Wednesday, November 11, 2009

It's Farm to School Week!




The Virginia Department of Education has collaborated with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to promote the Virginia Farm to School program during the week of November 9 - 13. Farm to School is an initiative that seeks to bring nutritious fresh foods from local farms to local schools.


As you may know, Harrisonburg has been working to source locally grown foods for our menus for the past two years. As the Farm to School movement grows, I am very excited to see more and more divisions beginning to source foods locally. What an opportunity for economic growth for local growers and for school nutrition directors to improve upon what we are serving to our students!


Some of the locally grown products that will be featured on our menus this week include bibb lettuce, ground beef, whole wheat flour, fresh apples, and our newest local product; fresh broccoli. In surrounding Rockingham County schools, menus will feature locally grown sweet potatoes, broccoli, apples, and whole wheat flour. Schools in Albemarle County, Greene County, and Charlottesville City will be sourcing foods through a "local food hub"; a distributor of sorts for local product that will make deliveries to schools throughout the area. Check out a link: http://chofoodhub.blogspot.com/


I mention the use of the local food hub to highlight one of the biggest barriers to schools using more local product - the "how to" of getting foods to schools. There is irony in the fact that it is much easier to get foods produced across the county to schools through large scale distributors than it is to get small amounts of locally grown foods to geographically spread out schools. In Harrisonburg, our schools are in close proximity to one another and farmers are willing to make deliveries to one or more schools. Our maintenance staff is also able to zip around to eight schools rather quickly to make food deliveries. In contrast, to include local product on his menus, the school nutrition director in Rockingham County needed to personally deliver local product to all of his 20+ schools. This would obviously not be an efficient distribution model over the long run.


The local food hub is a great solution to this problem. Like a large scale distributor, a local food hub can serve as a storage site and smaller scale distributor for local product. Farmers can sell to the hub, who in turn can sell and deliver to schools. I hope that the food hub in the Albemarle area will serve as a model for future hubs that may pop up around the state.


The farm to school movement in Virginia is still in its infancy, but is picking up momentum. It's an exciting time to be a part of feeding Virginia's students.