Farm-to-School
Explored at Seminar
—Maura McDermott
About eighty farmers, food service directors, policy makers and
agency personnel attended the Kerr Center's Farm-to-School Seminar
on November 4 at the Seretean Wellness Center on the Oklahoma State
University campus in Stillwater.
Participants listened to ten speakers explain how farm-to-school
programs work in other states as well as developments in the Oklahoma
farm-to-school pilot. They were also treated to an Oklahoma-grown
lunch, featuring lasagna (made with ground buffalo), fall greens
with apples and pecans, sweet potato cake and baguettes made with
Oklahoma-grown organic wheat.
Speakers from out of state were Kristen Markley of the Community
Food Security Coalition, Glyen Holmes and Vonda Richardson of the
New North Florida Cooperative, and Judi Jaquez and Betsy Torres
from the Santa Fe, New Mexico, school district.
Speakers who explained the Oklahoma program were Jim Horne, Anita
Poole, and Doug Walton of the Kerr Center, Paula Price of the Department
of Human Services, Mary Ann Kelsey of Oklahoma's Ag in the Classroom
program, Bob Ramming, a watermelon grower from Hydro, and Jill
Poole, food service director at Broken Arrow
public schools.
Markley opened the program, emphasizing the importance of establishing
good communication between school food service personnel, farmers,
parents and state officials. Everyone involved should strive to
understand and respect the challenges each face, she said.
Food service directors, she added, are doing the best they can
with tight budgets, and farmers face uncertain weather and growing
conditions.
Glyen Holmes, farmer and organizer of the highly successful New
North Florida Cooperative, echoed Markley's thoughts. He urged
farmers to learn to talk the "food service language," for
example, translating bushels
into cases and cost-per-serving.
"Look at the food service buying guide," he advised,
and think about what will save food service staff time and effort.
Holmes should know. His Florida panhandle cooperative of small-scale
farmers sells to schools in Florida and three nearby states—Georgia,
Alabama and Mississippi. They sell collards and sweet potatoes
year-round as well as Southern peas, muscadine grapes, strawberries,
blackberries and watermelon.
Their "signature crop" is collard greens (shredded
and bagged) and he advised Oklahoma farmers to find one or two
such crops that schools cannot get readily from vendors.
Broken Arrow Food service director Jill Poole agreed with Holmes
that "time constraints are an issue." Her schools
serve 11,000 lunches in two hours each day. "We're the largest
fast food restaurant in town." But she is dedicated to serving
her kids good food, spending $130,000 each year on fresh fruits
and vegetables.
"The kids eat fresh fruits and vegetables better than canned,"
she said.
Betsy Torres, who coordinates farm-to-school in Santa Fe, told
of introducing kids to a locally-grown salad mix that did not include
the more familiar iceberg lettuce. Wary at first, now "they
don't even think twice about it. It's the exposure," she
says.
She noted that kids will "eat what is available," and
are more flexible than adults.
Santa Fe's program began with incorporating local produce—lettuce
and melons—onto salad bars at three pilot high schools and
two elementary schools. Today, eight schools regularly incorporate
local products.
"It's a guaranteed market if your product is good," said
Torres. One success story is a local apple grower who sells his
smaller apples to local schools and is now upgrading his equipment
to better serve the school market.
Torres, Jaquez and others mentioned the challenges of buying
locally under restrictive procurement policies. The New Mexico
Department of Agriculture employs a middleman, Craig Mapel, who
helps food service directors and farmers write and meet specs.
"It takes creative thinking," Torres said.
"Today a farmer has to wear many hats," said Holmes. "You'll
be a dinosaur—extinct if you can't."
After listening to the presentations, seminar participants broke
into small groups to discuss the most immediate needs of the Oklahoma
farm-to-school program.
The item consistently mentioned by all of the small groups was
the need for a state-level program coordinator, said the Kerr Center's
Anita Poole, organizer of the seminar. The groups also identified
about a dozen tasks for such a coordinator to tackle.
Other needs—the development of farmer cooperatives, more
nutritional education, production techniques to extend the growing
season, mini-grants for schools to purchase locally-grown and the
development of promotional campaigns such as "It's Cool
to Eat in School"— were also mentioned. (The complete
list of recommendations is online at www.kerrcenter.com.)
Mary Ann Kelsey of Oklahoma's Ag in the Classroom program summed
up what should be the bottom line in every school cafeteria in
Oklahoma: "If kids eat well, they'll learn well. At least
they'll have a chance."
The Farm-to-School Seminar was presented in cooperation with
the Community Food Security Coalition, the Robert Woods Johnson
Foundation, and the USDA Risk Management Agency. Thanks to the
Seretean Center for donating space.
For More Information:
New North Florida Cooperative
www.smallfarms.cornell.edu/pages/resources/marketing/wholesale.cfm
www.foodsecurity.org/
f2s_case_florida.pdf
Bulletin No. 1, Marketing Fresh Produce to Local Schools: The
North Florida Cooperative Experience www.ams.usda.gov/tmd/MSB/PDFpubList/sfss-1.pdf
Bulletin
No. 2, Cultivating Schools as Customers in a Local Market: The
New North Florida Cooperative www.ams.usda.gov/ tmd/MSB/ PDFpubList/
sfss-2.pdf
Bulletin No. 3, Acquiring Capital and Establishing
a Credit History: The North Florida Cooperative Experience www.ams.usda.gov/tmd/
MSB/PDFpubList/sfss-3.pdf
Bulletin No. 4, Success of
the New North Florida Cooperative: A Progress Report on Producer
Direct Sales to School Districts") www.ams. usda.gov/TMD/
MSB/PDFpubList/sfss-4.pdf
New Mexico
Farm-to-School Program
www.farmtoschool.org/nm/programs.htm
www.foodsecurity.org/f2s_case_newmexico.pdf
Cooking with Kids Program
www.cookingwithkids.net/
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