Civil Eats

For years I have been saying that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to support Farm to School because of its common sense solution to serving local high quality food in schools and connecting children to where food comes from, but lo and behold, it does!

U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (NJ-12), an actual rocket scientist and five-time Jeopardy winner, has introduced legislation that would create a Farm to School grant program to fight childhood obesity and support local farmers.

“Farm to school programs exemplify the best use of federal school lunch dollars,” Holt said. “This is a rare opportunity for a win-win solution– a program to ensure our children get the best quality food at school, help foster local farm job growth, and create local economic growth.” Read More

As I entered the gymnasium of Lakeview Union School for Harvest Dinner, students buzzed busily around tables piled with plates of food – quinoa salad, beet and apple salad, pita bread, local Jasper Hill Farm cheese, turkey, squash, corn and mashed potatoes. Many are dishes that these students made themselves in the classroom using local ingredients, and most of the rest was grown in the school garden. A third-grader takes a bite of the pita bread made by the fourth graders and chews thoughtfully. Then he checks a box underneath a smiling face that proclaims, “I liked it!” Read More

With all the current discussion around improving school food, university food has been less-covered territory. Sure, it isn’t always funded by the government, but changing the way college students eat is an opportunity for better student health and the local economy. That was the impetus for creating Bon Appetit Management Company’s Comprehensive Student Garden Guide [pdf], a road map to starting, promoting and managing campus vegetable gardens as a force for bringing local produce to the college lunch room — where a campus full of hungry mouths and a budget means buying from student farmers becomes a logical option. Read More

Last week, while the market experienced a kind of volatility that had nearly everyone drawing parallels with the Great Depression, I had the privilege of participating in the Western Regional Assembly on Farm-to-School, which was sponsored by Ecotrust.  A large group gathered in Portland to share information, develop strategies and network around the issues of good food for schools, institutions and communities. Read More

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending the Chicago USDA Listening Session on the Child Nutrition & WIC Reauthorization Act with the Great Lakes National Farm to School Network. The session opened with a three-minute video on the Milwaukee Summer Feeding Program with a voice over by Sherrie Tussler from the Hunger Task Force. She then concluded with 22 seconds of questions posed by children (see above). Read More

“Stir-fried kale. They ate it. All of it. Gone,” Aziza Malik, Healthy City Kids Coordinator, says in proud amazement of teens eating the kale they harvested that day. Read More