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With a relativity young farm to school movement in the southeast, the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP), in partnership with the Community Farm Alliance (CFA) and the University of North Carolina (UNC), has the challenge and the pleasure of building a farm to school network in Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
The Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project has worked to build a thriving local food campaign in western North Carolina and the southern Appalachians. Early on in the process ASAP recognized the importance of an educational component to reconnect children to local food and farms, building the next generation of consumers. Growing Minds began as a school garden program and has developed into a farm to school program over the past five years.
In addition to working to get more local food into school cafeterias, Growing Minds has a unique focus on the educational components behind farm to school. In working with school systems, Child Nutrition Directors and farmers, Growing Minds recognizes that the story behind the food is just as important as the local product on the plate. Working with teachers, chefs, farmers and communities, Growing Minds strives to build positive experiences with fresh local foods and promotes connections between school gardens, cooking with kids, farm field trips, standard course of study objectives and local food in school cafeterias.
“If students have a connection to their food, if they grow it or cook it themselves, see it growing on a farm or meet the farmer growing it, they are more likely to eat it,” states Program Director Emily Jackson.
Children eating fresh local food is not only good from a nutrition standpoint, but also from a marketing standpoint. If students come home from a cooking class asking for okra or beg their parents to go back to the farm they visited, that is stronger marketing than any slogan or poster you can create.
Growing Minds is also engaged in multi-year research projects examining distribution (through a UPS grant) and the profitability of farm to school as a market for farmers (SARE R&E). UNC is playing a large role in this research, including assistance in data management, statistical analysis, and policy.
The Community Farm Alliance (KY) offers several years of experience working on farm to school from the farmer and policy perspective. One of the unique aspects of CFA’s program is their solution to seasonality: schools are out of session during the summer months when the amount of fresh, local produce is at its peak. Community Farm Alliance has looked to Kentucky’s numerous state parks to fill that void and secured legislation in 2006 through Kentucky House Bill 669 that requires all state institutions to buy local when it’s available and price and quality standards are met. CFA’s present work focuses on creating “L.I.F.E,” a local, independent food economy, in Kentucky. The next steps for the project are to expand the program to include farmers and institutions from neighboring counties and to fully utilize the Bath County Ag Education and Marketing Center’s certified kitchen, extending their market into the winter by freezing fresh, local produce during the peak harvest times.
Looking forward to a Regional Meeting on July 17th, ASAP and its partners are excited to draw knowledge and experience from the entire southeast region together. Offering the opportunity to network and share strategies, this will be an authentic look at farm to school in the southeast.
Contact Emily for more information: emily@asapconnections.org
To learn more about ASAP, visit: www.asapconnections.org