Is Farm-to-School a pipe dream?
Can't we do better?
Earlier last week, California Governor Schwarzenegger announced $6 billion would be cut from school funding. That’s pretty devastating.
On the upside, the Child Nutrition Act, which governs the National School Lunch program — which feeds 30 million kids — is up for reauthorization this September.
State-wide and nationally, school budgets are continually being reduced. This means not only layoffs and closures, but shrinking opportunities to increase fresh, healthy foods for kids.
Schools struggle to get any fresh food — let alone farm-direct food — on their students’ tables. It doesn’t have to be this way, according to a growing number of committed citizens pushing for school food reform. Making the fresh food dream a reality will mean running a gauntlet of funding, staffing, and regulatory challenges.
Who’s got money?
Not many. Most schools are already in debt. Public school meals are reliant on meager federal reimbursements. For a family of four, regardless of where you live, if you make:
- more than $40k/year, the govt pays $.25/child per day.
- $24k-$27k, the govt pays $2.17/child per day.
- $22k (poverty level), the govt pays $2.57/child per day.
And that whopping $.25 per child is not just for food — that is to cover food, labor, and facilities as well.
Some states have budgets set aside to also reimburse meal costs, but in this economy, as more families fall into poverty, the annual budgets for reimbursements are depleted after only 6 months. Recent attempts in California to allocate more money for school meal programs didn’t even make it to the floor to be discussed. Current state reimbursements were only $.21/child. Now, with the new state budget, that may now be $0.
In the 2008 Farm Bill, there’s a new rule that allows schools to give preference to locally grown foods when using federal funds, but again, at $.25 to $2.57 for breakfast, lunch, snack, labor, and facilities, what can you buy while still offering a fair price to the growers?
Nowhere and no one to cook
These days, most schools don’t have kitchens with the space or facilities to prepare fresh, whole food. More often than not, school “kitchens” consist of microwaves and warming bins. And, with limited budgets, there are no funds to hire staff to prep or cook meals. Or, schools may be required to use union labor, which isn’t affordable.
Farms may donate food to a school, but with no cooking equipment and no one to prepare the meals, the only viable option is whole fruit which can be served as is. Fruit is great, but fruit alone can’t sustain children.
Restrictive regulations
It’s not easy to become a new supplier for schools, especially if you’re a farm.
- Suppliers must have HACCP certification, and some schools require $1-2M in insurance coverage. Most small and medium farms can’t afford or don’t even know about these requirements.
- Each district has its own standards. Food-based standards are more common than nutrition-based, which means stricter rules on uniformity of products. Small/medium-sized farms have difficulties providing that sort of consistency and therefore aren’t eligible.
- Schools’ food purchasing is already highly regulated. There’s heavy administrative burden for schools regarding food safety, nutrition, record-keeping, and submitting reimbursement claims.
- Most districts seek suppliers who can serve all their campuses. Just like any institutional buyer, it’s easier to manage one consolidated supplier versus many smaller, local farmers. When budgets are tight, there aren’t enough staff to manage multiple farm vendors.
What’s being done
Thankfully, there is a growing legion of groups working hard to get local-food purchasing preferences for public schools and more funding — regionally and nationally — to support a healthy, sustainable school meals.
On a local level, parents and students are stepping up with:
- fundraisers to raise community money to pay for a healthy food program.
- parents subsidizing healthy lunch “potlucks”.
- private schools allocating more money to healthy, local meal programs.
- parents paying more to hire outside caterers (approximately $5/child per day).
In some cities like San Francisco, political leaders are making incremental changes. This is the third year that Mayor Gavin Newsom has committed to funding salad bars in public schools, even though it’s typically the Board of Education that allocates funds. Hopefully, this will continue forever, not just three years, and become part of the official policy.
Nationally, there’s a lot going on with the upcoming Child Nutrition Act and healthy school meals. Check out these resources to get involved:
- Slow Food USA: Time For Lunch Campaign
- Farm-to-School national network
- Community Food Security Coalition
- Farm Aid: Farm To School 101 Toolkit
Bottom line, we need to allocate more government money. We’re currently spending ~$15B annually on child nutrition programs, and $12B monthly in Iraq and Afghanistan. A friend who works on regional policy for school meals says that reallocating just a portion of that in the coming years may be the smartest first step.
5 Responses on Is Farm-to-School a pipe dream?
Since when is it the governments job to provide meals? When I was in school we had a room called the lunch room. We came there with our bag lunches ate them and left. My Mother packed me a simple lunch most times but I was never hungry. A sandwich be it turkey, salami, egg salad, whatever. A fruit orange, apple, pear, nectarine, cherries, there are plenty of options. A vegetable, carrot sticks, celery sticks, sliced cucumber, or sometimes it was extra lettuce in my sandwich. Also I got an extra carb to make sure I was full, crackers, a granola bar, popcorn already popped. For a drink, a juice box or a refillable container with Tang or an equivalent. Some days I had no drink! I had to drink from the school fountain! Which I believe still exist. We haven’t reached the ridiculous situation where all public fountains are deemed unsanitary. Now please explain to me how much the parents send your child to school with a bag lunch program costs?! I know you are going to say how little the government gives per child. NEWSFLASH! Parents are responsible for children! Not the government. NEWSFLASH! Food is actually cheap! Buy a bag of potatos sometime. Not 5lbs try 20 or 50lbs. If you find it is “hard work” to carry, guess what? I just saved you $30-$100 a month you no longer need that gym membership that you never use. I know my comment is dripping with sarcasm but I’m sorry, the sooner we learn to care for ourselves and our families the better. I have never been fed by a government program and hopefully never will. As a child my Mother fed me. Imagine that.
Your school lunches sound delicious! Unfortunately, there are many children in our country whose families can’t afford to pack meals, let alone feed the family at home. Children — our future — not having healthy food is a reality that we can’t ignore, and this post is intended to shed some light on the issues and obstacles to helping feed those most in need.
Also many people live in food deserts where the only have access to junk food at liquor stores or convenience stores since no grocery stores are anywhere near that sell real food. Many also work 2 jobs just to make ends meet ( if they are lucky). Gym membership? 50 lb. bag of potatoes? can’t get it and/or can’t afford it.
Buying 50 lbs of potatoes at once only saves money if you have a place to store them and you can eat them all before they go bad. My back of the envelope calculation, assuming 3/4 lb per potato, is about 67 potatoes a bag. For a family of three that is a potato a day for 22 days. And I have not been able to keep potatoes for that long without them sprouting. I am sure it can be done, but I suspect that it would require a cold cellar–something lacking in most modern homes and apartments.
I realize that the above digression was off the topic of school lunches, but since Kevin opened up the can of worms (or potatoes as the case may be), I couldn’t resist. It is easy to say that “food is cheap, if you buy a lot of staples, so why can’t people just feed their own kids.” Yes, but, storing and preparing food from scratch is a skill and it has to be taught. It also requires time to plan (yes, you can make a cheap, nutritious meal of dried beans and potatoes–and it doesn’t take a lot of time. But you can’t start it thirty minutes before dinner.) If people don’t know how, then even if they can afford to pack a lunch for their kids it might very well be a lot of expensive, unhealthy prepackaged foods. Under those circumstances then, yes,even our current School Lunch Program would is better. It at least is affordable and in theory has been monitored for nutritional value.
Farm-to-School sounds like a great idea but it seems to miss a bigger point. Since our school lunch programs rely on subsidized commodities shouldn’t we address the rather perverse subsidy system first? Rather than subsidizing crops that primarily go into junk food, why don’t we start subsiding healthy fruits and vegetables? Yes, I realize that that is taking on a lot of entrenched interests, but it solve a lot of problems as well, beyond the issue of school lunches.
For over 14 years I have worked in food service in a public school which has 90% of supposed needed kids. I say supposed because I know first hand that the lunch application are checked out something like 6 application for the entire school district at random. These kids who are so needed and hungry waste more food than one could imagine in one day. We throw out so much food that they never touch from the tray. Healthy food they don’t even want or willing to taste. But they all seem to have money to buy junk food with or better yet they come in from home with this stuff. I’m with Kevin the rest of you just want to sound good and caring. Let the parents supply the lunches even if this means no work for me.
Leave a comment on Is Farm-to-School a pipe dream?
RSS feed for comments on this post · TrackBack URI