Does anyone have any experience with the Farm-to-School lunch programs in your state or school district? I'm trying to see if we can get our local ISD to provide more locally grown foods to our students. Thanks! FarmToSchool.org Home Page -- FarmtoSchool.org
that's a beautiful website and program. i've never heard of it. mcdonalds is running our school lunch programs. my daughter is an organic farmer, i'll ask her if she knows anything.
Which state/district is this? Is it more expensive? Are the schools public/private/charter? How do the kids and parents like it? Any drawbacks? I'd really love to see our district do something like this. Would appreciate any and all info.
The Moore County School system in North Carolina built large vegetable gardens at more than half of their school sites. The gardens are maintained by the students as part of their general cirriculum. A lot of the produce and veggies are used by their cafeterias for student lunches. Students participate in the layout, design, build, planting, maintenance and harvest. I volunteer at my local elementary school and I've seen the program first hand. It's awesome. Jamie Oliver would be proud.
Northport, Michigan. It's a very small, geographically isolated district. Much of the local economy is agricultural, especially fruit. Our school kitchen has always cooked from scratch, so it wasn't a big stretch to include fresh produce and other local products. Our parents and community are happy with our food service. The only drawback would be higher costs, but these are minimal in our case. Tom
they did an inspection of the freezers in the boston school system and found much of the food being used daily to be way beyond the 'use by' date. while the meaningfullness of these dates is being debated, it's going to be a long stretch to fresh fruits and veggies.
It's not an everyday cirriculum for every student. I believe portions of the student body rotate every day (for maintenance), so that the entire student population gets into the garden once a month. I hope I explained that clearly.
Actually, I wonder if this infringes on child labor laws under the guise of public education curriculum.
So the schools sell these produce at a farmers market to reap a huge profit off of these unsuspecting students? What kind of flogging do the kids receive if they don't participate?
The kids get off easy: no flogging. The produce is used by each school's cafeteria for student lunches.
