USDA Finds New Ways to Boost Farm-to-School Programs

“We know it’s just snow­balling,” Merrigan said in an inter­view with The Associated Press before her appear­ance Tuesday at the School Nutrition Association con­ven­tion in Nashville, Tenn.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture used the con­ven­tion to release a new report on what works in farm-to-school pro­grams, what doesn’t and what the agency can do to help them work bet­ter. The report was put together by a USDA team that trav­eled to 15 school dis­tricts across the coun­try and comes as offi­cials, includ­ing first lady Michelle Obama, are pro­mot­ing the impor­tance of health­ier food for kids.

“First, it is about bring­ing fresh locally grown food into school cafe­te­rias,” Merrigan said. “So there’s the yummy fac­tor, the good nutri­tion fac­tor. … Number two, we believe it pro­vides good mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties for local pro­duc­ers, par­tic­u­lar those mid­size farm­ers that are strug­gling to make a go of it. This is a real oppor­tu­nity for them to increase the bot­tom line in their farm­ing oper­a­tions. So it’s about rural eco­nomic development.”

Third, she said, farm-to-school pro­grams help con­nect peo­ple with where their food comes from, how it’s pro­duced and by whom.

“We know that chil­dren are very dis­con­nected from agri­cul­ture … lit­er­ally think­ing food comes from a gro­cery store,” Merrigan said. But many schools use farm-to-school pro­grams to work agri­cul­ture into the cur­ricu­lum, she said, trans­form­ing the lunch­room into a classroom.

Farmers who sup­ply schools say they ben­e­fit from hav­ing steady cus­tomers, and they also get sat­is­fac­tion from know­ing they’re help­ing chil­dren eat health­ier food. Jeff Rosenblad, owner of Happy Harvest Farms in Mt. Angel, Ore., said he gets great feed­back from the dis­tricts he sup­plies with a wide vari­ety of fruits and vegetables.

“The kids like it so much they’re eat­ing (from) salad bars more. They’re eat­ing water­melon, they’re just gorg­ing them­selves,” Rosenblad said.

Matt Jones, who owns Jones Farm Produce in nearby Gervais, Ore., said the extra busi­ness he gets from sup­ply­ing schools lets him keep a few more work­ers employed for a few more weeks a year. He’s been able to sell to schools later into the win­ter because he has plenty of cold-storage capac­ity for the apples he grows. A lack of refrig­er­a­tor space is a com­mon prob­lem for many schools.

“These school dis­tricts are not just serv­ing the fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles but they’re also edu­cat­ing kids in the process,” Jones said. “They’re try­ing fruits and veg­eta­bles they never would have tried at home, so that’s really good for the children.”

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