Civil Eats » WIC reauthorization

Exclusive Interview with Kathleen Merrigan: Farm to School Movement Comes of Age

tgreenaway — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 20:34:08 +0000

It’s a big day for the farm to school movement. At the 2011 School Nutrition Association national convention in Nashville today, Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan announced a comprehensive, groundbreaking report on the current state of farm to school efforts around the country. Download the full report here.

The data in the report was complied by the USDA Farm to School Team (comprised of both Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) and Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) staff), which made visits to 15 school districts (over what time frame) in a wide range of states. Merrigan spoke with Civil Eats earlier today about the findings and how it might shape the farm to school landscape of the future.

What inspires you about this report?

It’s pretty exciting when students are getting really fresh food. It’s a time when the USDA has released a new dietary guideline and a new food icon and we’re really promoting the idea that half of the plate be filled with fruits and vegetables.

It’s also good for farmers’ bottom lines, economically. Particularly for that struggling mid-size commercial farmer, who could really use a local institutional buyer. We’ve seen it make a difference in their viability in a number of states where farm to school has taken off.

Lastly, I think it’s really important for kids to get reconnected to agriculture. It’s one of my themes; I talk about it all the time. Too many Americans are far removed from how their food is produced, and by whom, and they have a lot of questions. Farm to school is in a suite of strategies that USDA is employing to reconnect consumers to where their food comes from.

Farm to school has taken off regardless of what the USDA does, because there’s real enthusiasm around the country for it. Do we know how many schools are implementing these programs and how much produce they’re actually getting on students’ plates? The Farm to School Network Web site has more stats, but as of 2010, there were around 2,000 farm to school programs.

We would like to know more about these programs, so today at the School Nutrition Association convention (where 4,500 school district people are gathering), I’m announcing a national survey to gather baseline data on farm to school. And I’m going to be asking for 100 percent participation in the survey.

What do you hope the take home message is for folks in school districts from this report?

We’ve heard that people are enthusiastic about farm to school–that there are a lot of wins for farmers and students. But we’ve also heard consensus about the challenges: Around funding, around how to procure locally grown food, around how to ensure food safety standards are met, and how to incorporate better salad bars in schools in a way that counts for reimbursable meals. There are a lot of barriers, but none of them are insurmountable. What this shows me is that there really is a pathway forward to expand farm to school in a big way. None of the barriers in this report are deal breakers.

I noticed in the report when people identified barriers, there was often the implication that the farm to school effort was something they had to do in addition of their day-to-day operations, rather than instead of some day-to-day operations.

I have two thoughts about that. First of all, farm to school can’t be an isolated exercise; it needs to be supplemented. That’s why the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative is so important, because we’re investing in things like food hubs. Giving farmers access to light processing and value-added facilities makes it so that it doesn’t all fall on school personnel. Later today, for instance, I’ll be visiting an incubator kitchen in Nashville for value-added products that the USDA has invested with one of our big grants.

We also have the Let’s Move initiative. This report says people lack training, so the First Lady is pairing chefs with schools and a lot of that’s around culinary training in cafeterias, because some of it is just getting more familiarity with how to use knives.

Some of the most creative discussions I participate in focus on how to make the lunch room not just a place to consume the meal, but also an educational component in the school day. Jose Andreas, for instance, one of the chefs in Washington, is talking about trying to make the school meal a science experiment and considering it part of the curriculum. How do we rethink school meals so it’s not just time off from school, but really an inherent part of school?

The report mentioned two laws–the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act in 2002 and the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004. Both were to have supported farm to school efforts, but neither was actually funded in the appropriations process. Given the current budget constraints, what is the likelihood we’ll see these latest efforts get funded?

There is a grant program for farm to school in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act that passed last fall and that funding would become available next year. But you’re right, we can’t bet the ranch on it because we are in difficult budget times. I’m anticipating we’ll have that new money, because it seems to be a priority for everyone, including Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (the chairperson of the Senate Agriculture committee) who sponsored the original bill.

That said there’s a lot we can do without new money, by better aligning the bureaucracy. We need to be better on our own federal procurement policies. Today we’re announcing a new pilot program focused on purchasing locally grown fruits and vegetables in both Florida and Michigan. We want to allow school districts to put in their contracts with their distributors that they want local purchasing. We’re trying to really re-examine our own bureaucracy and see how we can make it easier for people to engage in farm to school effort.

If a school is bringing in a little spinach or broccoli–a few items at a time–it’s one thing. But if this were to really grow, do you anticipate any backlash from the few large companies that currently supply most of the food that ends up in school lunches?

Time will tell. Right now the school nutrition community and all the vendors in the school meals programs are facing challenges from a variety of quarters. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act is requiring a serious upgrade in nutrition standards. People are trying to figure out how do they meet these lower sodium and lower fat guidelines, and increase the quantity of fruits and vegetables? We are really in a transformative moment here in school meals; this is the first serious upgrade in nutrition standards in over 15 years, and the first real increase in the reimbursement rate for a very long time.

There are a lot of moving parts right now and everyone recognizes our dual problems of childhood hunger and obesity. Everyone recognizes from all the conversations that I have from every political perspective and every industry perspective that we have to change. It’s a national imperative. People are trying to figure out how to retrofit their businesses. I mean you even have Wal-Mart trying to retrofit their distribution system to move to a local distribution model. To some extent, corporate America will follow what people want and the customers are speaking pretty loudly on the need to reform school meals.

Who will be getting this report and what will happen now?

The report is on the Farm to School Web site as of today. We’re announcing the survey and the procurement pilot in Michigan and Florida and we’re releasing an annotated bibliography on farm to school today that the National Agriculture library has been working on.

I think that suite of efforts, and the fact that I’m at the School Nutrition Association gathering speaking to 4500 people, says it’s a real coming of age and a seal of approval from USDA. Farm to school is here to stay.

The above photo is from the USDA Farm to School website.

Dear Mom-In-Chief,

deschmeyer — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 09:35:37 +0000

As First Lady you have the ability to set the table for what our nation’s children eat by adding a plank of food justice to your platform. Many ideas have already been sent your way, including starting an organic garden on the White House lawn and appointing a First Farmer. But where should you start?

I request that you make the health of our nation’s children your platform priority. Especially with two growing girls to nurture and nourish, you must understand that we will only be successful as a nation when all children in our country are healthy and well-fed.

You have the support of the 44th President. The Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, was quoted yesterday in the Washington Post explaining President Obama’s goals for the USDA, “The vision is, he wants more nutritious food in schools.” Vilsack went on to depict the role of local foods in that mission: “In a perfect world, everything that was sold, everything that was purchased and consumed would be local, so the economy would receive the benefit of that.”

You have a ripe opportunity to make great strides toward that vision with the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, which is the federal legislation that establishes the guidelines for our nation’s school meal programs and the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. Every four or five years, there’s an opening for all of those concerned with the health of our nation’s children to evaluate, defend, and improve the federal Child Nutrition Programs. That time is now as the current Child Nutrition Act expires in September 2009.

With at least 35 to 40 percent of children’s daily eating occurring during the school day, a reformed cafeteria could improve the health and increase the capacity to learn for the 30 million children that eat at school 180 days per year.

When you invited Chef Sam Kass into the White House Kitchen, your spokeswoman said “he happens to have a particular interest in healthy food and local food.” Mr. Kass has spoken out previously on the need to change the school lunch menu by decreasing the high levels of sugar and fat. He’s right.

Earlier this month the results of the latest school nutrition dietary assessment study by the Journal of the American Dietetic Association exposed that in the 2004-2005 school year, only 6% to 7% of schools met all nutrition standards. This is unacceptable.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25% of children between the ages of 6 and 11 were overweight in 2007. In the late 1970s, that number was only 6.5%. The oft-quoted statistic that one in three children born in 2000 will be diabetic in their lifetime (make that one in two if the child is black or Hispanic) demonstrates we can’t wait a moment longer to act.

If you make the health of our nation’s children your priority, you could save countless lives and potentially save us billions of dollars.

Consider the economic stress of diet-induced diseases such as Type II Diabetes, now inflicting youth. The insulin, needles, test strips, blood sugar monitors, doctor’s appointments, etc. take a considerable chunk of change. The average annual expense for a person diagnosed with diabetes is $11,744, of which $6,649 is directly attributed to the disease. Those with diabetes have medical expenses that are 2.3 times higher than those with working pancreases.

Sasha and Malia are fortunate to be eating nutritious local, organic lunches at Sidwells Friends School. This is what your girls ate at lunch on Tuesday, February 10th:

Organic Vegetarian Chili, Carrot Apple Soup, Roasted Local Beet Salad, Salad du Jour, All Natural Beef Chili, Brown Rice, Steamed Zucchini and Grapefruit Slices

The above shows the solution can be delicious. How wonderful that you and the President can provide local, fresh and healthy foods for the First Daughters, but what about kids in the rest of the country? From your previous neighborhood on the south side of Chicago to your new community in Washington, D.C. with the highest childhood obesity rates in the country, the nutritional divide that stymies the development and potential of youth is an open wound.

The average school cafeteria unfortunately operates on the lowest common denominator of cost, not quality. The USDA currently reimburses schools $2.57 for every free lunch it serves and lower amounts for reduced cost and full price meals. This leaves about one dollar to cover actual food costs, once labor and overhead costs are factored in. What do you expect food service directors to feed our kids with on a $1.00?

Thankfully, kids, parents, food service staff, teachers, farmers, school administration, and other community members have a taste for change and have been working to incorporate fresh, local product—no matter the perceived barriers—through what is called “farm to school” programs.

The farm to school movement has not waited for the federal government to make children a priority. There are over 2,000 known programs in 39 states as reported by the National Farm to School Network, a joint project of the Center for Food and Justice at Occidental College and the Community Food Security Coalition.

Even though I promote from scratch cooking, you don’t have to start from scratch in your platform.

The Child Nutrition Forum, a collaboration of many groups, including, National Farm to School Network, School Nutrition Association, Food Research and Action Center and School Food FOCUS, has a statement of principles that outlines key issues to champion immediately.

From there you can delve into an extensive menu of ideas such as establishing a national farm to school grant program or strengthening nutrition standards for school meal programs.

On February 26, I invite you to attend one of two Congressional briefings on farm to school and hear directly from those working every day for a healthy America.

Fulfill your wish to be America’s Mom-in-Chief by making sure that every child has the nutrients necessary to carry our country forward—now that is a stimulus plan I can believe in.

Sincerely,

Debra Eschmeyer