PROGRAMS :: Farm-to-School

• Farm to School Vision
• Which schools participate?
• Reading list for kids
• Resources

The Community Alliance with Family Farmers Farm-to-School program brings fresh, locally-grown, and unprocessed fruits and vegetables into school cafeterias across California.

As a farmer-run organization, CAFF’s program is focused on creating distribution networks that can be used by school nutrition directors to purchase their produce from local farms easily and without increasing their standard food budget, making the purchase of more fruits and vegetables a sustainable economic choice for financially strapped school districts.

The Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) has been at the forefront of the Farm to School movement in California since 1999, and to date CAFF has mobilized more farm-to-school projects than any other group in California. CAFF is a membership based 501-c3 non-profit organization headquartered in Davis, California, with 26 years of experience in California agriculture.

CAFF’s Farm-to-School Program:

• Works with school nutrition directors to build purchasing schedules that take advantage of seasonal shifts in cost of produce
• Builds not-for-profit distribution centers specifically to supply local schools with efficient distribution from local small-scale farms to local schools
• Finds cost-effective ways to bring fresh food into the cafeteria with minimal processing and minimal transport
• Partners with other organizations with similar infrastructure needs (food banks, community gardens, etc) to share storage space to cut overhead costs

Where possible, CAFF’s distribution system can impact many parts of the community, increasing access to fresh fruits and vegetables with on-school farmers’ markets for low-income parents and other community outreach ventures such as mobile fruit and vegetable markets.

Fresh, healthy, local food is an experience we want kids to learn to enjoy – for their own health, and for the health of our rural food economies. By connecting activities in the classroom and on field trips to food in the lunchroom, the Farm to School program is making an important shift in the normal lines of school food service operations and helping kids understand how to balance a diet rich in prepared foods with healthier choices.

In many of the schools CAFF works in, students have little exposure to fresh fruits and vegetables in their home. The fresh vegetables they see in the cafeteria are often the only ones they see all day, therefore the educational outreach of CAFF into schools is important to teach kids about the importance of eating healthy, but also simply to introduce them to the new experiences of eating fresh raw snap peas, crunchy broccoli, and sweet in-season tangerines.

The educational component of any Farm-to-School program can vary from an in-class lesson about which vitamins different fruits and vegetables provide, to a hands-on tasting lesson where the flavors of different varieties of the same fruit are tasted and compared, to a visit to the classroom of a local farmer. Where available, on-campus school gardens provide another area for kids to learn hands-on about where their food comes from.

Although CAFF’s focus is primarily on bringing produce into schools, by working with local non-profits, parent groups, and existing nutrition education programs, CAFF works to develop nutrition education that fits each school.

Program Profile

The objectives of CAFF’s Farm to School program are:

• Increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables for low-income school districts (typically above 65% of students eligible for free and reduced-price school meals)
• Reduce the ‘food miles’ of food served in California cafeterias by using locally-grown food
• Serve a wider variety and greater quantity of fresh fruits and vegetables in California cafeterias

Most of the districts in which our Farm-to-School programs operate have marginalized, low-income students, such as Compton Unified in Los Angeles County (where we are active in 11 schools), and have a disproportionately high percentage of minority students, such as Pajaro Unified in Santa Cruz County (where we are active in 15 schools). However, CAFF is interested in growing food-smart kids across California, and as our program grows we are seeking any and all schools that are ready to get more fruits and vegetables into their cafeterias – and their classrooms!

To date, CAFF has brought successful Farm-to-School programs to 100 schools across California together with partners including:

Davis Educational Foundation
Fresno Metro Ministries
Center for Food and Justice
Food Matters
Food for Thought
Ventura Unified PTA
Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency

In the past two years of Farm to School, CAFF has been funded by: California Food and Fibre, Futures, California Nutrition Network, Chez Panisse Foundation, Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County, Harden Foundation, UC Hansen Trust, Occidental College Center for Food and Justice, Orfalea Family Foundation, Salimbaceous Trust, Tides Foundation, USDA Value-Added Producer Grant, USDA Community Food Projects Program, Ventura County Farm Bureau, Ventura County Cooperative Extension, Center for Ecoliteracy.

Write farmtoschool@caff.org for information about how to bring Farm to School to your district and how to make a donation to help CAFF grow its program and plant a seed of change in California classrooms!

Which schools participate?

CAFF works in schools on the Central Coast, Sacramento Valley, Fresno Area, and Humboldt County.

Is your school part of the Farm-to-School movement?

Farm-to-School participation list

Reading list for Kids

Parents and kids can bring a love of fruits and veggies to their home, and not just at the family dinner table.

Check out these books about life on the farm. the joys of planting your own garden, and fussy eaters turning into food-lovers. Books range from picture books to 3rd grade reading level.

Resource Links

National Farm-to-School Program
http://www.farmtoschool.org

Healthy School Meals Resource System
http://schoolmeals.nal.usda.gov/index.html

Rethinking School Lunch
http://www.ecoliteracy.org

The Food and Nutrition Information Center
http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/

National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service
http://www.attra.org

Community Food Security Coalition
http://www.foodsecurity.org

School Nutrition Association
http://www.schoolnutrition.org