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2020 – and now the start of 2021 – are pushing the conversation around race and systemic racism in this country to the main stage. Despite this recent heightened level of attention, what I and everyone around the world witnessed on Wednesday in our nation’s capital is not something that was created overnight nor over the last four years. Racism and otherness are the foundation of our nation, democracy, and food system.
As a white woman in America, I have the privilege of not seeing and feeling the hatred that is prevalent everyday for people of color in our country. I only see it when it is pushed to the main stage, and even then, I don’t feel it because my skin color protects me from that. And to be able to brush aside reality when it’s inconvenient, sad, or otherwise something I want to pretend doesn’t exist is exactly what white privilege is. I must speak out against the very privilege I hold and we saw displayed on Wednesday instead of condoning it through silence.
What unfolded this week is a reminder for us at National Farm to School Network about the necessity and urgency of doing anti-racist work. White privilege, white political power, and white supremacy are forces with long legacies in the history of this country and were undoubtedly on display through acts of intimidation, normalization of violence, and use of blatantly racist symbols and rhetoric by extremists this week, aiming to invalidate democratically cast votes in states with large Black and Indigenous populations.
National Farm to School Network condemns what happened. Also, we know this week’s events are yet another example of the deeply rooted structural and institutional racism and conscious bias that exists within our country. And it’s a reason why as Executive Director of National Farm to School Network – and on a personal level as a human being and mother – I remain committed to refocusing NFSN’s work to shifting power to those who have historically and systematically been marginalized, exploited, oppressed, and excluded. Dismantling racism and upholding democracy are fundamental actions we must take in order to achieve food justice, and to achieve justice in every aspect of our society. Standing up for justice and deferring to the leaderships of Black, Indigenous, Latino, Asian, and other people of color who do the essential work of organizing and advocating in their communities every day is what we strive for and what this moment reminds us we must continue to do.
In a late-night sprint on Monday, Congress passed a combined bill of $900 billion in coronavirus relief aid and $1.4 trillion in spending for fiscal year (FY) 2021. While the need for economic, nutrition, and public health relief is far greater than the scope of the relief provided, it nevertheless contains some wins for farm to school and farm to early care and education (ECE), and much-needed funds for our farmers and communities.
Highlights of the COVID relief measures include:
Relief for CACFP providers, replacing 55 percent of the total reimbursement funding lost for each claiming month from April 2020 to June 2020, plus half of March 2020.
A similar relief measure for schools participating in federal Child Nutrition Programs.
Expanded Pandemic EBT (P-EBT) to all income-eligible children under six years old.
Relief funding for a number of local food systems programs, and reduction of the matching funds requirements (note: unfortunately this does not include the Farm to School Grant Program) and measures to better tailor direct agricultural payments to specialty producers.
The FY 2021 spending bill also contains a number of big wins for farm to school and farm to ECE:
The highest-ever level of funding for the Farm to School Grant Program – $17 million total!
$500,000 allocated for a regional institute to disseminate farm to school and ECE research and technical assistance.
$2 million in Centers for Disease Control (CDC) funding for farm to ECE work.
Robust funding for other CDC programs promoting nutrition and addressing racial health equity, such as $63 million in funding for the Racial and Ethnic Aspects of Community Health (REACH) grants, of which $22 million is set aside for Native communities.
Update: These measures were passed in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, which was signed into law on December 27, 2020.
2020 has been a tumultuous year for so many of us – educators, farmers and fishers, school nutrition professionals, and of course children and families affected by the pandemic and its impact on the economy. While these crises are ongoing and there is still much work to be done, we want to take a moment to recognize the hard-won progress that our movement has made, together, in federal farm to school and farm to early care and education (ECE) policy during the 116th Congress. In particular, there have been numerous important marker bills introduced in both the US House and Senate since this Congress convened in January 2019, including:
Small Farm to School Act: Would create an eight state pilot program of local procurement incentives providing extra reimbursement under the National School Lunch Program.
Farm to School Act: Would expand funding and eligibility for the USDA Farm to School Grant Program, and increase equity by prioritizing grants that engage diverse farmers, serve high-need schools, and increase partnerships between tribal schools and tribal producers.
Kids Eat Local Act: Would allow schools to require local procurement for child nutrition programs, rather than including geographic preference as just one factor in the overall bid.
Universal School Meals Program Act of 2019: Would establish free breakfast, lunch, and summer food service available to all children in school and early care and education, including an incentive to procure at least 30% of ingredients locally.
Justice for Black Farmers Act: Would address discriminatory practices in USDA policies, including establishing independent civil rights oversight, creating a land grant system for Black farmers, and banning anti-competitive practices in livestock and poultry.
School Food Modernization Act: Would provide grants, loan guarantees, and technical assistance to help school nutrition professionals have the infrastructure and equipment they need to prepare meals with more fresh and unprocessed ingredients.
Improving Training for School Food Service Workers Act: Would require that USDA-provided training for local food service personnel take place during regularly scheduled, paid hours, and use hands-on methods whenever possible.
Food and Nutrition Education Act: Would establish a pilot program to support local education agencies to hire full-time food and nutrition educators, school gardens, and other hands-on nutrition learning opportunities for students.
Local School Foods Expansion Act: Would establish the Pilot Project for Procurement of Unprocessed Fresh Fruits and Vegetables as a permanent program and expand it to more states.
You can read more about each of these bills and see who co-sponsored them here.
Despite the difficulties of this year, these are shining bright spots that can set us up for significant federal policy opportunities with the new 117th Congress in 2021. To make that happen, your legislators need to hear from you that these marker bills are important!
ACTION: Take 2 minutes to scan the list of co-sponsors of these bills, identify if any are your members of Congress, and give them a call at the Capitol switchboard [202-224-3121] to thank them for their leadership. Then, take a second to thank yourself and your fellow farm to school advocates for your own hard work that has laid the foundation for these policy wins to be possible.
When the 117th Congress begins on January 3, 2021, we will need legislative champions to advance the priorities of farm to school and farm to ECE, including re-introducing bills like these and passing the critical COVID-19 relief measures our communities need. (Read more about the COVID-19 federal measures we’re pushing for here.) Your voices have never been more necessary to thank federal farm to school champions and forge ahead on policies towards a just food system.
National Farm to School Network was founded in 2007 on core values including food justice, and we have more recently moved to focus on the importance of race in this work, since food justice is racial justice. We are also working to move beyond words into action, since while words like our equity commitment statement matter, words alone will not achieve a racially just food system. We also need tangible action, such as our efforts in 2019. Twice in 2020 - in January and June - we publicly made commitments to action for racial justice through our work and have been carrying through on those steps throughout the year. This fall, we launched our call to action for the food system that will guide us in the years ahead.
In the spirit of holding ourselves accountable and in hopes of inspiring each of you to set measurable goals in your work towards achieving racial justice in our food system, we’re sharing our story from 2020. We’d love to hear your story too!
Became more explicit and vocal that there is no food justice without racial justice. We spoke out against racism, exploitation, and oppression, including for George Floyd, Philando Castile, and Jacob Blake.
Targeted our COVID-19 Relief Funds to Black- and Indigenous-led, -staffed, and -serving organizations. This decision inspired other national organizations to do so in their grant selection and awards.
Received mostly positive feedback on our statements. Some members in our network do not yet see the connection between farm to school and racial justice, which indicates further work we have to do.
Started identifying and correcting examples of deficit-based language in our writing, and we continue to push ourselves to be justice-centered in our communications.
Developing an organizational equity assessment tool for us and our partners.
Continuing to invest in racial equity professional development opportunities for staff and board members.
Creating a “People to People Language Guide” for communicating about race, ethnicity, gender, social class, disability status, and other forms of identity.
Continuing work with our external equity consultants.
Continuing to examine and address white supremacist culture in our organization.
The transition to a new Presidential administration comes with a change in leadership at important federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). This moment can be an inflection point, where farm to school and farm to early care and education (ECE) advocates can call for new leadership in how policies and programs are administered. While the federal Farm to School Grant Program has escaped major regulatory attacks over the last four years, it relies on and supports other programs within USDA that have suffered from agency actions. A new administration, in addition to undoing harm, has the opportunity to elevate farm to school and ECE as a proven strategy aligned with USDA’s multi-faceted mission of nourishing children and families and providing economic opportunities for farmers and communities. Additionally, the following recommendations are steps to advance the strategic goal of the National Farm to School Network: By 2025, 100% of communities will hold power in a racially just food system.
Actions for the new administration specific to farm to school and ECE:
Withdraw the proposed rule on Broad Based Categorical Eligibility, and revisit USDA rules that may negatively impact participation in school meals. Any attempts to restrict school meal or CACFP participation should be corrected.
Develop more formal guidance for school food authorities (SFAs) on using a values-aligned procurement framework (in addition to strictly geographically local preference) for RFPs and the bidding process.
Research USDA authority to issue waivers for greater cash in lieu of USDA commodity foods, if SFAs applied with proposals to increase their local and/or values-aligned purchasing.
Initiate research on increasing transparency within the USDA Foods supply chain, and assess what would be needed to apply more stringent conservation compliance and fair labor standards within that supply network.
Research barriers that prevent producers from participating as a vendor in DoD Fresh procurement. Recommend policy changes if necessary to reduce barriers for small local and regional producers, to increase the ability of SFAs to procure locally through DoD Fresh.
Continue and expand the AMS and FNS administered successful Pilot Project for the Procurement of Unprocessed Fruit and Vegetables, an alternative to USDA Foods and DoD Fresh for USDA purchases, authorized in the 2014 Farm Bill.
Conduct research on administrative and overhead savings provided by pursuing a universal approach to school meal and child nutrition programs. Additionally, assess the potential economic impact of local and values-aligned procurement for the farm economy as part of such an approach.
Identify regulatory and other barriers related to developing farm to school programs, including direct and indirect compliance costs of production and marketing to schools and early care and education programs, barriers to local and regional market access for small-scale production, barriers to funding projects which might otherwise be eligible for a federal Farm to School Grant, barriers to funding Tribal projects under farm to school programs, and barriers to local and regional market access for Tribal farmers and ranchers.
Actions for the new administration for a just food system:
Resume the farm labor prevailing wage survey, and ensure that H2-A agricultural workers receive the very modest protections the program currently has.
Take immediate action to protect food and farm workers at risk from the COVID-19 pandemic, and enforce occupational safety and health rules in our food system.
Restore the antitrust and competitive practices protections in the livestock and poultry industry, which are rife with unfair practices that exploit producers and lead to more consolidation in our food system.
Rebuild the personnel capacity of USDA’s Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture to collect, analyze, and release important data.
Work with small producers to understand and reduce the regulatory barriers of compliance with the Food Safety Modernization Act.
Scrutinize programs that have been authorized, but not funded, to include in the President's budget request. Programs such as the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Individual Development Account, which would provide matching savings for beginning producers, require no additional authorizing authority and could get funds directly into the hands of producers who need it most.
A PDF version of these recommendations is available here. For more information, please contact Karen Spangler, NFSN Policy Director, at karen@farmtoschool.org or 248-535-3709.
Photo courtesy of National Farm to Institution Metrics Collaborative
By National Farm to Institution Metrics Collaborative
As part of the National Farm to Institution Metrics Collaborative, the National Farm to School Network has been working with a group of farm to institution organizations across the U.S. to increase the measurement and evaluation of Farm to Institution programming.
In 2019, the Collaborative set out to identify key farm impact metrics that can be used by farm to institution practitioners across the country. Funded by USDA AMS, the project resulted in a set of six metrics, and an accompanying set of tools and resources, to help practitioners track the impact of their local purchasing. The final set of metrics include:
Business type: Type and Location of Business that produced the FINAL PRODUCT
Ownership: Is the business woman or minority-owned?
Farm impact: Percentage of the item that consisted of ingredients sourced from farm(s) within the local region
Farm identity: Does the item contain any local farm sourced ingredients that are identity-preserved (can be traced back to the original farm)?
Product type: What is the food category?
Market Channel: How was the item purchased?
These metrics are meant to be used as an integrated suite that can assess the economic impact of farm to institution purchasing on food and farm-related businesses. Shared metrics allow farm to institution practitioners to track progress and impact, provide for consistency and transparency in reporting, support strategic development of regional value chains, and create learning across sectors. Standardized metrics can also reduce costs for distributors in tracking them, making it more likely they will do so.
These metrics are particularly important to the farm to school sector as they create opportunity to connect schools to the broader farm to institution movement, motivate and encourage districts to set benchmarks and goals around local purchasing, and will provide important data to influence future local foods and farm to school supportive policy.
Learn more about the National Farm to Institution Metrics Collaborative, the farm impact metrics, and how you can get involvedhere. Interested in applying the metrics to your institution's tracking of local food purchases? Contact Lacy Stephens, NFSN Senior Program Manager, at lacy@farmtoschool.org to learn more!
(Top Left to Right) Serena Padilla, Joëll Edwards, Corey Banks, April Smith (Bottom Left to Right) Gale Livingston, Kadeesha Williams, Disha Patel, David Gardner
As National Farm to School Month comes to a close, we are thrilled to share with you the second round of our 2020 Community Food Champions! This year’s National Farm to School Month theme of It Takes a Community to Feed a Community has been all about recognizing the individuals who make farm to school work - day in and day out - and who have gone above and beyond this year, especially, to keep our kids and their families connected to community food systems.
We called on people like you to nominate your Community Food Champions - the people whose efforts may often go unnoticed, but whose work is absolutely essential to keeping our communities fed - for recognition and a $500 honorarium from the National Farm to School Network as a small token of appreciation. We received more than 200 nominations from across the country, representing nearly every role in the school food and farm to school ecosystem. After announcing our first round of 13 selected Community Food Champions early this month, we’re excited to share with you 17 more Community Food Champions, to round out our 30 awardees for National Farm to School Month 2020. They are:
Amber Woitalla - Community Food Advocate, Cheyenne River Indian Reservation - “Amber harvested 1043 pounds of produce and 169 cups of herbs to share with community members this summer. She recruited numerous youth to help plant and nurture the produce and taught lessons about the health benefits, Lakota and Dakota languages, and Dakota perspectives of the historical value of this food. Knowing that many families have been isolated due to a variety of restrictions, Amber packed up and took the harvest around the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation to many families.”
April Smith - SNAP-Ed Nutrition Coordinator, Minnesota - “Since COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd, April has been a leader in food distribution at four encampments within Minneapolis which impacted over 150 families. April has also partnered with Master Gardeners and a local food hub, the Good Acre, to distribute food from BIPOC farmers to 55 native elders and families. April exemplifies what it means to be a community food hero and has demonstrated unwavering commitment to her community.”
Chester Williams - Founder, A Better Chance A Better Community, North Carolina - “Chester Williams is doing exciting work to uplift the youth and communities in Halifax County and the Roanoke Valley in Northeastern North Carolina, creating opportunities for the youth to shape a healthier world in their own communities and beyond. Before and since COVID, Chester works beside young people to respond to urgent needs of the whole community, foster food sovereignty in his area, and nurture leaders and collaborations that move us toward the world we want for all our people.”
Corey Banks - Operations Associate, The Common Market Southeast, Georgia - “For the past 3+ years, Corey has been a pivotal, behind-the-scenes player in ensuring our fresh, nutritious food reaches our food service teams, students and partners alike safely and smoothly. His contagious positive attitude, resilient spirit, and direct action ensures safe, clean, beautiful food gets picked up from our farms, gets inspected for safety and quality, and ultimately reaches our region's schools and beyond.”
David Gardner - School Nutrition Professional, Cambridge Public Schools, Massachusetts - “David has always been an integral part of our school food services team. However, once the pandemic hit he had to adapt nearly every aspect of our meal service. His responsibilities of managing inventory, coordinating drivers, collaborating with vendors for orders which had been historically stable interactions were now impacted by so many forces out of anyone's control. As district staff was cut in half, use of 13 kitchens was consolidated to 2, on site meal preparation transitioned to contactless delivery to 8 different sites through the city, David was always a beacon of calm.”
Disha Patel - Food Justice Educator, Common Ground, Connecticut - “Disha is a pioneer for food justice, land sovereignty, youth opportunity, farm and labor rights, and so much more. She started a mutual aid fund with other social justice organizations like during the pandemic, hand delivering food boxes grown on her school farms to families. She also works with students as an educator implementing the most culturally aware lesson plans that I've seen, including the Black Panther Smoothie lesson, and Common Grounds infamous cooking club that is vegan, allergen free, delicious, and each month they visit a new culture and tradition!”
Gale Livingston - Farmer, Deep Roots Farm, Maryland - “Gale's dedication to building a healthier and more just food system are unparalleled. She is a hands-on farmer, maintaining 500 acres of land, with a mission for her farm space to become a place where there is equitable access to quality organic produce. She also works with local schools like Kimball Elementary to provide produce through weekly farm shares, which are used to teach family cooking classes. Her hands may be dirty from being immersed in soil all day but her heart is golden.”
Jay Holly - Afterschool Educator & Community Food Advocate, Virginia - “In addition to being an inspiring and tireless afterschool educator for local youth, Jay is also an excellent chef and has consistently supported and championed efforts to provide students with summer field trips to our farm, "Young Chefs" cooking classes, veggie tastings, take-home snack packs for students using local produce, and a Youth-Run Farm Stand in the Boys and Girls Club parking lot. Most recently, Jay supported an online video series called "Super Summer Chefs" we launched to connect with students during the pandemic.”
Joëll Edwards - Farm to School Hui Project Manager, Mālama Kaua’i, Hawai’i - “Joëll is a true unsung hero in the local Kauaʻi food community. When COVID began to shutdown our island, Joëll sprung into action. She began managing all of the intake calls for families and kupuna (elders) who were most in need of food through Malama Kauaʻiʻs CSA bag program so that local produce was delivered to their homes. She coordinated various avenues of food distribution for the USDA Farm-to-Families program through 10 sites across the entire island, which allowed over 15,000 local produce bags to be given out to families for free. Through her personal connections and ability to navigate through adverse situations, Joëll has shown us how much our community can accomplish together with a shared vision.”
Kadeesha Williams - Community Horticulturist and Urban Agriculturist, NYBG’s Bronx Green-Up, New York - “I have learned so much from Kadeesha about providing nutritious food to my community. She has even opened doors for me to gain employment in this field that I grew to love and want to be part of. She is self-taught and very knowledgeable about urban farming and how to help people become sustainable and teach others.”
Kena and Mark Guttridge - Farmers, Ollin Farms, Colorado - "Kena and Mark demonstrate a passion for and commitment to growing nutrient dense, high quality produce for children across Boulder County. When the pandemic hit, we asked if they would be willing to double the number of CSA shares they had initially agreed to provide for our child care programs and they agreed without giving it a second thought. They also helped us strategize safer models for the in-person farm trips and nutrition education classes they provide Farm to ECE participants."
Lenny Xiong - Farmer, Cannon Falls, Minnesota - “Lenny grows strawberries, rhubarb, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, eggplant, sugar snap peas, and more to Minnesota schools and early care and education centers. In the spring, Lenny via the Good Acre supplied schools in Robbinsdale, MN with local strawberries and rhubarb for a strawberry-rhubarb sauce kit that contained a recipe and video tutorial for children in the Robbinsdale Area district. Just this month, he grew loads of colorful carrots for schools in Roseville, MN - a great way to celebrate National Farm to School Month! We are so grateful for local partners such as Lenny who go the extra mile to provide delicious produce for students.”
Malcolm Snead - Food Service Director, Creede Consolidated Schools, Colorado - “Chef Malcolm is committed to making his school lunch program the best rural meal program in the state! He is constantly exposing his students to new cuisines and exciting flavors; things that are not very common in their tiny mountain town. It's common to find Colorado-grown produce on his menu - he has even managed to incorporate Colorado Quinoa into a burrito! He is a leader in this space when it comes to making the procurement of local foods look normal. On top of his amazing meals, he also started a culinary program for 8th and 9th graders. He is doing whatever he can to ensure that the children in his community are well-fed and truly nourished.”
Patricia Cain - Second Grade Teacher, New Mexico - “Mrs. Cain is a second grade dual language teacher at James Elementary and leader of the school/community garden, which has 224 raised beds. Despite COVIE-19, Mrs. Cain still made sure the garden was planted, maintained, and watered so the students would have fruits and vegetables when they returned to school. Unfortunately, the students haven't returned yet, so the produce has been donated to community partners and frozen so the students will be able to do cooking and nutrition activities when they return. She is truly our garden angel.”
Samantha Oster - Farm to Preschool Coordinator, New York - “Samantha adapted Grow it, Try it, Like it food lessons, recorded, edited and uploaded those lessons to Youtube so the pandemic didn't stop nutrition education in our daycare center. She also helped coordinate fresh food boxes to be sent home with families, and recorded recipie demonstrations for how families could use this food. I believe that by implementing Farm to Preschool remotely, she helped continue to provide safe nutrition lessons to children and parents without compromising the safety of our staff nor the families we work with.”
Sarah Nesky - School Nutrition Professional, Suttons Bay Schools, Michigan - "Sarah has been working tirelessly since the pandemic started, providing 200 breakfast and lunch bags for our students 5 days a week that were delivered from March 16th until school started this September. Plus we also had the summer GSRP group and the other student programs on site at the school including driver's education training. She even worked during the spring break to make sure the students didn't go hungry. Sarah really cares for the children of our area, and works long hours to make sure they are taken care of and get the freshest produce we can purchase."
Serena Padilla - Newburgh Program Manager & Garden Educator, Land to Learn, New York - “Serena leads an empowered learning community of students who explore their school garden, discovering its diverse habitat, observing how plants work, understanding where food comes from, creating artwork, practicing literacy skills, and harvesting veggies to make healthy snacks. This gardening season, as schools are closed due to the pandemic, Serena contributed to the 200 pounds of produce that Land to Learn donated to food relief efforts and also participated in the formation of networks that are helping people feed themselves. She has stayed engaged with her students by offering them garden-at-home kits, producing educational videos, and hosting virtual lessons. Serena is a dedicated champion of food education and food system justice!”
(Top Left to Right) Lenny Xiong, Samantha Oster, Amber Woitalla, Chester Williams (Bottom Left to Right) Sarah Nesky, Jay Holly, a Malcolm Snead school lunch, Patricia Cain
In addition to these Champions, meet the first 13 Champions we announced here. We are so inspired by and grateful for all 30 of these individuals who make strong, resilient food systems work and keep their communities nourished. THANK YOU for all you do!
Special thanks to CoBank and Carton2Garden for sponsoring our National Farm to School Month campaign and making our 2020 Community Food Champion recognitions possible!
Farm to school is all about relationships and partnerships. We often hear about the relationships between farmers and schools – a literal farm to school kind of relationship. But there are many other types of partnerships, collaborations and support networks in the background that make the farm to school movement thrive. One of those important partnerships is between National Farm to School Network and CoBank, which have a shared goal of growing farm to school to support farmers and vibrant rural communities. CoBank, one of the nation’s largest providers of credit to the U.S. rural economy, has been a financial supporter of the National Farm to School Network for more than six years, making important farm to school projects – like data research and evaluation, national networking events, National Farm to School Month celebrations, and so much more – possible.
Since 2014, CoBank has been a sponsor of National Farm to School Network’s biannual National Farm to Cafeteria Conference, which has brought together thousands of stakeholders from across the country to network, learn, and collaborate on advancing farm to school and wider cafeteria efforts, including expanding new market opportunities for farmers and agricultural producers and strengthening rural economies.
In 2017, CoBank and fellow Farm Credit bank AgriBank sponsored the development of National Farm to School Network’s “Economic Impacts of Farm to School: Case Studies and Assessment Tools” report, which quantified the financial benefits to farmers when schools source food locally. The report found that not only were surveyed farmers satisfied or very satisfied with most aspects of farm to school sales, but farms participating in farm to school tend to purchase more inputs from the local economy, which results in positive overall local economic impact.
CoBank has also been a significant supporter of National Farm to School Network’s National Farm to School Month celebration campaigns in October. This year’s theme of It Takes a Community to Feed a Community honors all of those who contribute to feeding our kids and communities – including farmers, harvesters and food hub distributors, school nutrition professionals, educators, garden coordinators, bus drivers and more. Among this year’s campaign activities has been the nomination and selection of 30 Community Food Champions from across the country for special recognition of their important efforts to keep kids and their families fed, especially during this difficult year. CoBank’s sponsorship has allowed National Farm to School Network to specifically recognize the exceptional efforts of five farmers, producers and agricultural community leaders:
Kena and Mark Guttridge - Ollin Farms, Longmont, CO - Kena and Mark grow high quality produce for schools and early care and education centers across Boulder County. They also offer farm trips and educational classes to teach and excite students about where their food comes from.
Lenny Xiong - Farmer, Cannon Falls, MN - Lenny grows and delivers strawberries, rhubarb, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, eggplant, sugar snap peas, and more to Minnesota schools and early care and education centers. Just this month, he grew loads of colorful carrots for schools in Roseville, MN - a great way to celebrate National Farm to School Month!
Mateo Carrasco - Food Justice Organizer, Albuquerque, NM - This summer, through his work with the Southwest Organizing Project, Mateo partnered with Cornelio Candelaria Organics to harvest and distribute more than 1,000 pounds of fresh, local produce to families from Whittier Elementary School in Albuquerque.
Josefina Lara Chavez - Farmer Advocate, Davis, CA - Josefina works with Latinx growers on the California Central Coast to coordinate and aggregate their agricultural products for sales, including to school districts, and during the pandemic, to emergency meal programs and food banks. She has helped facilitate thousands of dollars of fair price sales for Latinx growers, who sometimes have otherwise faced language, financial, and other barriers in selling their products.
Lauren Jones - Urban Farmer, Shreveport, LA - Lauren, through a partnership with Shreveport Green and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is leading the establishment of a multi-acre urban farm in the heart of downtown Shreveport that will feed 150 families, teach gardening and nutrition education, and foster leadership development opportunity for youth.
Looking forward, National Farm to School Network and CoBank’s partnership is continuing in the coming months with the launch of a new quantitative and qualitative analysis of the producer and supply chain impacts of Washington, D.C.'s Healthy Tots Act, which includes a local procurement incentive program for child care programs purchasing from local farmers and producers. This evaluation will provide valuable data on the impacts of procurement incentive programs and will inform new policy advocacy tools to help elected officials and decision-makers explore and implement policies that support new economic opportunities for farms and increased access to healthy, nutritious food for kids. Stay tuned for more on this new project coming in 2021!
“CoBank’s partnership with National Farm to School Network supports creating new markets for local farmers,” said Sarah Tyree, Vice President, Policy and Public Affairs of CoBank.
“National Farm to School Network is grateful for CoBank’s partnership and investment in our efforts to strengthen farm to school across the country, which is providing new opportunities for farmers, strengthening rural economies, and fostering vibrant and healthy communities,” said Helen Dombalis, Executive Director of National Farm to School Network. “CoBank’s commitment to supporting our mission has been instrumental in allowing us to expand our reach, deepen our impact, and move closer to turning our vision of a just food system that corrects inequities and benefits everyone into reality.”
