolstering farm economies. There have been relatively few successes in Washington, which the proposed legislation aims to change.

"I don't think there's another state that's putting together such a comprehensive soup-to-nuts package," said Thomas Forster, policy director for the national Community Food Security Coalition.

Changes pending in the federal farm bill would clearly allow public schools to prefer local growers. In the past, the Agriculture Department has maintained that that kind of favoritism is illegal.

If the federal language passes, it would open to the door for states and local school districts to overhaul bidding and procurement rules that require government agencies to buy the cheapest food.

"School nutritionists should have the discretion to say, 'I want to buy these apples from Wenatchee; they're fresher and better for my kids,' without having to go through a bureaucratic nightmare or break the law," said Mo McBroom, policy director for the Washington Environmental Council.

The farm-to-school legislation is one of the environmental community's top four priorities in Olympia in 2008. It has attracted support from parents, public health employees, child advocates, state school nutritionists and some farmers.

But its passage isn't guaranteed. In a short session, the bill could get mired in questions such as how to define "locally grown" and how to allow preferences for Washington products without angering other states.

It also remains to be seen whether the Legislature will spend the $4 million that the groups are requesting in a tight budget year. School nutritionists are lobbying for an additional $4 million to allow low-income children who qualify for reduced-price lunches to eat free.

"We've all been focused on the environment, the health of kids and supporting small businesses, and I'm hoping that will be the right combo to jar loose some of the money," said Rep. Eric Pettigrew, D-Seattle, who is sponsoring the farm-to-school bill. "It may not be everything we want, but it's a starting point."

Eric Boutin, nutrition supervisor for the Auburn School District, visits farmers markets in his off hours. He waits until the lines go down, hands someone a card and asks about buying carrots or raspberries in the quantities he needs to serve 10,000 lunches. Most often, he never hears back.
"I've called or e-mailed every farm from our area, and it's a struggle ... to get that commitment," he said.

That's why the proposed legislation would fund two new employees in the state Agriculture Department to help connect schools and farms and wholesalers, and spread the word about what's seasonally available.

It would also spend $250,000 to research how farms might collaboratively market and distribute products. A community processing plant with proper insurance and food safety certifications could help small farmers crack new markets, for instance.

One of the biggest hurdles on the school side is funding, with food budgets of roughly $1 for each child's lunch.

The proposed bill would spend $2 million on grants enabling schools with large numbers of low-income students to serve more Washington fruits and vegetables as snacks.

The measure would also allow school nutrition directors and state agencies to buy meat, dairy products and produce from Washington without going through a bureaucratic process that forces them to accept the lowest bid.

But in Seattle, the school district has even stricter policies than the state's, requiring quotes for purchases over $15,000 and formal bids for anything over $50,000.

"It doesn't mean it couldn't be changed, but it would take some work," said Anita Finch, nutrition services director for Seattle Public Schools. "Bid laws are set up to make things competitive, so there's no little gentleman's or lady's agreements going on under the table."

McBroom, with the Washington Environmental Council, said the legislation would create a more flexible climate for schools, universities or prisons to take the initiative to support state agriculture. Much more work would be necessary.

But if the environmental community is serious about preserving farmland, it needs to do more than buy development rights and push land-use regulations, McBroom said.

"We want farmers to continue farming, not just because they can't build a condo on their farm -- which is something we want to prevent -- but also because it's profitable to remain in farming," she said.

Large farming interests say they support the farm-to-school bill in concept, but haven't seen the details. Their participation would boost its chances of success.

"One of the biggest detail devils is what is local -- that issue has been profound for at least 29 years that I know of," said Chris Cheney, a lobbyist who represents dairy farmers, poultry producers, hop growers and other agricultural interests.

The legislation currently defines "local" as anything planted, cultivated, harvested, raised or collected within the state.

Because some tree-fruit growers and dairies pool products with producers in Oregon or Idaho, it might make sense to broaden the incentives to food grown in the Northwest, Cheney said.

But small-scale, organic producers might prefer the definition of "local" to be narrowed. If the grant money can be spent on food grown anywhere in the state, schools are likely to go through wholesalers that draw from large Eastern Washington farms, they argue.

"Unless the food manager is someone who really wants to see that happen, a lot of them are going to say this is too much bother, and I'll just order through my distributor," said Steve Hallstrom, who grows organic lettuce and vegetables at Let Us Farm in Grays Harbor County.

Bill supporters say the most important thing is to establish a state farm-to-school program that can be expanded or tweaked in future years.

After battles that have historically pitted environmentalists against the state's agricultural powers, legislators hope such a program could help bridge that divide.

"It certainly is one of those win-wins if we can do it right," said Sen. Brian Hatfield, a Pacific County Democrat and a bill sponsor. "The conversations are taking place between our rural ag communities and the more urban environmental folks to say, 'Hey, we've got a lot in common here.' "

AT A GLANCE

Legislation proposed by the Washington Environmental Council would:

* Spend $2 million to get more Washington-grown fruits and vegetables into at least 75 schools serving low-income students.

* Hire two full-time employees in the state Agriculture Department to connect schools and growers.

* Spend $250,000 to research how farms could collectively process, package and distribute products in quantities that large cafeterias need.

* Allow schools to buy Washington-grown produce, meat and dairy products without formal bids, as long as prices don't "reasonably exceed" other choices.

* Adopt goals and policies encouraging state agencies, universities and schools to buy local food when available and comparable in price.

* Spend $830,000 to allow more low-income families and seniors to buy nutritious food at farmers markets.

* Spend nearly $1 million on a pilot program allowing food banks to buy from local farmers.

For more information, visit wecprotects.org/state/index.cfm.

State Rep. Christopher Hurst favors legislation requiring schools to include "carbon costs" when evaluating food bids. Factoring in environmental damage from greenhouses gases involved in shipping food could make local products "cheaper" than other options.

P-I reporter Jennifer Langston can be reached at 206-448-8130 or jenniferlangston@seattlepi.com.

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