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Farm to school is taking place in all 50 states, D.C. and U.S. Territories! Select a location from the list below to learn more or contact a Core Partner.
By Krystal Oriadha, NFSN Senior Director of Programs and Policy
No murder is without strong impact to a community, but the murder of George Floyd impacted not only the community of Minneapolis, but our nation and the world at large. On the tragic anniversary of his murder, I am reflecting on National Farm to School Network’s year of growth and challenges as we move to operate more fully within our vision for a just food system.
Last year we made a statement to stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and declared our commitment to ensuring that National Farm to School Network will be an anti-racist organization. As a white-led organization, we knew we could not just be silent allies. We needed to speak up on these injustices within our communities with not only our words, but with our actions. We must be an organization that is actively – not passively – working to dismantle racism and to shift power whenever and however we can. That commitment aligns with the Call to Action for the food system we launched in October 2020: By 2025, 100% of communities would hold power in a racially just food system. This bold call to action is what is needed and what the movement calls for. If we do not shift who holds power in our food system, we will never achieve our vision for a just food system.
We also went through some challenges as we examined white toxicity in our own organization. This led to us to have very honest conversations about our organizational culture. As the only person of color in staff leadership and as a Black woman, I felt a strong need to push ourselves to not only talk about transforming the work we do externally but also look at how we can create an anti-racist workplace culture internally. To do this, we had to take an honest look at ourselves – as individuals and as a collective – and be willing to transform our own perspectives. This ongoing journey has not been easy, and it is not over, but we are committed to going on this journey, and to sharing it publicly. Over the last year, we’ve had to name and call out harsh truths as well as create space for uncomfortable conversations around issues of anti-Blackness in our own organization.
We are calling for other white-led organizations to do as National Farm to School Network has done. Do not just put out a statement in memory of George Floyd; make a public commitment to action both internally and externally, and then do that work. There are many staff of color suffering prolonged emotional trauma within organizations that put out statements of solidarity with communities of color while still creating and maintaining a toxic work environment for staff of color, showing that diversity is not truly welcomed. I am personally calling on organizations to think about the emotional tax paid by staff of color and to begin to work on addressing this within your organization’s culture.
The COVID-19 emergency exacerbated inequities and activated new crises for the farming sector and for consumers across the food system. The pandemic led to shifting demands in the food system and prompted the government and communities to respond quickly to provide emergency support for actors across the food system. With food insecurity heightened, operators around the country demonstrated their ability to innovate and develop practices for fulfilling essential needs in communities across the country. Mitigating this crisis came with innovative approaches to supplying communities with fresh, local products through Community Supported Agriculture and emergency food operations. Community food organizations mobilized quickly to support local farmers and communities. In many communities, schools and early care sites became vital access points for local food through emergency food distribution.
As part of the Local Food Systems Response to COVID-19 project funded by USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, National Farm to School Network (NFSN) partnered with Farm to Institution New England and researchers from the University of Kentucky to develop an Innovation Brief: Pre-K and K-12 Schools as Access Points for Local Food to elevate examples from across the country of this innovation. However, we heard so many inspirational examples of schools and early care sites becoming hubs for food access, we could not fit them all into a single brief. Below, you’ll find even more innovation and inspiration from NFSN partners across the country. Thank you to all the organizations who shared their stories with us!
Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project-ASAP (Asheville, North Carolina): ASAP launched the Appalachian Farms Feeding Families program to connect local farmers with food pantries/relief sites as well as with child care providers that have continued to operate as essential businesses throughout the pandemic. ASAP raised funds for this program from both corporate foundations and individual donors. ASAP staff acted as “matchmakers,” connecting small farmers in the region and nearby feeding sites, including child care locations. ASAP awarded the feeding sites a monthly budget to be used to order local products on a weekly basis directly from their “matched” producer. Farmers are compensated directly for the products they grow and deliver to these sites.
Project GROWS (Staunton, Virginia and Waynesboro, Virginia): Project GROWS worked closely with Staunton City Schools (SCS), Waynesboro Public Schools (WPS), after school programs, various food pantries and farmers markets to continue to provide local food to families in the Staunton, Waynesboro and Augusta County community throughout the COVID-19 emergency. Using connections with farmers in the community, Project GROWS was able to help facilitate sales to the schools directly through the Harvest of the Month (HOM) program. Each month a different local farm was featured in virtual HOM videos and Project GROWS facilitated a sale of the featured HOM product to the schools from those farms to create HOM produce samples. According to Project GROWS, participation in the school meal program in their partner districts has actually grown amid the pandemic. With this increase in demand for food, produce sales to schools increased both from the Project GROWS own on-site farm and other local farms. The organization worked also worked with partners to create new pathways for local food to reach families during a time when access is very limited. This included participating in a fresh food box initiative through the local hospital, establishing an online farmers market for producers, creating a fresh food donation program at markets, facilitating a curbside pick up at market, accepting and doubling SNAP/P-EBT, and routinely donating food to food pantries, homeless shelters, and senior centers.
Farm Fresh Rhode Island (Rhode Island): Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Farm Fresh Rhode Island's local foods distribution platform, Market Mobile, connected farms exclusively to wholesale accounts such as restaurants, small grocers, Co-ops, food service management companies, and schools. When restaurants closed dine-in services, Market Mobile leveraged this existing infrastructure to launch direct to consumer food distribution, both to provide local food to residential communities, and to mitigate supply chain disruptions for farmers. Rhode Island worked with USDA Food Nutrition Services to obtain clearance to accept SNAP-EBT and to deliver food to SNAP recipients. Farm Fresh Rhode Island also developed a guide for farmers on how to obtain an FNS number and EBT card reader to accept SNAP sales directly.
REAP Food Group (Madison, WI): For over 10 years, REAP Food Group, in partnership with Madison Metropolitan School Districts (MMSD) Food and Nutrition, has processed local fruits and vegetables for elementary schools enrolled in the USDA Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP) as part of the MMSD Farm to School Project, which focuses on increasing local food accessibility for preK-12 students. To ensure continued access to FFVP to all students, MMSD began distributing unprocessed items to FFVP schools in late September. School staff prepared and bagged local fresh fruit and vegetable snack items to be distributed for students learning at home. MMSD Food and Nutrition altered their entire service model to cater to the mostly virtual model for the district, packing over 50,000 meals weekly for a district with over 50% of 28,000 students receiving free or reduced lunch. REAP worked closely with MMSD to create a modified snack schedule that allowed for the local, seasonal component of the program to really stand out and gave REAP a chance to continue the program despite also having reduced capacity to safely receive and pack food.
Fairfax Public Schools (Fairfax County, Virginia): Fairfax Public Schools (FPS) started serving meals to families at the start of the pandemic. USDA waivers allowed breakfast and lunch meals to be served to children throughout the summer through the Summer Food Service Food Program and continued during the school year. CACFP meals and snacks waiver has helped provide meals to families. Additionally, the district continued the Food for Education Program (FFEP), which creates an additional opportunity to offer local foods to families. Funding from the National Farm to School Network (NFSN) COVID Relief Grant allowed for the continuation of FFEP through the summer by offering supplemental fruit at four school feeding sites. FPS distributed over 4,000 pieces of fruit to children through Summer 2020. NFSN COVID relief funding also provided support for Fairfax tp provide “Grow at Home” seed growing kits with printed activity cards, education and enrichment information for distribution at 65 meal sites. FPS hopes to expand the program through another grant in the spring.
From these examples, it is clear that many early care and education sites and schools involved in farm to school and farm to ECE leveraged their existing partnerships, resources, and infrastructure to shift their priorities and address the critical needs of families amid the COVID crisis. Schools and early care sites became a critical access point for Child Nutrition Program meals as well as local food boxes, food shares, and gardening resources and education. In many communities, local food organizations and aggregators have acted as key connectors across local food systems and emergency food systems. Now is a vital time to consider what we have learned from this experience and ensure that local and regional food systems as well as schools and early care sites are well supported and sufficiently funded so they can continue to be a bridge to good food for children and families.
When schools purchase locally grown foods for school meals, it is a triple win for kids, family farmers, and local economies. Today, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Congressman Peter Welch (D-VT) took an important step towards providing more schools flexibility in making impactful local food purchases by introducing the Local School Foods Expansion Act, which will expand the successful Unprocessed Fruit and Vegetable Pilot project to 14 states, while also increasing technical assistance and capacity building to improve access to this valuable program for schools with racially diverse and high-need student populations and for socially disadvantaged farmers. National Farm to School Network applauds the introduction of this bill and encourages all Members of Congress to support its inclusion in the upcoming Child Nutrition Act Reauthorization (CNR).
“This expansion of the Unprocessed Fruit and Vegetable pilot program offers participating schools the opportunity to cultivate their own purchasing relationships with local producers, which directly translates to kids eating more local, fresh, and unprocessed or minimally processed foods in school meals. Thanks to leadership from Senator Wyden and Congressman Welch, the Local School Foods Expansion Act will nearly double the number of states with access to this flexibility and increase vital technical assistance to maximize its impact,” said Karen Spangler, Policy Director with National Farm to School Network. “National Farm to School Network is proud to endorse this bill because its provisions are directly responsive to what we have learned from schools participating in the existing eight-state pilot. With a renewed focus on equitable capacity building to ensure that small producers, Tribal producers, and schools in every community have the resources to benefit, scaling up this Pilot project so more states can participate is a promising opportunity.”
The Unprocessed Fruit and Vegetable Pilot project was created as part of the 2014 Farm Bill and currently operates in California, Connecticut, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington. In addition to expanding the project to up to an additional 7 states, the Local School Foods Expansion Act will include $25 million for technical assistance to help schools in participating states build their capacity for local food procurement and to assist new produce vendors in being approved to sell to schools.
National Farm to School Network is advocating that the Local Foods Expansion Act, as well as other important marker bills that will advance farm to school and equity in the food system, be included in the upcoming CNR. National Farm to School Network is committed to supporting policies that build on six shared community values – economic and environmental justice, health, racial equity, workers rights, and animal welfare – which will move the country towards a just, equitable food system that promotes the health of all school children and benefits producers, workers, educators, and our communities.
This spring, National Farm to School Network is keeping a close eye on Washington, D.C. as Congressional leaders begin to build momentum for Child Nutrition Act Reauthorization ("CNR") – the package of bills that authorizes federal school meal and child nutrition programs. For the farm to school community, CNR is an especially important piece of legislation as it sets the standards and parameters of meals served to nearly 30 million children every school day.
A strong CNR built on our shared community values (read more about these below) can be a win for our kids by ensuring nourishing food is served in meals and snacks; a win for farmers by creating school market opportunities that provide reliable and consistent sales and fair pay; and a win for our communities by creating conditions for school food to be grown, distributed, prepared and consumed in ways that benefit everyone along the way. But for these wins to become reality, we must advocate for a CNR that is firmly centered in equity – and that’s what National Farm to School Network is doing.
What is CNR? The Child Nutrition Act Reauthorization authorizes federal school meal and child nutrition programs including the National School Lunch Program, the School Breakfast Program, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program, among others. The package of bills that make up CNR is meant to be reauthorized every five years, but the last CNR to pass was the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. That makes this upcoming CNR a once-in-a-decade opportunity to strengthen the programs that feed our nation's kids.
CNR and Farm to School: The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 was groundbreaking for the farm to school movement. For the first time, this legislation supported farm to school directly by providing $5 million in annual mandatory funding for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm to School Grant Program. This was a major victory for National Farm to School Network and farm to school partners across the country, funding competitive grants and technical assistance for farm to school activities that increase the use of and improve access to local foods in schools. Since its inception, USDA has awarded over $52 million through Farm to School Grants, funding a total of 719 projects across all 50 States, the District of Columbia, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico, reaching almost 21 million students in 47,000 schools.
While policies like this can and have helped more schools across the nation create a pathway to practicing farm to school, there’s more work that needs to be done to ensure equitable access to the resources, opportunities and benefits of these activities. Many of the systems and sectors that intersect with CNR’s provisions – including the food system, education system and economic system, among others – are deeply racialized and have in the past and continue in the present to exclude, disadvantage, and cause harm to Black, Indigenous, Latino and other people of colors in our communities. Systems like these that are failing any of us are failing all of us, and we can not engage in farm to school effectively without changing them. That’s why as CNR ramps up in 2021, National Farm to School Network is focusing intentionally on provisions that address systemic barriers in farm to school and create racial equity in the food system.
Equity at the Center: We believe that building the next CNR on six shared community values will help move us closer to the just, equitable food system, education system, and farm to school movement that we seek. You can read more about each of these values here.
These values can be realized in the next CNR through well-thought-out and equity-conscious marker bills, such as the Farm to School Act of 2021, the Kids Eat Local Act, the Universal School Meals Program Act, the Local School Foods Expansion Act, and others. You can read more about the marker bills we are endorsing and the CNR priorities we're advocating for here. A more just, equitable and community-centered CNR is possible and we must encourage and hold our Members of Congress accountable to making it so.
What Can You Do to Prepare for CNR? As the National Farm to School Network prepares for the likely return of CNR this summer we want to hear from you! As our name implies, we are truly a national network of stakeholders, and our policy agenda is driven by advocates like you. To prepare for the upcoming reauthorization, you can:
Today, a bipartisan group of congressional leaders took an important step towards making it easier for schools to source locally grown, locally raised, and locally caught food and farm products for school meals. The Kids Eat Local Act, introduced by Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Susan Collins (R-ME) and Representatives Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE), Josh Harder (D-CA), and Alma Adams (D-NC), would help break down barriers between school food purchasers and family farmers and food producers by simplifying local purchasing guidelines for school meal programs.
By including the Kids Eat Local Act in the next Child Nutrition Act Reauthorization, schools would be given a new, easier to use local product specification option through which they could specify “locally grown,” “locally raised” or “locally caught” in their procurement language, and then make the award to the lowest bidder who can meet that product specification. The addition of local product specification would substantially improve opportunities for local producers by providing more flexibility for school districts. The Kids Eat Local Act would also allow schools flexibility in determining the definition of “local” that best suits their needs.
National Farm to School Network and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition thank the bill sponsors in both the Senate and House for introducing the Kids Eat Local Act and paving the way for increased healthy food in schools and new economic opportunities for local farmers. We urge all members of Congress to support this simple, yet significant change and look forward to continue working with our partners and allies as this bill and the Child Nutrition Reauthorization move forward.
Have questions about the Kids Eat Local Act or want to learn more about how you can be a farm to school policy advocate? Contact Karen Spangler, our Policy Director, at karen@farmtoschool.org.
National Farm to School Network and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition are partnering to advance farm to school priorities in the next Child Nutrition Reauthorization, with the shared goal of supporting stronger communities, healthier children and resilient farms.
Today, a bipartisan group of Senate leaders introduced the Farm to School Act of 2021 which will support our nation’s schools, farmers and communities in building back equitably from the Covid-19 pandemic. The bill, sponsored by Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Susan Collins (R-ME), will expand funding for and programmatic scope of the highly successful USDA Farm to School Grant Program, while also ensuring that more communities – specifically those serving racially diverse and high-need student populations, as well as engaging with beginning, veteran and socially disadvantaged farmers – have a competitive opportunity to benefit from this valuable program.
A similar bill (H.R. 1768) was introduced in the House by Representatives Stacey Plaskett (D-VI), Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) and Alma Adams (D-NC) in March.
"The Farm to School Act of 2021 couldn’t come at a more necessary time,” said Karen Spangler, Policy Director with National Farm to School Network. “When the pandemic began, school nutrition professionals, educators, and local food producers – the people who make farm to school work – were some of the very first community members to step up and ensure the ongoing care and support of children and families. The measures included in the Farm to School Act will give them much-needed resources to continue their work as we emerge from the pandemic, while helping our country build a more resilient and equitable food system."
The USDA Farm to School Grant Program provides funds on a competitive basis to schools, farmers, nonprofits, and local, state and tribal government entities to help schools procure local foods for school meals and to support activities like school gardens, hands-on science lessons, and new food taste tests. The program was originally funded as part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 and includes $5 million in annual mandatory funding.
Since the program’s inception in 2013, USDA has awarded over $52 million through Farm to School Grants, funding a total of 719 projects across all 50 States, the District of Columbia, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico, reaching almost 21 million students in 47,000 schools. In recent years, the program has benefited from temporary funding boosts through annual appropriations. The Farm to School Act of 2021 would increase annual mandatory funding to $15 million to permanently allow more of these impactful projects to be realized. The proposed legislation, as introduced in the Senate, will also:
Increase the maximum grant award to $500,000,
Prioritize grant proposals that engage beginning, veteran and socially disadvantaged farmers and serve high-need schools,
Fully include early care and education sites, summer food service sites and after school programs; and,
Increase access among Native and tribal schools to traditional foods, especially from tribal producers.
Have questions about the Farm to School Act of 2021 or want to learn more about how you can be a farm to school policy advocate? Contact Karen Spangler, our Policy Director, at karen@farmtoschool.org.
National Farm to School Network and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition are partnering to advance farm to school priorities in the next Child Nutrition Reauthorization, with the shared goal of supporting stronger communities, healthier children and resilient farms.
Photo Credit: ASAP Growing Minds / WCCA King Creek
By Sophia Riemer, NFSN Program Fellow
North Carolina's Growing Minds Farm to School Program – a project of Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP) – has dedicated themselves to an upstream approach to expanding farm to ECE through Growing Minds @ Community Colleges, an effort to embed farm to early care and education (farm to ECE) curriculum into soon-to-be early care providers’ education and coursework in community colleges across the state. Growing Minds provides an abundance of resources to instructors looking to incorporate farm to ECE programming into their coursework, including presentations, workshops, and a comprehensive toolkit. Gwen Hill, Growing Minds’ Program Coordinator, explained the reasoning behind the approach. “We are very focused on training the trainers because we know there will never be enough nonprofits to put a garden educator into every school. We need to educate people who are already working in preschools about the basics of farm to ECE so they can be the trainers.” This approach is not new to Growing Minds, as seen through their Growing Minds @ University program that has been running since 2011, where farm to school curriculum is built into college coursework for dietetic interns and education students.
So far, Growing Minds @ Community Colleges has been a success. The program was first piloted with Blue Ridge Community College and truly launched in 2019 in 22 of the 58 colleges in the state.Through this program they’ve been able to deepen existing relationships while building many new ones, in part due to the excitement surrounding the program. One organization, Ashe County Partnership for Children, was so excited about the mission of Growing Minds @ Community College that they reached out to Growing Minds and offered to implement the farm to ECE trainings both at their organization and at their local college, after the college explained that they didn’t have the time to implement it themselves.
Beyond its own programming, Growing Minds also co-facilitates the North Carolina Farm to Preschool Network, partnering with a coalition of organizations to promote farm to ECE statewide. “As we continue to grow the North Carolina Farm to ECE Network, we’ll continue to look for ways we can build those symbiotic relationships and tie the work we’re doing with the network with the community colleges that are imbedding this coursework,” explained Hill. Growing Minds @ Community College is also hoping to go more in depth with the community colleges they are currently working with through monthly newsletters, development of more lesson plans and resources, and providing mini-grants to students in the program who are already working in early learning programs to implement farm to ECE and provide feedback.
Even with their early success, Growing Minds @ Community College hasn’t been without its bumps in the road. COVID presented the largest challenge to the blossoming program. Early care priorities shifted with the transition to virtual learning, leading to some slowed growth. Under normal circumstances, Growing Minds would be focusing on hands-on training, taking students through activities the children in their care would be doing such as crafts, taste tests and cooking demonstrations in order to get soon to-be providers excited. However, they are not letting these challenges stop them. Hill explained how they’ve been able to stay flexible. “We’ve found some creative ways to still connect with programs and progress.” They’ve converted their trainings to virtual platforms and have tried to increase communication, sending frequent email updates and doing virtual trainings over zoom. Understanding that early learning programs can be under-resourced in general, and even more so during COVID, Growing Minds @ Community College makes a point to always look for ways to make their trainings simple and user friendly while offering as much support as they can. They also emphasize how farm to ECE can be embedded into what providers are already doing. Hill explained, “this doesn’t have to be super fancy to be effective. You can get a sweet potato for a dollar, roast it up, do a taste test and then watch a ‘meet your farmer’ video. That’s all that’s needed to get kids excited about trying new vegetables and about farming.”
This blog was originally posted on April 19, 2021.
Meet Abby, Mackenize, Sophia, Sophia, Tiffany and Tomas below!
2021 has kicked off with exciting growth for the National Farm to School Network team! We’re thrilled to have welcomed six new teammates to our staff over the past several months, and are excited to introduce you to them. Across their different roles, they each play an important part in supporting National Farm to School Network’s vision of a just food system. Meet them below, and don’t hesitate to reach out and say hi.
Abby Katz - Policy Fellow Abby Katz is our new Policy Fellow. Abby is completing her Master’s degree in Food Studies, with a focus on policy and history, at New York University. Her intersectional and interdisciplinary approach stems from her experience developing a major at the University of Connecticut, where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Food, Culture, and Sustainable Society (Individualized) and Human Rights. She also holds a certificate in Food and Sustainability Studies from The Umbra Institute in Perugia, Italy. Abby's research interests are food policy, food history, cultural analysis, social justice, health equity, and sustainability. Her identity as an Afro-Latina shapes her interest in understanding the complexities of inequitable health outcomes in Black and Latinx/e communities – collectively and respectively. She also currently works in the Section on Health Choice, Policy, and Evaluation in the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone, in addition to collaborating with Dr. Kristen Cooksey-Stowers in the Department of Public Policy at the University of Connecticut. You can find Abby somewhere between coastal New England and the New York metro area, cooking, watching documentaries, and connecting with friends.
Mackenize Martinez - Program Associate, Native Communities Mackenize Martinez has joined our team as a Program Associate, supporting our work in Native Communities. Mackenize is a native of Zwolle, Louisiana, and an enrolled Tribal member of Choctaw and Apache descent. She earned her undergraduate degree from McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where she studied agricultural and animal sciences. Mackenize is currently enrolled in graduate courses at Arizona State University and plans to earn her Master of Science in Sustainable Food Systems. Mackenize’s passions include engaging with livestock producers, implementing farm to school initiatives, and supporting Indigenous food systems through policy advocacy. Mackenize has served farmers, ranchers, and food producers in various capacities. In 2019, she advocated for farm to school efforts in Native communities while working collaboratively between the Intertribal Agriculture Council and National Farm to School Network as the Partnership Communications Intern. In the spring of 2020, Mackenize served as a congressional intern in Washington, DC, for the House Committee on Agriculture’s majority office. During her time as an intern with both the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative and Native American Agriculture Fund, she was actively engaged in nationwide efforts geared towards promoting food sovereignty and supporting Indigenous farmers and ranchers.
Sophia Riemer - Programs Fellow Sophia Riemer is our 2020 Programs Fellow. Sophia recently finished a Masters in Public Health Nutrition from University of Washington's Graduate Coordinated Program in Dietetics. While in the program, she evaluated Washington State Department of Health’s fruit and vegetable incentive program using a community-based participatory approach. She is currently coordinating Washington State’s Farm to ECE implementation grant, where she is able to unite her passions for farm to school, healthy food access, and addressing inequities in our communities. Sophia also brings experience in farm to school nonprofit management from her time as program manager of Sprouts Cooking Club’s after school program, overseeing gardening, nutrition and culinary classes in over twenty schools across the California Bay Area. In her free time you can find her swimming or snorkeling on the Southern California coastline, cooking, gardening, reading, or hiking.
Sophia Rodriguez - Communications Intern Sophia Rodriguez is our 2020 Communications Intern. Originally from Hinesville, Georgia, Sophia is a junior at the University of Georgia where she is studying Human Development & Family Sciences and International Affairs with a minor in Spanish. As a pottery enthusiast, aspiring community gardener, and avid 4-H'er, she enjoys using her creativity to inspire equity-informed positive youth development. Sophia currently serves on National 4-H Council's Young Alumni Advisory Board, and she’s excited to use her passions and experience to contribute to the food justice movement. Sophia has helped launch National Farm to School Network’s new TikTok account - check us out at @FarmtoSchool!
Tiffany Torres - Strategic Plan Fellow Tiffany Torres has joined our staff as Strategic Plan Fellow and will support our efforts in working towards our new call to action: By 2025, 100% of communities will hold power in a racially just food system. Tiffany is based out of Florida and brings extensive experience in farm to school and working with producers. She formerly supported farm to school efforts in Florida while working for the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Extension and is a former FoodCorps service member.
Tomas Delgado - Program Manager Tomas Delgado has joined our staff as Program Manager, focused on supporting our work in Native Communities and with farmers and producers. Based in Illinois, the Prairie State, Tomas is passionate about building and supporting socially equitable and environmentally resilient communities. Tomas has experience in public and non-profit administration, scientific and policy research, ecological restoration efforts, and community organizing for social, environmental, and food justice. Tomas has a background in geography from Eastern Illinois University where he obtained a Bachelors of Science in Human Geography and is currently finishing a Masters degree in Geographic Information Sciences (GIS). Tomas’ academic background concentrates on the nexus of community-based, environmental resilience as it relates to land use and natural areas conservation policy, with a heightened focus on BIPOC and ancestral environmental stewardship. In his role as Program Manager, Tomas will oversee NFSN’s support of projects in Native communities and will serve as the lead for the NFSN’s work on Bringing the Farm to School, a new training program for agricultural producers across the country. Tomas currently resides in Urbana, Illinois where he is involved in local mutual aid systems and serves on a number of public boards and advisory commissions. Tomas enjoys collecting music, traveling, cartography, cycling, hiking, and coffee.
