Farm-to-school is a movement on the national, state and local levels to get more fresh, unprocessed food into school cafeterias, provide another market for farmers and incorporate all of the benefits sandwiched between those aims.
One potential benefit is preparing future leaders who can direct tomorrow’s farm-to-school programs.
Colorado College, a private four-year institution near downtown Colorado Springs, has it all: the students, the farm and the future leaders. A student garden along Fountain Creek produces fruits, vegetables and eggs for the dining halls and the catering department at the college. Having such an ultra-local supplier makes an impression with the other students, who are returning to campus this week to start the fall semester.
“The kitchen posts where the food comes from,” said Jillian Gold, one of three summer interns. “The students will come out of the dining hall, and they’ll often say something to us about it.”
Gold, who is from upstate New York, was paid a stipend to work full-time at the garden all summer. During the school year, the Farm Club on campus provides a welcome source of volunteer labor for farm work and fundraisers.
“It’s definitely a great experience. We learn how to run a market garden,” she said of the internship. “A huge part of this job is figuring out how to do everything from the ground up.”
That entrepreneurial spirit impresses potential employers, she said.
“All three of us look forward to farming or gardening in some form when we graduate,” she added.
Despite the hard work and low pay small growers often endure, the interns are optimistic about the professional opportunities that await them beyond campus.
Gold’s personal interest is in the educational sphere. “There’s a movement right now of putting gardens in public school systems,” she said. “Many public health issues are intertwined with growing food. It’s a good thing to educate students about healthy food and nutrition at a young age.”
She recognizes the challenges, including budget constraints and the fact that schools operate on a huge scale.
In Colorado alone, schools serve 49.1 million lunches and 7.7 million breakfasts each year and employ more than 3,000 food service professionals.
But schools are beginning to change how they approach food service, and farm to school programs in Colorado and other states are encouraging the trend. Back in February, the Center for Systems Integration launched (www.csi-policy.org/projects/csi-projects/FTS.html) three-year program, funded by a grant from the Colorado Department of Agriculture, to create a model farm-to-school outreach program and to analyze the obstacles to getting more Colorado-grown food into the state’s schools.
In Colorado Springs, District 11 terminated its food management contract and hired Rick Hughes to oversee food service in-house, where he has since eliminated processed foods from menus and launched innovative programs such as Harvest of the Month, which features Colorado-grown produce items in the cafeteria and the classroom. He’s making these changes, even though the school has only $1.23 to spend on food per meal. “We can do this,” he said.
At Colorado College, input and engagement by students led to a switch in food service providers. Bon Appetit Management Company has a reputation for procuring local food and cooking from scratch. The company traces its own “awakening” to 1999, when it intensified its focus on “farm-to-fork” and sustainability programs.
The student interns who run the farm are getting a warm reception from school chefs. On a recent day, assistant chef John Faulkner enthused over a wagonload of fresh-picked produce, including yellow and green summer squashes and purple string beans. “It tastes really good,” he murmured as he bit into one.
Head chef Ed Clark said that during the summer, the college gets 60 percent of its food from local sources, which includes the college garden and area farmers. He commends the students for being “professional” and “very knowledgeable” about the food items, which are carefully weighed and labeled at time of delivery and exhibit excellent qualities such as high yield and long shelf life. The kitchen takes everything they have available and pays them for it.
He sees the student farm as integral to the company’s broader mission.
“It helps on so many different levels,” he says. “It brings the community together. It makes everybody proud to eat something that was grown two blocks away and just pulled out of the ground yesterday. Not many places can say that.”
Every summer, a new set of interns is selected and given the chance to put a new twist on the school garden. Two years ago, they sold produce weekly at local farmers markets. More recently, they decided to deliver all of what they grow to the student cafeteria and put more effort into expanding production on the available land. Last year, they did educational programs for a daycare near campus. This year, the students visited area gardens and farms.
Rebecca Levi, a student from Boston, even traveled to Eliot Coleman’s famous Four Season Farm in Maine, which hires interns, though most of the outings were closer to home.
“Farmers locally always need help,” she said of the job prospects.
She’s not worried about how much the work pays.
“I’m okay with camping,” she said cheerfully.
In three years as a member of the campus Farm Club, she’s learned about how the dining hall works and the challenges of getting food on the table every day. She’s also involved in the Real Food Challenge, a national student organization that has a goal of spending $1 billion out of the total $20 billion budget annually for college and university food with local farms. She strongly believes that students and food service providers need to act more like partners and that students need to get involved, ask questions and express their preferences. She wants to start a new food awareness group on campus.
“We need an outlet to talk about food issues,” she said.
Alix Hudson, of Crawfordsville, Ind., is the third summer intern working at the farm. She’s particularly excited about “World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms,” or wwoof.org, a global network linking volunteers with farms needing labor. The pay is typically room and board.
“You can go anywhere in the world and do this,” she said. “It’s really new. It could take root, metaphorically speaking.”
Her family owns land in Iowa and her long-term goals are modest, financially speaking. She wants to farm; “something smaller scale, maybe herb gardening, and maybe have some sheep. For me, it’s just about finding a way to sustain yourself and the people in your community. I might teach, as well.”
Jobs that seem perfect for these students are sprouting up even here, in the surrounding community. As one of next year’s goals, Pikes Peak Urban Gardens plans to establish a community garden adjacent to the Harrison School in Colorado Springs, which would include a full-time on-site farmer-teacher-cook to offer educational tips, classes and cooking demonstrations.
“It’s a cool position,” Hudson noted.
Meanwhile, Colorado College has established a model that could work for other schools, from the elementary grades on up, the interns say.
“Gardens can be part of the curriculum, or even used for recess or for after-school programs. And in the public schools, parents can get as involved as the kids,” Gold said. “Reaching out to students and getting them involved in growing food — we really think that’s the first step.”
