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Farm to school is taking place in all 50 states, D.C. and U.S. Territories! Select a location from the list below to learn more or contact a Core Partner.
Congress will continue work on a budget reconciliation package that offers new funding for a broad range of issues important to farm to school stakeholders. The House Budget Committee voted to advance the general outline of the overall $3.5 trillion budget, covering agriculture spending, labor enforcement, employment education and training, school facilities funding, higher ed, child care and pre-K, and child nutrition.
The child nutrition portion, estimated at $35 billion, contains several big wins for equity. Most notably, the bill would widely expand the Community Eligibility Provision -- a big step toward school meals for all! -- and increase funding for meals served under CEP. It also would fund expanded summer EBT, as well as school kitchen modernization and training.
Finally, it allocates $634 million to Healthy Food Demonstration Incentive grant for schools to improve school nutrition, including hands-on experiential learning, increasing scratch cooking, and procuring local, regional, and culturally appropriate foods and foods produced by “underserved” or “limited resource farmers” (as defined by USDA). The language of the grant program is broad in this legislation, leaving much up to the discretion of the Secretary. If passed, this will be an important opportunity for NFSN partners and impacted communities to give feedback on how grants can be prioritized and administered to increase racial equity. NFSN has signed on to advocate for $1 billion in funding for this grant, as originally proposed in the White House’s Build Back Better plan.
Other highlights include:
A federal and state partnership to help parents cover the cost of child care
Support for universal pre-K
Funding for states to improve public school facilities
More robust enforcement of labor standards and protections
Investments in Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and other Minority-Serving Institutions.
The House Agriculture Committee had previously voted to advance a partial proposal of $66 billion in new spending on rural development, agricultural research for climate resiliency, biofuels, and forestry. This week, the Committee finalized an additional $28 billion in conservation spending, which would begin immediate investments in programs towards President Biden’s pledge to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The Committee also unveiled $2 billion in debt relief provisions and assistance to “at-risk producers,” including loan payoffs and modifications for USDA borrowers, financial assistance to producers who suffered discrimination under USDA loan programs, assistance with legal issues of land access, and outreach and mediation services. Previous debt relief targeted at producers of color was halted amid legal challenges.
This week, Congressional leadership will be working to gain the coalition of votes needed to pass both this legislation and separate infrastructure package. As part of this process, negotiators will be choosing between many high-profile priorities competing for funding. Now is the time to contact your legislators and voice your support for the measures important to farm to school stakeholders!
This was originally posted on September 14, 2021 and was updated on October 1, 2021.
National Farm to School Network (NFSN) is excited to share a new project we’re working on to support four state cohorts of grassroots community groups, nonprofits, and farm to school stakeholders in convening across issue areas and identifying shared goals for food justice policies and programs in their communities. This “State Values-Aligned Working Groups” project is in support of our Call to Action that 100% of communities will hold power in a just food system by 2025. Towards that goal, we will work with these participating state groups to shift power to the most impacted stakeholders in their communities at the nexus of education, nutrition, agriculture, community health, and the environment.
What Do We Mean by “Values-Aligned”?
We believe that farm to school and farm to early care and education (ECE) can be a vehicle to advance racial equity, economic justice, environmental justice, respect for workers and educators, and health equity for children. (Read more about our six community values here.) We aim to support other groups who are aligned with these same values, both in the farm to school movement and in the wider community. We’re advancing this at the national level through our call for a policy that would provide school meals to all children that promote these values in our food and educational systems.
Where Are We Working?
We have recruited four place-based cohorts to support their capacity for action planning and mobilization for policy and/or program innovations that advance equity. Our cohorts hail from:
Charlotte, North Carolina
New Brunswick, New Jersey
New York City, New York
United States Virgin Islands
What We Will Do By the end of 2021, each group will have formed connections across their disparate sectors to:
Identify and share the most pressing barriers to racial equity as experienced by their communities,
Explore policy and advocacy solutions for these issues at the local, state, and national level,
Identify common goals and values for shared policy and/or programmatic development and mobilization,
Create concrete objectives for a cross-sector advocacy campaign or innovative program to advance their shared goals, and
Deliver an action plan for implementation in 2022.
NFNS will support planning through 2021, during which groups will outline fundraising needs to put their campaign or program into action in 2022, and identify where NFSN can support that fundraising capacity. We plan to support participants with a stipend for their time and expertise advancing this work. NFSN has secured funding for $10,000 per cohort through 2021 for action planning, and has offered Year 2 seed funding for implementation. We prioritized stipends for grassroots groups led by people of color and organizations who may not have resources to support dedicated staff time on this work. We thank the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Campbells Soup Foundation for making this funding support possible.
Stay tuned for updates on this project over the coming months. Have questions? Connect with our Programs Team to learn more.
In celebration of the 10th anniversary of National Farm to School Network’s launch into farm to early care and education (farm to ECE), Sophia Riemer, NFSN Program Fellow, sat down with the original trailblazers of farm to ECE and the new leaders in the movement. These inspiring women shared their perspectives on the growth, innovations, and successes they’ve seen, what the future holds for farm to ECE, and what is needed to continue building an equitable and sustainable movement.
Participants:
Andrea Lopez, Food and Wellness Program Officer, CentroNia
Caroline Stover, Project Director, Center for Environmental Farming Systems
Brittany Martens, Nutrition Consultant and Farm to ECE Coordinator, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
Wande Okunoren-Meadows, Executive Director, Little Ones Learning Center
This conversation took place with current leaders and innovators in the farm to ECE movement. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Sophia: Please give us a general idea of how your organization or department does farm to ECE, what your role entails, and how you got your start in this work?
Caroline: I run the farm to early care and education initiative in North Carolina. We are an initiative with the Center for Environmental Farming Systems, which is a three way partnership between the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and two land grant universities and North Carolina State University. Our initiative really seeks to promote farm to ECE and grow the movement in the state through systems level change. We connect early care and education system leaders at the state level with local food systems leaders. And so we do that through statewide stakeholder engagement, where we listen to folks on the ground who are really doing the work and spread their successes and make it easier for them to do farm to ECE. I've been doing this work since 2016. Before that, I was with FoodCorps, a Farm to School program, for four years. I have just really enjoyed bringing the farm to table movement to younger and younger children as I go on.
Brittany: I work for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment for both the Child and Adult Care Food Program as well as the Early Childhood Obesity Prevention unit. We are working to lift farm to ECE with systems thinking since 2016, which is when I got hired and we started our first Team Nutrition farm to ECE grant. That was a three year grant focusing on culinary training, gardening and curriculum. Since then we have focused our programming and funding on trying to overcome barriers and understand them through community based programming. We're also currently working on our farm to ECE coalition, which is two years in, and we have about 25 members and 18 organizations helping to align farm to ECE across the state, bringing diverse voices to the table. We're hoping to increase our membership, helping to represent populations we serve and those historically underserved communities. We’re doing this through an Association of State Public Health Nutrition grant, which is allowing us to implement nine community based mini grants and build a three year Colorado farm ECE roadmap. Additionally, we're going to be releasing our first curriculum that's Colorado specific for our Harvest of the Month program. I’m coming from a background both as a chef and a nutritionist. So I love having the perspective of both fields, trying to connect with the cooks and think about their day in and day out and how to make this programming work for them.
Wande: I am with Little Ones Learning Center in Forest Park, Georgia. Our organization is actually part of a five group initiative with the WK Kellogg Foundation. We’re all about increasing the quality of early childcare programs and communities, supporting the state, and bringing it to scale. Our program can be considered a model demonstration site. We do a lot of implementation programming here, because it's important to see proof of concept. We've been doing this work for many years but it doesn't mean that we have all the answers. I've also launched a nonprofit that is focused on farm to ECE. It's called the Hand Heart and Soul Project, where we provide children and families access to nutrient dense foods and we develop holistic programming focused on health, wellness, education and nutrition programs. I'm focused on making sure that the voices that are doing this work are elevated. People in policy are absolutely needed, but we also need to hear from the boots on the ground. We say farm to ECE should not be a burden, but without the right supports in place it becomes a burden for teachers and everybody else.
Andrea: I work in an organization called CentroNia. We're a nonprofit organization providing high quality bilingual, early childhood education in a multicultural environment in Washington DC. We also have a site in Tacoma Park, Maryland. Within our early childhood services, we have the food and wellness department, which is a wraparound service, and that's my role in the organization as program officer. My role entails operating the child nutrition program, so right now that’s the CACFP Summer Meals Program. We also have a central catering company that is specific to ECE centers. We also do CACFP compliant catering to a wide range of centers, they can be small, maybe 25 to 30 children up to other centers who have 100 children throughout the district.
We also work with food access programs. We partnered with a fresh farm organization that brings pop up markets to ECE centers. We were a pilot center in 2018 and are still doing that with SNAP and WIC eligible families, bringing them fresh fruits and vegetables on a weekly basis. I've been with CentroNia for the past three and a half years. My background is in nutrition, so in this position, I've learned a lot about community nutrition. My special interest is in encouraging people to try new foods, and especially at a young age to develop their palate.
Sophia: Wande, I’d love to hear from your perspective how this movement has changed and grown since you became involved. Either in your center or the movement as a whole?
Wande: It's picked up a lot of interest, but that might be because it's trendy. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Whatever we can do to bring health and wellness to communities. We've seen it branch out with teachers and families now wanting to participate in the movement. Also, now that the government is taking part with federal funding streams that are focused on health and wellness and equity, everybody wants to jump in, which can lead to mission creeping. Not everyone needs to be applying for this funding. So it's great that everybody wants to get involved, but we do need to make sure that money remains for those doing the work and not allow mission creepers to come into our industry.
Sophia: Brittany, from your perspective working in government, what growth have you seen?
Brittany: With our first grant application, we were pretty much begging people to apply. If they applied, they got a grant, and we had maybe five people who actually applied and got a grant. And this year, in a pandemic, during a time when childcare providers are understaffed, overworked and stressed out, we received 78 applications. I was blown away by the momentum that we have seen, and I think it has to do with our ability to bring in stakeholders. With our coalition, we have grown so much and are expanding as much as we can to bring everyone into farm to ECE, making sure that we're talking to every person who touches childcare or farm or food system work. We hear what they want to do and start speaking the same language. For example, the cultural wellness program is trying to encourage local food in their cultural cooking classes and Cooking Matters knows how to bring us in so that we can provide farmers market education. I really think that that has driven our momentum and has helped us to have a louder voice. I have to agree that it is becoming trendier and people are starting to buy into it. We've been saying forever that we have to step away from the instant gratification, we have to teach children to slow down and to be connected to their food and to step away from processed foods and to take the time to cook for children, and it's starting to catch on. I think that that's what's really been driving Colorado; we're starting to speak with a unified voice.
Sophia: Andrea, I'd love to hear from you what you think your largest contribution to farm to ECE has been?
Andrea: Farm to ECE was really the priority of my past supervisor. She brought nutritious meals to the Columbia Heights area in Washington DC and built an all around program. The meals that we used to serve included processed foods and now we cook from scratch. It's a learning process for our cooks to figure out how to get produce from local sources and try to manipulate that into something doable in our menus. So again, working with families, immigrant communities, and meeting them halfway to not only push this healthy lifestyle, but offer CSA bags with maybe a produce item that they have never tried before and being very aware of their cultural standpoint and where they're coming from. We focus on traditions. We are aware that we work with working parents, but we try to tell parents that they could conserve their traditions and expose children to the home cooked meals they grew up eating. Traditional food is healthier food, but more importantly, that might be their only connection to their culture.
Sophia: Caroline, what do you think your largest contribution to this movement has been?
Caroline: Our initiative. We have seen a lot of spread here. I also have loved that we've been able to promote the work that folks have been doing for a really long time. There's such great examples of folks that have been doing this work for so long and they have been such great advocates for continuing and spreading the work, speaking with their legislators and the childcare commission, and really just making farm to ECE front row center. I'm just grateful for the opportunity to have met those folks and learn from them.
Sophia: Where do you all see farm to ECE moving as a whole?
Wande: We had a farm stand that was shut down by the city a couple of years ago and the media interviewed the city manager, and they asked her, “why are you shutting the farm stand down?” The city manager said, if we allow a farmstand at this center, there could be farmstands everywhere. That means she has no idea what access issues are, what transportation issues are, and how health and education correlate. So, for me, the next 10 years looks like people in charge understanding what it means to take care of communities, because if you don't have people supporting communities, then when you have local funding coming through, they're not going to allocate it in ways that are supportive to this movement. So I’m looking for better informed policymakers and other people that are in these positions of power.
Brittany: I want to go off of what you [Wande] just said, because I absolutely agree with that. I want to see less of the higher ups, like the state agency, creating the grant program and more of the communities creating the grant programs, which is what we're working for right now. I don't want to have all the money, I want all the money to go to the communities and I want them to build the programming. Right now our nine community based programs are doing work that I never could have fathomed. They are impacting communities, they are working with children who are separated at the border, and they are trying to mitigate the trauma they've experienced. And they are bringing that to the garden. They're working with autistic children and getting nonverbal children to play with worms and talk to their worm when they haven't spoken that many words in a month. I mean, it's the type of work that I don't say I have to go to work, I say that I get to, I get to do this work. And I can't wait to see more money going to the communities and less people saying make a kale salad, because it's good for you. And that's where I see this going as well. I couldn't agree with you more that we need to get the policy in line with that, and the funding in line with that, so that the people in the communities can tell us what they need, and they can put it out there and meet those needs.
Andrea: You know, sometimes with these grants, they build a framework and it's one size fits all. With diet and nutrition, we're steering away from that individualization but for farm to ECE we need individualization. It's very different in urban settings where there might not be space for a garden and you need to adjust. So when the community speaks to what is relevant to them, what is sustainable to them in the long run, it’s always a good thing.
Caroline: Pragmatically speaking, thinking about local food procurement, we often say that there’s a benefit for farmers with the increased market for them. But when we look at local food procurement, we're talking about tablespoons as serving sizes, we're talking about centers that serve very few children. It definitely benefits the children, but how can we make it more beneficial for farmers? So that's something that we started looking into, and we're excited to tap more into that by networking centers, coordinating menus, working with head starts a little more, and maybe combining sarm to school and farm to ECE efforts. Some of the folks that we work with throughout the state are already trying to do some of those really cool methods. Also, I know folks on this call have also mentioned working with infants and toddlers and that just gets me really excited. Having consistency from birth to preschool to the school cafeteria. We've been working with local cooperative extension agents, and they have done a fabulous job with folks that are new to gardening and new to cooking fresh food. They've gotten right on board going into the centers and helping with that gardening piece, recruiting volunteers for folks and doing some family engagements and parent training, things like that. I think there's just such an opportunity for sustainability using systems that already exist and making sure that this work continues.
In celebration of the 10th anniversary of National Farm to School Network’s launch into farm to early care and education (farm to ECE), Sophia Riemer, NFSN Program Fellow, sat down with the original trailblazers of farm to ECE and the new leaders in the movement. These inspiring women shared their perspectives on the growth, innovations, and successes they’ve seen, what the future holds for farm to ECE, and what is needed to continue building an equitable and sustainable movement.
Participants:
Emily Jackson, Program Director, Growing Minds Farm to School, ASAP
Zoe Phillips, Director of Administration, Office of Women’s Health, LA County Department of Public Health
Stacey Sobell, Director of People & Culture, Ecotrust
This conversation took place with the original leaders in farm to ECE and Co-Leads of the original NFSN Farm to Preschool Subcommittee. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Sophia: Please tell us briefly where you were in your career during your time on the subcommittee and why you decided to invest time into supporting the start of farm to ECE?
Zoe: 10 years ago I was with UEPI, the Urban Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College, working under Bob Gottlieb. I started back in 2009 as a volunteer. I received my Masters in Public Health in the Spring of 2008. While I was looking for jobs, I bugged him until he gave me an internship. He gave me a set of different projects that he thought could show some promise. At the time I had a preschooler, and he mentioned what we were calling farm to preschool as a potential project. I started immediately writing grants and doing some program planning and development. The grants were awarded and that was the start of my baby. Around April 2009, I created a pilot program for farm to preschool.
Emily: I work with the Appalachian Sustainable Agricultural Project in Asheville, North Carolina. 10 years ago, I was the Program Director for Growing Minds and today, I'm still the Program Director, but I'm retiring this year. We started doing farm to preschool back in 2007. When we first started the subcommittee I was serving as the Southeast Regional lead for the National Farm to School Network, Stacey was the Northwest lead with Ecotrust, and Zoe's organization was one of the core institutions housing the network. So, I was lucky enough to work with them and push this movement into fruition.
Stacey: 10 years ago I was at Ecotrust, where I still work. I'm in a different role now, doing more people oriented human resources work, but I was in the Farm to School program in our Food and Farms team for about a decade. When I first started, my boss was really excited about getting farm to preschool going, so we did a pilot. After we did that pilot, we received a lot of inquiries, just because there wasn't much information online except from Emily, Zoey, and myself.
Sophia: What did participating on the farm to preschool subcommittee involve for each of you?
Emily: Our overarching goal was to grow this movement, since it was nascent at that time. Each of us also spearheaded different work with our own work groups. I was really interested in taking this upstream and embedding this in the community college programs so we could train providers while they're in school - and happy update - it's been a long journey, but we now are working with 22 of the 58 community colleges in North Carolina and hopefully we'll see that number grow even more in the next couple of years. But, the experience of working nationally and getting input from people really helped me see what was needed and how to best navigate that work.
Zoe: It was very exciting to discover that we had these three different programs in different parts of the country that had been developed somewhat around the same time. Once the three of us got together, we were able to look forward and pool our resources, the best practices we had developed, and the challenges that we had gone through to lead the subcommittee. It was a really special point in time and we got along really well. We shared leading responsibilities for the subcommittee, we were able to help grow the members of the subcommittee so that it was far ranging, from small community based organizations to academia to the CDC. Eventually our program at UEPI moved into other states in the West and we even partnered with a Montessori school with the Navajo Nation. But together, the three of us were able to help build the movement on a national level.
Sophia: What do you think was your greatest accomplishment while working to bring together the Farm to Preschool movement? Or, in your own farm to Preschool work?
Zoe: I came into this having no gardening experience. I had a health education background and nutrition background, but learning how to garden, how to teach preschool aged kids and their teachers how to garden, and how to find ways to make it economical was so great. Watching the kids dig in the dirt in an urban setting was also incredible to see. I remember one time, we had asked the nutrition director who oversaw a set of preschools if she would start introducing more vegetables, and she said, “well, if I see the kids eat it, then yes, I'll bring them in.” So we had a cauliflower taste test with a lesson plan and we collected the data to show that kids were actually eating it, enjoying it, and wanting more of it, so they put it on the menu. So that was gratifying to see. Also, the building of our website. We were able to bring in partners from all over the country and share their resources and tools on the website, which was special.
Emily: The three of us showed the network what great promise there was in this and why the network should invest resources and time. So the years that we all spent together trying to build this movement just really paid off in that way. I think that was a great accomplishment. We grew it to where it needed to be and then the network took it over, which was fabulous. The other thing that I'm proud of is creating those critical resources with my organization to make things easy. We have a farm to preschool toolkit that is now being sold all across the country. And in that toolkit is something that the North Carolina Network created together, which we call reach for the stars, which takes the star rating and aligns it to preschool activities. Another piece of the toolkit is the crosswalk between our lesson plans, which are very experiential, and CACFP guidelines. So the children are not only getting a local, healthy snack, but they're also getting the education associated with that product.
Sophia: Can you speak to the growth that you’ve seen overtime? Is the state of the movement today where you thought it would be 10 years ago?
Emily: The Association of State Public Health Nutritionists, or ASPHN, pulled down CDC money and were able to distribute that to states for farm to ECE work. North Carolina, along with 10 other states and the District of Columbia received funding. To me, that shows some strength, that there is a lot of infrastructure out there for this, and that it’s growing. It’s a lot harder than K12. They're so much more underfunded and there's a lot of entrenched problems with early care and education. So I think it's even more of a success that we've been able to build out the infrastructure that exists now, with the leadership of the National Farm to School Network, of course. This ASPHN grant is an example of the success of the movement.
Zoe: I have been a little more removed from it for a while, but have kept in touch with what's happening, particularly in Los Angeles. So it's exciting to hear the developments for the movement, and that it's happening at a local level, state level and national level. 10 years ago, it was our dream that it could develop to that point. There's also been improvements in offering funding at the national level but if there could be even more, that would be better, because funding is really what supports this work.
Sophia: What do you see as the future of farm to ECE? What do you envision? Any promising opportunities?
Stacey: I'm thinking about a lot of what my work is focused on right now. We’re putting more of a racial justice focus and anti racist kind of lens to that work, and I know that Farm School Network is also doing a lot of work around that.
Emily: I hope with the current administration that we're going to see more funding. I think the pandemic showed a lot of things about our country, and one is that our infrastructure for early care and education is just vastly underfunded. So, hopefully, we're going to see more universal child care. That'll also raise up racial equity issues while making room for things like farm to preschool, because people hopefully won't be struggling so much with the funding issue.
Zoe: I think it is hugely important that this movement can find a role in helping decrease structural racism, improve disparities, and move towards improving food insecurity. Having a farm to preschool program in any type of early care setting as a default would be incredible. If it became the norm it would be fantastic, where they're getting food, and bolstering the farmers. Emily: Just think of all the joy and wonder out there if every kid could be exposed to a garden. That could be a beautiful thing.
Taxing sugar sweetened beverages (SSB) is a policy strategy that is gaining momentum as a way to decrease sugar consumption, improve the health and wellbeing of communities, and raise revenue for health promotion, food access, and equity related efforts. Boulder, Colorado and Seattle, Washington are two cities that have enacted a SSB tax and have dedicated a portion of the funds raised to farm to early care and education efforts. This month, we will take a look at the comprehensive and inspiring work these cities have been able to accomplish with the help of these funds.
A Natural Fit for Priority Funding Seattle’s Farm to Table initiative and Boulder’s farm to ECE program work to bring healthy, local foods and hands-on experiences such as gardening and food education activities to their communities. In Seattle, tax fund distribution prioritizes early childhood education and food access: a natural fit for farm to ECE. “We can address these two crucial areas, nourishing these children and improving very underpaid providers’ access to healthy foods,” explained Leika Suzumura, Farm to Table consultant. Thanks to SSB funding, these programs have been true successes, supporting participating sites with the tools and resources needed to create comprehensive farm to ECE programming such as nutrition and garden education, technical assistance, and funds for local food purchasing and gardening tools.
The sugar sweetened beverage tax funds have been integral to the growth of these programs. Once Boulder’s tax was passed in 2016 and the program was able to secure funding, they hired Heather Haurswirth as the farm to ECE coordinator. With a new dedicated staff member, the program greatly expanded. “We started in 2015 with 4 child care programs. We grew to 12 programs in 2016, 37 programs in 2018, 54 programs in 2019, 68 programs in 2020, and now 75 programs in 2021,” explained Hauswirth. This past year they even started to offer additional produce to cities outside of Boulder with limited food access. Seattle’s Farm to Table also brought on more staff with tax funds, first received in 2018, enabling them to greatly expand their program. Increased staff capacity has also allowed them to spend time on developing long term plans that focus on increasing the quality and reach of the program.
A Community Asset During COVID Both the Seattle and Boulder team explained how invaluable the SSB tax funding became during COVID when food security and food access plummeted. Families still needed to feed their children, so the programs took action and began to send food home with families. This was critical, as Seattle farmer’s markets were closed and store shelves were empty, limiting farmers’ selling opportunities and households’ access to healthy, fresh food. “We were able to respond and build even stronger relationships with our sites. We’re cultivating that trust,” explained Kelly Okumura, Farm to Table’s program manager.
Okumura went on to explain how critical building these relationships has been to the success of Farm to Table. During a visit to a center that had not fully participated in local food procurement, Okumura was able to meet Ms. Patrice, the kitchen lead. “It was magical meeting Ms. Patrice,” Okumura said. “She told me ‘now that I know who you are, I’m going to order the food.’ The shift was visceral.”
The COVID-19 experience also had an impact on how participants in Boulder’s program, and in turn, the program administrators themselves, saw theprogram’s role in the community. “Last year the most profound feedback we received was the increase in food accessibility due to our program. Because of the pandemic, we felt like we were playing a role,” explained Hauswirth. Boulder is now looking to the future to see how they can expand food access through their program. “We’d love to engage with more organizations across the city or county. There’s so many different places our program can go.”
Growing Imagination Both Boulder and Seattle have used SSB tax funds to give children a healthy start in life, improve the quality of childcare, and provide families with vital assistance. However, as both programs made sure to note, the true value of farm to ECE comes in the excitement and sense of wonder it creates. Suzumura and Okumura shared stories about children rushing out of class to see what’s in that day’s deliver box and finding seemingly magical produce like purple potatoes, rainbow carrots, and lions mane mushrooms; tasting foods like local chickens that, as Ms. Patrice noted, just smell better; seeing worms squirm around in soil; and planting a few potatoes and harvesting four buckets full. These experiences not only teach children to appreciate the fun and often mysterious place our natural environment can be, but can lead to naturally healthier children, both mentally and physically. As Hauswith explained, “certain kids wouldn’t touch a brussel sprout or a tomato, but went on a field trip to a farm, or saw it in their produce box, or grew it in their garden, and now they're asking for it at home or eating it at lunch. It’s something we see time and time again and it always makes me smile. That the intention of the program is actually working.”
This blog was originally posted on August 9, 2021.
Over the past several weeks, National Farm to School Network staff and I have been listening to, learning about, and reflecting on a history that Native and Indigenous people have been naming for generations, but that only recently has gained public attention: the horrific, traumatic, and unjust history of forced boarding schools for Native children.
The US government first opened these schools in 1879 with the express intent of cultural genocide by removing Native children from their homes in order to systemically wipe out Native cultures. Under the management of the US federal government and several Christan church denominations, there were at least 367 schools in 29 states where Native children were punished for speaking their languages, stripped of their cultural clothing and hair, and banned from behaviors reflecting their Native identities. Physical, sexual, emotional, cultural, and spiritual abuse and neglect were rampant. Hundreds of thousands of Native children were removed from their families and forced into these schools. In 1926, it was estimated that 83% of all Native school-age children had been forced to attend. As recent news stories from Canada and the US have retold, many never returned home.
Another piece of this history – which is directly linked to farm to school’s history – was forced agricultural labor in many of these schools. This was a specifically chosen tactic for forcing values of individualism, dismantling communal worldviews, and driving the agenda of a colonistic food system that’s rooted in exploitation, extraction, and profit. It is imperative to understand that this real and traumatic history of Native children gardening at schools in the early 20th century has often been re-spun into a white dominant narrative about the benefits of America’s first school garden movement, which for white children (to be specific) was viewed as "[affording] opportunity for spontaneous activity in the open air, and possibilities for acquiring a fund of interesting and related information.” To be clear, gardening and agricultural labor was anything but a benefit to Native children in these circumstances. (Thank you to Alena Paisano, a former colleague at National Farm to School Network, for previously sharing this history with us.)
Today, National Farm to School Network actively partners on farm to school efforts in Native communities. Through these efforts, we strive to be supporters in work happening to reclaim food traditions, revitalize Native foodways, and build food sovereignty. While there have been shining spots in this work, there have also been shortcomings. Given this, and my deep desire for National Farm to School Network to be a better ally to our Native partners, I have been reflecting: if National Farm to School Network had existed 100 years ago, would we have been complicit in the horrific actions imposed on Native children? In what ways are we complicit to the injustices that continue to persist for Native peoples today? And what changes can I lead to be accountable to and correct this?
One starting way is through this statement you are reading. I state, unequivocally, that National Farm to School Network is committed to standing by our Native and Indigenous partners and their communities in demanding answers, accountability, and justice for past harms and injustices. I am also committed to leading by example, especially for National Farm to School Network staff, in continuing to listen, learn, and reflect on this history. Since actions speak louder than words, I will also be proactive in taking action for justice, including deferring to the leadership of our Native partners and whatever actions they may ask of me and National Farm to School Network – now, and in the future. I acknowledge that sustained commitment and engagement is required, and that my actions – and the actions of National Farm to School Network – will demonstrate the sincerity of this commitment. I openly welcome feedback, conversation, and the opportunity to be held accountable to these things.
National Farm to School Network is committed to a vision of a racially just food system, and as such, we will not keep silent about racial inequities. As a network of farm to school and community food systems advocates, we must address the impacts and legacies of traumatic and unjust histories – past and present – in the spaces we work. If this history of forced residential schools for Native children is new to you, I encourage you to continue listening, learning, and reflecting, and to turn that learning into active support for Native peoples in fighting for equity and justice. Here are some places to start:
Thank you to Mackenize Martinez, National Farm to School Network Program Associate, for elevating this history on a recent call with NFSN staff and for encouraging our organization to speak publicly about it.
UPDATE: Thank you to Valerie Segrest, NFSN Advisory Board member, for suggesting that we also elevate the lasting impact of Native children being fed army rations and how that has altered Native peoples' physical taste buds and interrupted the transmission of cultural foldaway knowledge through generations. Learn more in this article written by A-dae Romero-Briones: Fighting for the taste buds of our children.
Child nutrition programs across the country exercise collective purchasing power on a massive scale. Pre-pandemic, the National School Lunch Program alone invested $14.2 billion annually to serve 29.6 million lunches every school day. K-12 school meals, early care and education (ECE) nutrition, after-school snacks, and summer meals are an opportunity for every community to express their values through purchasing priorities and to shift power in the food system as a whole.
Jennifer Gaddis, associate professor of Civil Society and Community Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools
Jose Oliva, Campaigns Director with HEAL Food Alliance
Chang Vue, Capacity Building Director with Hmong American Farmers Association
Jackie Wincek, Procurement and Sustainability Specialist, DC Central Kitchen
In this powerful session, moderated by Janna Parker, NFSN Policy Associate, the panelists articulated how every decision made in our food system signifies a choice being made, whether hidden or apparent. As Jose Oliva shared, “The system shows the values they care about with the choices they make.” Inspired by the drive to shift power in our food system through values-aligned procurement, this session shed light on the interconnectedness of our society’s issues and the importance of intersectionality in the work that we do. Jennifer Gaddis illustrated, “The cafeteria is a place that we can all collectively renegotiate our values.” And as we work to mobilize and shift power, we, with cultural humility, must prioritize and empower our local communities by centering the voices of those who are most impacted by the changes in our food system. Watch the conversation above or here.
The Northeast Farm to School Institute model, developed by Vermont FEED, is a unique year-long learning opportunity for schools, districts, and early childhood teams to build robust and sustainable farm to school programs. Lacy Stephens, Senior Program Manager of the National Farm to School Network (NFSN), sat down with Andrew Powers of PEER Associates, lead evaluator for the Northeast Farm to School Institute, to discuss impacts and learnings from the farm to school institute model. Listen to their full conversation and view excerpts below. For background on the farm to school institute model, see NFSN’s recent blog, Driving Sustainable Farm to School Through the Farm to School Institute Model.
Lacy: You've been involved in the Northeast Farm to School Institute for quite a while now. What are the key components that we should know about the institute?
Andrew: I couldn't stress enough from everything we've learned over all the years the importance of bringing a diverse team together. People from schools can be very siloed and not everyone has a chance to really work together. When you can take an administrator, food service director, teacher coordinator, bringing them together with their coach, and really, everyone is welcome as part of a team, it can be a parent, a community member, any sort of volunteer, but bringing those folks together and really having them understand each other's roles is so valuable and creates such a functional working dynamic. Bringing that team together and building their capacity is such a huge element. Then again and again, I heard about action planning. Farm to school is an evaluation challenge because there are so many different ways to implement it. Having that action plan, having the time to develop a plan of, “Here's where we're going to focus. Here's how we're going to do it,” brings about that clarity of purpose. It becomes that central reference point that they keep coming back to. The coaching is really important, having ongoing support, having that sounding board and that person who has the bigger perspective in the team that can say, “you know, we need an idea for this, or we need a resource for that,” or just help problem solve. Having an expert outside perspective, and that support for an extended period of time, is also really valuable.
Lacy: Can you tell us about your previous engagement and evaluation with that model over the years?
Andrew: I think over the years evaluation has helped to refine and clarify what's important in the model. A high level finding that really speaks to the institute model is the need to invest in people. It's not like here's your little one hour after school professional development. We're going to bring it together in a nice place and really take care of you and give you the space and time to get to know each other and work together. We should talk more about the equity piece and how to make it available to more people and what we're learning about hybrid virtual access. But it's fundamentally about investing in the people who are going to be the ones to do the work. We know farm school can be a heavy lift, it doesn't just happen easily. The institute model focuses on showing people that we value the work by valuing you and your involvement in it. The team’s become that burning heart of the program, being that strong team or strong committee
Lacy: Tell us what you heard in your retrospective study. What did you find? And, I know you also did a lot of work looking at previous literature around sustainability. How did those findings fit with farm to school and your evaluation here?
Andrew: When we talk about sustainability, it’s a buzzword and can be a lot of things. In this case, we are generally talking about just program staying power: How strong is the program? Is it still there? What's helping it last? When it distilled to the highest level, we heard three big factors that really were driving sustainability: capacity, culture, and commitment.
Capacity is about the people power that runs farm to school. We know that it takes a lot of players to make this happen, especially talking about the institute model where you want to be integrated across the cafeteria, the classroom, and in the community. Building that people power and having that sustained people power is so important. Where the institute really thrives is in the leadership and coordination capacity for farm to school – building strong teams, giving them tools, helping them build relationships and then giving them tools to work together in action planning. That management level of capacity is so valuable when you're trying to do something that is not necessarily super simple. Under capacity as well, it takes money, it takes equipment to make some of these things happen. That is a piece of capacity that the institute does not provide, but people did a lot of planning at the institute for finding support and applying for grants.
Culture is an important piece, and much has been written about school culture. The idea of school culture embodies so many things: the values of a school, the traditions, what they define themselves as, what's deemed as important. Getting farm to school into the culture is a really important piece of sustainability. At the institute, teams get a chance to look and see, “where does this fit into what we already believe?” And there's so many ways that farm to school aligns with what people think is important. Of course, you have a wellness policy, or a focus on health and wellness and farm to school fits right into that. Other schools, you can fit it into academics. Part of the institute is seeing how we pull together these disparate threads and make them into a program. You'll find a lot of schools with gardens that aren't really integrated. You'll find a lot of schools with a bit of local procurement going on, but no one really knows about it, or it's not something that's connected to the curriculum, or the community is not aware of it. Another piece of culture is a school’s traditions and rituals. There’ll be a community dinner a school has always done, but then it becomes a harvest dinner, a farm to school dinner where it becomes something that people look forward to in the whole community.
Commitment is all about relationships. Farm to school takes a lot of relationships and commitment. What you see with the institute is a way to build those really strong connections to each other. What it takes is people who really care. You need champions, but you can't rely on those people forever. You have to figure they're going to move on, they're going to need to do something else. It’s about figuring out how to keep recruiting those folks, how to keep bringing people on board, getting people excited.
