My gradual enlightenment about the important role school food programs play in children’s learning and lives began in 1996 when my granddaughter Alice came to live with me. I had not realized most schools no longer had kitchens, nor that lunch programs often relied on fast food companies to deliver desiccated hamburgers, hot dogs, tacos or pizza slices to a microwave oven. We packed Alice a nutritious brown-bag lunch, but this did not solve the problem. She was the new girl, and not eating a couple bites of pizza before dumping the rest and heading for the playground cut into her desires to belong. We discovered the lunch bags, untouched, in her backpack.

In October, 2000, I went to a Bioneers Conference and attended Berkeley’s Ecoliteracy Center’s workshop on their Food System Project. I discovered how Berkeley parents had besieged their school district with demands for better school lunches; how Chef Alice Walker’s Edible School Yard in one school gave children a chance to grow their food, cook it, and learn to love vegetables and fruits. The Center received an USDA grant for a Farm to School program to extend throughout Berkeley’s school district.

Nor were school lunches the only focus of the program. The Center knew that unless students understood where their food came from, how it was grown, and the economic and distribution system that brought it to them, they (and their parents and teachers) would remain ignorant of the vital role of the food system in their well-being. What was needed was an integrated sense of the food system as a whole. As Zenobia Barlow, the Center’s Executive Director put it: “When schools adopt practices that mimic nature’s ability to sustain the web of life, they transform themselves into places where extraordinary learning can occur.”

I realized SLO County had everything needed to create similar programs: family farms seeking more direct markets, Jr. Master Gardeners programs helping establish viable school gardens, various programs that taught children about nutrition, and environmental and educational organizations fostering interest in sustainable methods of horticulture. Through Farm to School conferences with the Community Food Security Coalition, I discovered wider support for county resources. The California Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) was launching farm to school programs in Monterey, Ventura, and Santa Cruz Counties. The CA Department of Education linked healthy nutrition and the cultivation of school gardens to academic motivation and success, with their Garden in Every School and 5-A-Day Nutrition programs. The U.C. Extension fostered a Youth Nutrition Education Program (YNEP) with a representative in our county.

As I talked with people engaged in these activities in our county, it seemed the major obstacle to an integrated farm to school program was the scattered and partial nature of these efforts. For example, the YNEP program, ably carried out by Kimberlee Hampton, was allowed to operate only in those schools with 50% or more of the students eligible for free or reduced price lunches. The non-profit, Creative Nutrition Concepts (CNC), begun by two Cal Poly graduates, Yukie Nishinaga and Karla Quiroga, taught nutrition to fourth graders using Cal Poly student interns, but only in that grade and only in San Luis Coastal USD elementary schools. The Jr. Master Gardeners Program, under Aija Samloff, taught an excellent garden-based curriculum keyed to State of CA Standards. Although currently operating in 16 classrooms in three different schools in Lucia Mar district as well as a continuation high school in North County, the program often ceased once the JMG staff left the school.

Consequently, in 2001, the Community Food System Project was formed to develop partnerships between many stakeholders, connecting the separate existing programs by educators, people from agriculture and horticulture, environmental groups, and parents. Our statement of purpose is “Working together to create, enhance and improve a wholly integrated local food system, which contributes to a healthy ecology in SLO County.” In 2004 we convened a Farm to School workshop with the CAFF representative who facilitates such programs in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties. School district focus groups were formed to work to involve parents and teachers in grassroots efforts to bring together the elements of the national farm to school program:

• farm-fresh food in school lunches – helping children make healthy choices as they developed life-long eating patterns

• school gardens -- hands-on experiences with the natural world, and incorporating kid-grown foods into the lunch program

• composting and recycling – developing an understanding of environmental stewardship responsibilities

• nutrition education and cooking classes – understanding the connections between growing and preparing food

• farm visits – developing a connection with the land and appreciation of the people who grow their food.

This past school year we began a partnership with the CNC program and the UC Youth Nutrition Education Program in the San Luis Coastal Unified District schools, to supplement their nutrition programs with farm fresh foods and information about local farmers. Currently, explorations are underway to connect county-wide efforts to combat obesity and low standards of fitness among schoolchildren with an integrated farm to school initiative.

So what would have happened for Alice if such a program been in place when she started at her new school? Nutrition curriculum linked to math, science, reading, and literature in her classroom would include taste-tests of new foods, cooking, and practice in choosing healthful foods at a salad bar and in hot lunches. Pride in their garden would be fostered when her class was celebrated for their contributions to the salad bar. Less food would get thrown away, and scraps would be fed to worms making compost for their garden. Trips to local farms would have given children insight into how complex our food system is, and how much skill it takes to grow healthful food. All these activities would have given Alice a sense of place and many close friends. And we could have stopped packing lunches!

I’m sad that my granddaughter missed out, but I am convinced it’s not too late for the children of SLO County to jump on the Farm to School bandwagon. No more tomatoes transported from as far as 1300 miles away, picked green and pumped full of gas. Carrots, broccoli, lettuce, and melons fresh from local soils. A life-long enjoyment of good food and what it takes to grow and cook it. Imagine it! You can help make it happen!

Liana Forest, Ph.D. is an independent educational consultant specializing in collaborative dialogue, cooperative projects, and crafting creative community. She is Coordinator for the Community Food System Project of SLO County, whose goals are educating the public about access to fresh, local food and developing Farm to School programs to link students, teachers, farmers and parents in SLO’s various school districts. She can be reached at (805) 528-4510 or bearforest@earthlink.net.


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