While many schools will no longer have free lunches for all students this school year, isn’t it time to think of a reset and have a major locally subsidized farm to school movement with real plates and utensils for our kids, instead of what we currently have?
Even with the free lunches some school kids will still get in Washoe County, the problem is these are of dubious quality nutritionally, with lots of the food ending up in the trash along with all the plastic and styrofoam.
The Washoe County School District released a message earlier this week indicating it’s “committed to providing a world-class education to its 60,000 students, and an important part of that mission is ensuring that every student is well-nourished. Good nutrition is essential to the learning process, and the District’s Nutrition Services school meal program is dedicated to providing healthy, balanced meals to children during the school day. Children who are eligible under federal guidelines may receive breakfast and lunch at no cost.”
Rather than contracting with Aramark, though, which makes billions off of schools and prisons with food which includes nine different meat patties indistinguishable from each other in rubbery taste, shouldn’t we emulate other locations such as Colorado’s Front Range where most of the food comes from the Greeley-based family Hoffman Farms?
The National Farm to School Network calls such partnerships a triple win, for kids, for farmers and for schools.
As part of this movement, some schools take the school garden idea to the farm level.
“We can go into our lunch every day knowing that some of the food that we are eating is from somewhere that is right in our back yard, if it’s not from the surrounding farms. I think it’s a great way to learn about what we are eating,” said Nora Cullen, a high school junior in Vermont, whose school Champlain Valley Union High School holds a farm stand as well for the community during the summer, when school is out.
“Food comes from somewhere, right, and so I think they’re getting an understanding of where it comes from and kind of all the hardships that go with that,” said her sustainability teacher Dave Trevithick. Two years ago they produced 350 pounds of food which went directly to their own cafeteria.
As part of policy work towards such goals. the state of New York is requiring schools and other institutions to serve 30% locally produced food in their meals by 2027, which is a step in the right direction.
Time and time again, extensive studies have proved that kids who eat healthier, behave better throughout the day and do much better in their schooling.
There are several schools around the area with school gardens and related programs, but what about working with existing farms or creating new ones, and then getting kids to spend class time learning about how to grow food, growing it, and then eating the food they helped grow?
It would be so much better than having no school lunch or one that’s dismally empty in nutritional value and extremely polluting.