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Farm-to-School's Teachable Moment
Teaching the value of healthy eating in schools is a great way to fight obesity.
Schools throughout the country are shaking up the cafeteria through new initiatives to improve children's health while giving a boost to local farmers. It's time to give the mystery meat a break and bring out locally produced apples, squash, tomatoes, and chicken.
You'd think that a program linking local farmers producing fresh, minimally processed foods with local schools would be a no-brainer. But several decades of federal farm programs have discouraged farmers from targeting local markets--instead encouraging farmers to expand acreage with a few commodity program crops (like corn, soybeans, or wheat) or get out of farming all together. At the same time, school lunch programs dealing with tight budgets have taken advantage of more highly processed foods over buying fresh from local farmers.
We're clearly seeing some of the consequences of a flawed farm policy and tight finances for school lunch programs. Approximately 17 percent of U.S. schoolchildren are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control. And we have the highest obesity rate among 40 countries analyzed in a recent Organization on Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report. The costs of our obesity are astronomical: at least $147 billion per year in direct health treatment costs, by an estimate published in the journal Health Affairs.
Teaching the value of healthy eating in schools is a great way to start turning these numbers around. Aside from the great tasting local food, "farm-to–school" programs help improve kids' "food literacy" by teaching them what food is grown nearby, how their food is grown, and what a healthy diet looks like. Some schools are scheduling field trips to local farms and making farm- to-school a part of their classroom curriculum. Others are starting their own gardens, or teaching children to cook what's sourced locally.
Farm-to-school programs also support small- and mid-sized farms that have often been left out of school lunch programs. Thanks to our flawed federal farm programs, one of the challenges schools often face is finding enough steady supply of locally produced food to serve at their schools. But the economic benefits to the community can be considerable when more of the "food dollar" stays in local economies. A University of Minnesota study estimated that the economic benefit to the local region ranged from about $20,000 if each school in the area served one locally grown meal a month, and up to $430,000 if schools bought larger amounts from farmers.
Other challenges to expanding farm-to-school programs are related to infrastructure, such as the labor, kitchen equipment, and preparation time needed to bring locally produced food to the lunch table.
Despite these obstacles, these programs are taking off. Just think of what could happen if federal nutrition and farm programs were geared more toward supporting farm-to-school. This fall, Congress was expected to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act. Both the House and Senate versions of the bill contain a number of provisions to increase fruits and vegetables, including relatively small, but significant, mandatory funding to support farm-to-school programs designed to address some of the challenges schools face.
But while members of Congress from both sides of the aisle support the Child Nutrition Act, budgetary issues have stalled the bill and it likely won't be considered until after the elections.
Congress can do better. No matter how you calculate it, farm-to-school programs are an investment in the education and health of our children, and the economic future of our farmers. The farm-to-school approach will pay us all back many times over.
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13 Comments so far
Show AllAnd what of those children who happen to live in areas dominated by local farmers growing the 'commodity program crops'? Such communities are remarkable for their near total acceptance of, and subservience to, the corporate line.
and on it continues...
Schools in tobacco country will wish they had access to edibile commodities.
You mean chaw is not a vegetable?
Which reminds me of a something I saw the other day at the super-market in town.
I don't keep up very much with the various processed food products, however, I couldn't help being a bit startled at the sight of a young boy--not much more than nine or ten--grabbing something off the shelf that looked just like a tin of snuff.
Double checking the shelf, I realized that it contained beef jerky products of different sorts, and the 'tin' of snuff was really some kind of pulverized and powdered form of jerky product. How's that for indoctrination?
If only they would plow up the football field and have the school run a teaching garden.
Again, what kind of farming would they teach?
You can't even listen to a baseball game in the Heartland without being exposed to some promotional propaganda for industrial ag. About a week ago the St Louis Cardinals even had a special Bio-Ag day at the ball park celebrating the contributions that St Louis 'bio-science companies' were making towards advancing global agriculture.--all with Senator Kitt Bond's blessings.
Cardinal broadcasts regularly feature a PSA with one of the team's star players touting the benefits of the 'modern farmer'.
The Sundance Channel website offers a list of documentaries about school lunches & solutions available. See
www.sundancechannel.com/search/?words=school+lunches&x=0&y=0
One of these features a small Arizona school where students grow and prepare their own food at school. What fabulous opportunities for hands-on experiential learning of biology, ecology, nutrition, math and science simultaneously, too.
Behaviors also change from eating wholesome food. The Principal of an 'alternative' school noted these profound changes shortly after the change from corporate ersatz stuff to authentically wholesome and organic food from local and state farmers. The students weren't nearly as disruptive or bellicose.
I recall actual food preparation and cooking going on in the public school kitchen (50's & 60's). Today's approach of feeding children processed food and chemicals is foreign and shocking to me. How could we ALLOW that? When I was a kid going to public school, I recall paying for a hot lunch prepared on site or bringing my Roy Rogers lunch box with a nutritious lunch in it prepared at home.
Could we please bring on thoughtful, compassionate, educated individuals and civil society! As old farmers here say, "You can't eat money."
"I recall actual food preparation and cooking going on in the public school kitchen (50's & 60's). Today's approach of feeding children processed food and chemicals is foreign and shocking to me. How could we ALLOW that? When I was a kid going to public school, I recall paying for a hot lunch prepared on site or bringing my Roy Rogers lunch box with a nutritious lunch in it prepared at home"
Well said. And you also went to an hour of gym for exercise in jr. and high school. Now kids seldom participate.
This article neglects massive closures of public schools all across the nation that have been going on thanks to NCLB. If more public schools are closed, then the remaining ones will get more crowded in class size meaning that it will be more difficult to find any room for teaching the basics of gardening let alone farming.
The private and charter schools that are rarely held accountable have no interest in teaching any true healthy values because all they care about is money and obedience to authority. The only "crops" I see them teaching kids to grow would be GMO and you can bet that the Monsantos will have enough cash to control education on farming, gardening, and health.
Don't get me wrong. I am glad that some schools are trying their best to change course. However, before any of this can be done, Congress must first end corporate subsidies for the Monsantos and the Coca Colas, repeal NCLB to prevent further closures of public schools, and providing funding to restore more public schools to reduce class size and make room for basic education in genuine gardening and farming.
"The only "crops" I see them teaching kids to grow would be GMO and you can bet that the Monsantos will have enough cash to control education on farming, gardening, and health."
Precisely my point in the first comment. What type of nutritional education can we expect from schools in districts dominated by wealthy GMO farmers?--I refer to both private and public educational institutions. Something of a Catch 22 situation.
The problem thus applies to the whole of the Heartland.
Stanley
I don't think you can put all the school closings down to NCLB. We must begin to give our kids a real education again before we try and teach them anything else. Most cannot read, write, add, subtract or multiply when they graduate high school at a 7th grade level, if that and IF they graduate.
NCLB is directly responsible for putting rote memorization before critical thinking. If it weren't for NCLB and critical thinking were put in place, reading, writing, and doing math would be coming spontaneously from the students without torturing them with memorization tests. As a matter of fact, critical thinking would motivate more students and their parents into demanding that education on basic agriculture and respecting Mother Earth be the general norm for school curricula.
A very popular program that significantly boosted small holders' incomes in Brazil was a requirement that schools purchase 30% of their requirements for school lunches locally. Except in the south we don't have the a climate that would permit local farmers supplying schools throughout the school year, but there are plenty of healthy food crops that can be grown seasonally and in plastic hoop houses.
Well, I sure like the apples that appeared 2 years ago in our school. They look and taste like HoneyCrisps. I just wonder how they keep them from turning brown in those single-serving sealed plastic bags. Do the all local farmers have nitrogen processing equipment now-a-days?
The afternoon fruit or veggie snack was a big hit with the kids and staff when it began. Later we found out it was FORBIDDEN to send the extras home or to give anyone more that one helping. Still I'll never forget the third grade girl who ate 7 Dixie cups of cherry tomatoes, and took more home. (That was before the edict I mentioned previously. I know better now. Send them back to the kitchen for the cooks to place in the dumpster.)
The kids' favorite is still the chicken nuggets meal. They choose it over the salad bar most of the time. To round out the meal, there's a helping of instant mashed potatoes with margarine (which the kids won't eat) and a biscuit with jelly or sometimes honey. I call it the "tan meal."
As for me, I've dissected those nuggets and inside, they have no visible chicken, just a porous breaded flavored stuffing. I call them "breaded breading." I choose the salad. I won't even mention the "hamburgers" since even I don't want to know what they are made of.
Now and then the school brings in a local farmer (at least I think it's a farmer) to hand out a special fruit/veggie snack along with a calling card.
Did I mention the nutritionist the District hired? She gets a good salary and garners a lot of press coverage in the local paper for the Farm-To-School thingy. Oh, and the nutrition numbers look great on the paper she puts out, even the burger and nugget meals.