Farm to School is a program in the United States through which schools buy and feature locally produced, farm-fresh foods such as fruits and vegetables, eggs, honey, meat, and beans on their menus. Schools also incorporate nutrition-based curriculum and provide students with experiential learning opportunities such as farm visits, garden-based learning, and recycling programs. As a result of Farm to School, students have access to fresh, local foods, and farmers have access to new markets through school sales. Farmers are also able to participate in programs designed to educate kids about local food and agriculture.
Contents
- History
- Farm to School Network Description
- Benefits of Farm to School
- Environmental Impact
- Economic Impact
- References
Currently, school lunches are generally designed according to the guidelines put out by the USDA National School Lunch Program (NSLP). More than half of US children participate daily, which translates to approximately 28 million lunches distributed per day. The nutritional guidelines for the NSLP lunches are based on "Dietary Recommendations for Americans" composed by the Institute of Medicine. Its requirements are that a school lunch includes one third of the RDA of calories, vitamins A and C, calcium and iron, and protein. Additionally, the lunch should contain no more than 30% of the total calories from fat, and no more than 10% from saturated fat. The guidelines provide unclear recommendations on fruit, vegetable, whole grain, sodium content. In general, the guidelines leave room for interpretation and do not always lead to the creation of health meals. For example, in several schools pizza counts as a vegetable due to its tomato sauce.
Another issue facing schools is the prevalence of other sources of food and snacks, which often make the problem of school lunch nutrition worse. One such source is called “commodity foods” which are free or low cost foods subsidized by the USDA. Of the subsidy money, 73% goes to buy meat and dairy, whereas less than 1% goes to subsidize fruits and vegetables. Schools also may receive “bonus foods,” which are free surplus foods from farms or large-scale agriculture, which also are not typically healthy options for children. Most concerning is the widespread use of “competitive foods,” a term describing foods and snacks offered outside of the auspices of the NSLP. Competitive food includes such items as vending machines (which usually contain high-calorie sugary drinks and sodas, as well as other junk foods), snack bars, and pizza or bake sales.
School lunch nutrition is of particular importance currently due to the emerging childhood obesity epidemic. Using the definition of obesity as having a BMI-for-age of greater than the 85th percentile, approximately 31.7% of American children qualify as being overweight, whereas 16.9% of US children aged 2 through 19 years meet criteria for being obese (with BMI-for-age greater than the 95th percentile). Unfortunately, this epidemic is worsening with an alarming pace - in school-age children, the rate of obesity has increased since 1980 from 6.5% to 19.6%. Given this growing problem facing our nation’s youth, school lunch nutrition will play a vital role in halting and potentially reversing this concerning trend.
Farm to School provides a model for positively influencing children’s eating habits through school cafeteria improvements, hands-on nutrition education, and community involvement and support. The last decade has witnessed a tremendous spike in nutrition- and health-related diseases in the country, especially those affecting children. In response, there have been numerous initiatives undertaken to combat the growing rates of childhood obesity targeted at changes at the school, community and individual levels. Farm to School is one such initiative, and it also has the added benefits of supporting small farmers, local agriculture, and local economies.
History
The National Farm to School Network sprouted in 1996-1997 from the desire to support community-based food systems, strengthen family farms, and improve student health by reducing childhood obesity. In 2004 the National Farm to School Program was officially authorized, and included 400 programs in 22 states. Additionally, the 2011 White House Task Force Report on Childhood Obesity recognized Farm to School as a strategy for obesity prevention.
Farm to School Timeline:
Farm to School Network Description
The Network, established in 2007, began as a collaborative of the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute, Occidental College and the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC). In late 2011, it was decided that the National Farm to School Network had outgrown its original home and it became its own organization under the fiscal sponsorship of the Tides Center. The Network coordinates, promotes and expands Farm to School at the state, regional and national levels. Eight regional lead agencies and national staff provide free training and technical assistance, information services, networking, and support for policy, media and marketing activities. Currently, the National Farm to School Program sponsors a competitive grants program, involving over 2,500 programs in all 50 states and over 10,000 schools.
The Network’s six main priority areas are:
- Policy development
- Training and technical assistance
- Information development and dissemination
- Networking
- Media and marketing
- Research and evaluation
Benefits of Farm to School
The Farm to School approach helps children understand where their food comes from and how their food choices impact their bodies, the environment and their communities at large.
Potential benefits of the program for communities, schools, farmers and children include:
Recent studies conducted by Beery et al. demonstrated additional, unexpected benefits from programs similar to Farm to School, as illustrated by the following quotes:
Environmental Impact
Multiple studies have looked at the environmental impact of conventional agriculture versus the local food movement. These studies show that there is not yet a consistent methodology for measuring energy consumption in local versus non-local farms. “Local” is not a clearly defined measurement, and by only examining the energy in terms of “food miles” versus an entire life cycle assessment (LCA), much of the research on local farming is missing key components of the farm-to-consumer process, and the energy consumption involved. For example, despite the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from transporting farm foods to consumers, agricultural soils are also responsible for releasing significant amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (Schlesinger). The life cycle assessment attempts to measure the impacts of each activity directly or indirectly involved in the production, transport, storage, retail, consumption and disposal of a particular food from “farm to fork” or “farm to waste”. Studies that examine the LCA still show that there is no clear conclusion on the environmental impact of local versus non-local agriculture. A study in Sweden that examined bread production using local flour versus flour from other regions in Sweden found that the smaller scale of local farms results in less energy efficiency5. Another study supports this argument that global food systems have better energy efficiency due to the size of production, the so-called “ecology-of-scale”. Both of these studies are countered by other studies that found lower emissions on small scale bread making facilities, contesting the accuracy of the measurements in the Schilich and Fleissner study. These studies show the inherent variation in farming production, which leads to varying levels of impact on the environment. Other environmental assessments of farming production methods include:
Several organizations promoting sustainable agriculture methods have been created on a national and international scale in response to growing concerns about the impact of current farming production methods on the environment, the economy, human health, and animal health combined.
Economic Impact
There is a widespread perception that serving healthier meals in schools and doing away with serving typical vending foods such as chips, sodas, and sweets will decrease the financial viability of the school lunch program (CDC). A growing body of evidence indicates that this concern may not be warranted. Though there may be an initial decrease in revenue, most schools have reported an increase or no change in revenue after implementing strong nutrition standards and restricting the sale of unhealthy a la carte foods in pilot studies (CDC). This seems to be due to an increase in school lunch program participation. Additionally, vending contracts are not a significant source of funding for most schools and can in most cases be eliminated without significant financial loss. A la carte foods from vending machines may simply compete with the school lunch program. Stronger restrictions or even eliminating these competing options are most likely to increase participation in the school lunch programs which generally include the healthiest food options.
Advocates of farm to school argue that it will have a beneficial effect on the regional economy but there are few comprehensive analyses that have evaluated this. At least one analysis evaluated the potential economic impact of farm to school programs for an entire region (Central Minnesota) in a comprehensive manner. The investigators empirically developed a realistic set of potential foods to include in farm-to-school lunch programs in the region. Their analysis took into account the impact on output as well as employment and labor income in the regions. Depending on the price paid for the farm foods and how often the farm foods are utilized in school lunches, the regional economic impact ranged from $20,000 to almost $500,000 in their analysis.
Though initial pilot studies and economic analyses provide hope that farm-to-school programs are financially viable options for schools and can also be beneficial to local economies, this research is in early stages and no longer term controlled studies have been completed.