By Jennifer Dorsett
Field Editor

Ensuring America’s students are fed and healthy is a large part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) responsibility. This month, the agency is celebrating agriculture’s role in the process.

National Farm to School Month is an annual 31-day campaign to celebrate the connections between schools, kids, food and the farmers and ranchers in their own communities, according to Brandon Lipps, USDA Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services deputy under secretary.

“Farm to School is one of the many programs we run at USDA in our Food and Nutrition Service area,” Lipps said in an interview with Texas Farm Bureau Radio Network. “It’s a really important program, and one that benefits so many different stakeholders—from students and teachers, community members and certainly to American farmers, ranchers and fishers as they all connect together on this program that really ultimately is designed to benefit our school children and to advance agriculture in the school curriculum.”

Through Farm to School, school districts enrolled in the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program are encouraged to incorporate local and regional food produced by area farmers and ranchers, Lipps said. The schools also provide hands-on agricultural education through school gardens, farm visits, culinary classes and more and integrate food-related education into  classrooms.

“One of my first Farm to School visits was in San Antonio, at an IDEA Public School down there. Someone donated some land to them on which they have a pretty decent size school farm out there. It was just so impressive, both the farm that they have, the way that they bring the produce that they make into the cafeteria, but also into the classroom,” Lipps said. “I was talking to one of those young kids at that farm who spends time out there volunteering every day and asking about the effect that it’s had on them. She told me that it inspired her to go to college for an agriculture-related field.”

The program is funded through competitive grants to schools offered by USDA Food and Nutrition Service.

This year, more than $12 million was awarded to 159 grantees, which Lipps said was the largest amount awarded since the program’s inception.

By incorporating experiential learning, along with adding agriculture and food education into the curriculum, Lipps said the program really brings agricultural concepts home to students.

“We know that most of the American public is two or three generations removed from the farm. They don’t understand where their food comes from, and they don’t understand the difficulty and the challenges in growing food,” he said. “So, anytime we can help kids in any setting—urban, suburban or rural—understand more about that, there’s a very positive effect on agriculture, the agriculture economy and the long-term opportunities that we have with that.”

And the program creates healthier kids, too.

“We see so much opportunity for kids as they learn to grow their own fruits and vegetables and harvest those. You’ll see kids trying things that they’ve never eaten before and liking them, because when you participate in that process, there’s an emotional attachment,” Lipps said. “I think that we make so much more progress in leading kids to healthy choices through these type of activities than we do through more strict government regulation. So we’re really excited about that.”

Three entities in Texas were awarded Farm to School grants this year: St. Mary’s Academy Charter School of Beeville, Dallas nonprofit Grow North Texas and Northside ISD in San Antonio. The largest grant in Texas was awarded to Northside ISD, which plans to incorporate a comprehensive farm-to-school approach at 10 elementary and middle schools across the district, according to Lipps.

“Their program is not only improving the students’ access to local foods but also provides agriculture education efforts. They’re going to have school-based vegetable gardens and an agriculture curriculum, which will translate into taste tests and field experiences at the local agricultural sites there, ultimately culminating in what I think will be a lot of fun,” he said. “The district plans to target around 1,000 kindergarten through eighth-grade students, many of whom are lower-income children who often take advantage of our free and reduced-price lunch program.”

Northside ISD will have several partners in delivering the program, including Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, San Antonio Food Bank, Hurst Farm and Cibolo Nature Center, he added.

More than 30 million children eat school lunches every day, and more than 42,000 schools participate in the Farm to School program, according to USDA.

Lipps said that’s 30 million opportunities for students to learn more about agriculture and food.

“There is a lot of room to grow, and this isn’t something that has to be done through our grant program. This is just another opportunity to either launch or expand efforts to local school districts,” he said. ”Those of us involved in agriculture need to make sure we take note of the need to educate all of America’s schoolchildren, but certainly those in urban and suburban settings, about the importance of agriculture, about the challenges and the ways that our American farmers and ranchers overcome those, to make sure that we have the best food supply in the world.”

Click here for more information on Farm to School programs.