STEPHANIE D. R. LARSEN
Farm to Cafeteria Legislation

I have a confession to make: I love peas. Fresh from my local farmers market, bright green and crisp, they almost never last long enough to make it into the stir fry I was planning to cook because I generally devour them raw. At restaurants, I often choose which curry to order simply based on the presence or absence of peas. To be clear, I am definitely not talking about the tired, overcooked peas that come from a can. Even I can’t stomach those reminders of "food" that the grade school lunch lady used to serve up.

I have a second confession, too, and one that might be even more surprising than the first: I hate, and have always hated, sugar cereals and soda. Even with the colorful packaging and catchy jingles on TV, I didn’t understand how my friends could eat cereal that turns their milk funny colors and drink liquids that took years of chemical engineering to concoct. Of course, I asked for them at the grocery store from time to time, but a firm and flat "no" from my mom ended any hope of me becoming a sugar fiend. My mother raised me on whole grains, veggies, and milk with limited amounts of processed sugar, and to this day my typical eating habits include lots of these nutritious foods.

I bring up these two personal preferences to make a point—kids love and eat foods that are familiar to them. However, ask any parent who has wrestled at the dinner table with a child who won’t eat their vegetables, and they will likely tell you that kids won’t eat just anything you put in front of them, even if they’re familiar with it. In order for healthy foods to do kids any good, they first have to want to eat them! Not the easiest of tasks, especially when high fat, high sugar treats are marketed as fun substitutes to foods of high nutritional value.

Food touches us in the most basic, sensory ways, and those smells, textures and tastes, along with the feelings associated with them, help to develop eating patterns that last long after the dishes are cleared. When I think back to my childhood, I remember the comfort foods, made with love, that helped to establish my likes and dislikes today. Foods introduced to us when we’re young shape our habits for the future, which is why positive experiences with nutritious, healthful foods are so important to establish with children. Some of these experiences happen in the home, but they can also occur in school through exciting, creative, experience-based nutrition education and "Farm to Cafeteria" projects.

Farm to Cafeteria isn’t a new idea, because before the adoption of current practices like cross-country shipping and long-distance refrigeration, local food was simply the only option. Shorter distances from the farm to the cafeteria means higher quality products for kids and a greater share of the food dollar for local farmers. However, schools have drifted away from using fresh products, and thus the skills and equipment needed to handle fresh and local foods have become less common in school kitchens. Schools and parents are now beginning to realize, however, that there was wisdom in buying foods grown in the local area to serve in cafeterias. Through experiences gained in school from Farm to Cafeteria projects, kids are exposed to fresh, local foods that taste and look delicious, which is something that kids don’t often expect. When farmers visit classrooms to share their knowledge or students take a field trip to a local farm, the students learn about foods grown in their region and the idea of seasonality from someone who is frequently passionate about his or her occupation and is excited to share this knowledge. Kids respond to this positive energy, and before you know it, they’re asking their parents to purchase spinach or tomatoes at the grocery store or from a farm stand. If they grow the vegetables themselves in a school garden or develop recipes and learn to cook the vegetables they grow, they take pride in their work and enjoy eating the fruits of their labors.

Recently, the national media has highlighted what many of us have known for years: kids who don’t eat enough healthy foods have more problems with obesity, diabetes, learning and behavior problems, and these are just a few of the diet-related diseases that have become all too common. Children learn from experience that they will feel better, learn better, and are generally happier and better behaved when they eat local, healthful foods. From this perspective, feeding children local products fresh from the farmer becomes a moral imperative, especially for children from low-income households, where school lunch may be their only consistent access to healthy food. Farm to Cafeteria projects not only help to reinforce lessons learned in the classroom, it helps bring communities closer together. As part of experience-based nutrition education, farmers become teachers as well as food producers while maintaining the economic viability of their farm by opening new markets for the products. It becomes a win-win situation for everyone involved.

Recognizing this gap in schools’ ability to process farm-fresh foods as well as the need to help schools set up experience-based nutrition education that might include gardens or farm visits, groups like the Community Food Security Coalition have advocated for legislation at the national level that would help reestablish a place for fresh and local foods in school cafeterias. With lots of help from partner organizations and grassroots activists, legislation establishing Farm to Cafeteria projects was passed as Section 122: "Access to Local Food and School Gardens", of the 2004 Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act. The law allows for school districts or non-profits working with schools to write one-time competitive grants that could help pay for such things as buying food from local farmers, cutting and storage equipment, staff time and training, educational and promotional materials, and the cost of setting up a school garden. With a little help from the government, schools would be able to overcome the barriers of starting a new project that would ideally sustain itself after the federal funding expires. Sadly, Congress has yet to fund Farm to Cafeteria, which means that the dozens of communities who would benefit from a closer tie between kids and farms continue to wait.

There’s really great news to report, though! This year, supporters of Farm to Cafeteria worked together to educate members of Congress about Farm to Cafeteria, and we are closer than ever to gaining much-needed money. Over 300 organizations signed on to a letter that was delivered to every member of Congress, asking for Farm to Cafeteria to be funded. Twenty Senators recently signed a letter to the leaders of the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, which is the subcommittee holding the purse strings for agriculture, asking for $5 million for Farm to Cafeteria. While $5 million may not seem like enough to start a national program, it would be a start and at least 50 school districts would benefit starting in 2007.

Even better news is that state and local governments have begun to take matters into their own hands. All over the country, state legislatures are introducing bills to help farmers and schools become more closely linked. In urban and rural areas alike, more parents and school administrators are realizing the value of having school lunch choices that are healthy, fresh, nutritious AND tasty. People everywhere have begun to realize that Farm to Cafeteria can be a win-win solution for both the obesity epidemic and the crisis of family farm loss.

You can help, too! Inside all of us is an inner advocate, and if you value local farmers and healthy kids and communities, we need your support. For starters, the Farm to School Network, (www.farmtoschool.org), World Hunger Year (www.worldhungeryear.org/fslc) and the Community Food Security Coalition (www.foodsecurity.org) all have information about Farm to Cafeteria, and include resources to help you educate others on the benefits of starting a Farm to Cafeteria program. Use these websites to find out whether there are Farm to Cafeteria programs in your area, or how to start one. Talk to your local school administrators, food service directors, and farmers about ways to encourage healthy eating both at school and at home. Contact your federal legislators and ask them to support and advocate for funding for Farm to Cafeteria projects. Show this article to members in your community, and together, we can encourage a new generation of kids to say no to soda and sugar cereals and YES TO PEAS!

To speak to someone about getting involved in Farm to Cafeteria, please contact the Community Food Security Coalition in Washington, DC at (202) 543-8602. THANK YOU SO MUCH to all the people, now and in the future, who devote time and energy to making Farm to Cafeteria a success.

Stephanie D. R. Larsen is Policy Organizer for the Community Food Security Coalition in Washington D.C. Visit www.FoodSecurity.org.


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This article was published in the Spring 2006 issue of Catholic Rural Life©. No portion of this article may be reproduced without written permission from The National Catholic Rural Life Conference. To purchase the Spring 2006 issue of Catholic Rural Life, please contact The National Catholic Rural Life Conference office at 4625 Beaver Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50310-2199, call (515) 270-2634, or e-mail ncrlc@mchsi.com. The cost is $2.50 an issue plus postage and handling.