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The National Farm to School Network

Ventura Unified School District

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School districts across the country are trying to fight obesity and pollution by purchasing food from local farmers.

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While most efforts to encourage better health in schools focus on removing fat and sugar from the cafeteria and by offering a second vegetable with each meal, there are a growing number of school districts that have turned to local farms for a solution.

By using local farms, schools hope to offer their students fresher food that tastes better while financially supporting small businesses in their communities.

"Locally grown food is fresher and tastier," said Anupama Joshi of the National Farm to School Network, which helps set up the farm-supply programs.

One of the more successful programs is at the Ventura Unified School District in California. Sandy Van Houten, who oversees the school lunch program for the 18,000 students in the 25 schools of the suburban district, said when it started, "kids didn't even know what a potato looked like," apart from processed french fries.

The Ventura program focuses on four points: providing locally grown food in all the schools' cafeterias, incorporating a different food item into the curriculum each month, creating gardens so that students can grow their own fruits and vegetables, and introducing students to the professional farmers.

The students learn when, where, and how each item is grown, as well as the food's nutritional value.

"Before we started the program kids couldn't tell the difference between oranges and tangerines. Now they all know at least three varieties of tangerine," said Van Houten.

According to Marion Kalb, director of the National Farm to School Network, about 400 school districts participate in farm-to-school programs.

Although 23 states have programs, the most successful are in California, Florida, Alabama and Georgia because of their agricultural history.

"It is easier to start programs in rural areas because there is an understanding about farmers and farm culture," Kalb said.

Joshi said the reason the programs are successful in rural areas is also the reason they are rarer in the city. "Urban school districts tend to be further away from farms, so transportation and distribution of farm fresh product pose a hurdle."

Frank Kelly of the Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin tried a farm-to-school program, but decided not to make a permanent change to the school lunches.

"The educational component of the program worked very well," Kelly said, but it was hard to get the food to the cafeteria.

"Because the growing cycle and school cycles are in conflict," local farmers aren't able to provide enough food year round, Kelly explained.

Another challenge, said farmer Mike Tabor, who runs Licking Creek Bend Farm in Needmore, Pa., "is getting schools to raise enough money to compete with agribusiness," who can offer food at a lower price.

Many in the movement, including Tabor, believe that existing laws should be funded to subsidize farm-to-school programs to make them more widespread.

The Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 allows federal money to be given to schools that participate in farm-to-school programs, however, no money has been set aside in recent budgets to make this a functioning program.

--- By Bryan Hayes, NewsHour Extra

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