Farm-fresh school lunches on the way

Farm-fresh school lunches on the way - Wenatchee World

Joan Qazi, Our Sustainable Table

What’s for lunch?” Sometimes I don’t want to answer this question, especially when I know my kids and I don’t always agree about what constitutes a good meal. If it’s not pizza or burgers, then they show less enthusiasm about sitting down to eat.

There are people whose paid employment means facing up to this question asked by hundreds of kids every day. School food service personnel are charged with feeding our children well-balanced, nutritious meals and snacks during their school day. This task is made even harder by constrained budgets and national health statistics trending upwards for childhood obesity and diabetes.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National School Lunch program was originally designed as a hunger relief strategy for undernourished kids and a farm-support strategy for commodity agriculture. After the Depression, Congress passed Public Law 396 to “safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation’s children and to encourage the consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other food.”

In order to maintain commodity prices for farmers, the USDA buys agricultural surplus, including chicken to be processed into nuggets and beef to be ground into hamburgers. These items and more can then be served free to kids who might not otherwise afford a healthy meal.

Did you know that the Department of Defense (DoD) also has an important role in supplying a school lunch? In 1994, the USDA teamed up with the nation’s largest food-service provider, the DoD, to take advantage of its large-scale buying power and distribution network established for all military and federal institutions. School districts pay an overhead fee of 5.8 percent to use the “DoD Fresh” procurement service in order to receive fresh fruits and vegetables grown in the U.S. Using their commodity entitlement funds, schools can access nearly 900 regionally grown produce items, from mushrooms to melons, through DoD Fresh.

Still, there are several challenges for school food service to feed the 30 million students in our country who eat school lunch daily. For many districts, the congressional reimbursement rate for each free lunch served to children from households living in poverty doesn’t cover costs. That means districts must also rely on commodity foods and extra income from the sale of popular foods like chips, pizzas and cookies in a la carte programs. As budgets tighten, school food service has trended toward food processed and prepared by food service companies, eliminating the need for schools to have cooking staff or even kitchen facilities.

The Wenatchee School District is countering that trend. Kent Getzin, the district’s nutrition services director, has made sure that there are fresh salad bars in all the elementary schools. This means that students can choose to eat lettuce, spinach, other vegetable and fruit options, shredded cheese, beans and croutons, for example.

Food waste is also being addressed by implementing an approach where students choose three of five nutritious offerings, including a fruit or vegetable, instead of being served everything and then throwing unwanted items away. It also means that schools like Foothills Middle School, which built a compost bin last Earth Day in its edible schoolyard, can eventually compost any salad bar waste into valuable soil amendments for their garden.

Some schools are thinking outside the lunchbox in ways that increase fresh produce options for students while also supporting the economic viability of regional farmers. An estimated 2,000 “Farm to School” programs are operating nationwide, giving local farmers the opportunity to sell directly to school food service.

In an effort to encourage students to choose healthier foods, including more fruits and vegetables, schools are sourcing fresh, locally grown produce, picked at the peak of its flavor.

Studies in Portland, Ore., and Riverside, Calif., found that students eating a farm-fresh salad bar consumed roughly one additional serving of fruits and vegetables per day and demonstrated a willingness to try out new foods and healthier options.

Our community is also having success experimenting with the farm-to-school idea. Jan Hanson, the kitchen manager at Wenatchee High School, took the initiative to connect with area farmers, including Yaksum Orchard, to localize her fruit sourcing options and to discuss planting specifically for her kitchen’s vegetable needs. It is not just apples and pears that Jan will be buying but squash, greens, tomatoes and herbs to round out her order from local farms. Jan cites the exceptional quality of products and service from local farmers as key to her excitement about the possibilities for farm-to-school, adding, “It is so nice to deal with someone in person rather than a computer.”

The Alley Café at Wenatchee Valley College will be serving up a seasonal, locally grown lunch for regional farmers and school food service directors when they meet in the campus theater on Feb. 25 for a Farm to School Workshop. This event intends to build on some of the momentum in North Central Washington for getting more regional farm products into school cafeterias, while addressing the challenges of food safety liability and procurement protocols.

The sustainability of these programs may also depend on their educational component in helping students learn about where food comes from and teaching lifelong lessons in healthy eating. Students themselves are the final arbiter of success for farm-to-school programs, whether they fuel up on a la carte snacks or on fresh produce in an array of appetizing colors and textures.

As a geography instructor at Wenatchee Valley College, Joan Qazi likes to think globally and eat locally. She coordinates the grassroots volunteer group EAT, which supports sustainability in farming and healthy food choices. She lives in Wenatchee with her husband and three children.