Senate bill would expand farm-to-school grants

By Jim Sabataso
Staff Writer
A new bill in the U.S. Senate aims to update a federal farm-to-school program.

The Farm to School Act of 2021 — introduced by Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C. — is a renewal of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm to School program, authorized in 2010, which provides grants to support initiatives across the country that get fresh, local food into schools. A companion legislation bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in March.

According to a press release, the USDA has received nearly 2,000 applications for a total of $141 million in requests since 2013. Less than a quarter of grant applications receive funding annually.

The competitive grant program provides funding for initiatives such as sourcing local foods for schools meals and creating school gardens. The new bill would expand those initiatives by permanently increasing annual mandatory funding from $5 million to $15 million and increasing the maximum grant award to $500,000.

The bill would also prioritize proposals that engage beginning, veteran and socially disadvantaged farmers and serve high-need schools; include early childhood education, summer food service and after-school programs sites; and increase access to traditional foods for Native American schools.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to bear the hunger crisis we face in this country,” Leahy said in a statement. “Farm to School — the grant program, and the movement at large — has won success by encouraging healthier eating habits, and supporting local producers. … It’s a common sense approach to addressing hunger and supporting our farmers. It advances education and healthy eating.”

Betsy Rosenbluth, Project Director for VT FEED (Food Education Every Day), a statewide organization that promotes local food and child health through farm-to-school programs, praised the proposed legislation, calling Leahy “a champion since the very beginning.”

Rosenbluth noted that the USDA Farm to School program was built on a Vermont grant program that started in 2007.

Since then, she said VT FEED has helped other states develop farm-to-school initiatives through Farm to School Institute that teaches them how to adapt Vermont’s model for themselves.

“It’s a way of scaling up farm to school so it just becomes embedded in the way schools purchase food for their school nutrition program and the way that kids are educated and learn about where food comes from and agriculture and healthy eating,” she said.

Rosenbluth said the USDA grants have been key to helping VT FEED build on its early work and expand across the state.

She cited NOFA-Vermont and the southern Vermont-based Food Connects as examples of organizations that have utilized the grants to strengthen connections between schools and farms, and focus on the purchasing of local food.

“They’re really important sources of funding and resources for expanding Farm to School, and this just makes it so much easier to be able to serve more to meet the need and the demand,” she said.

Rosenbluth said she is particularly interested in the proposed expansion of the Farm to School Act to include early childhood programs.

“This funding would help to invest in the kind of technical assistance and professional development and connecting early childhood programs with gardens and farms,” she said.

Another opportunity for grant funding, according to Rosenbluth, would be to support the local food purchasing incentive program the State Legislature had included in its omnibus budget bill.

She said a past grant helped Burlington schools explore and ultimately commit to purchasing local beef for its meal programs. A future grant, she said, could do the same to support the statewide incentive program.

At Sharon Elementary School, grants like this have helped to embed food education into the curriculum and foster a culture that celebrates fresh, local food.

Principal Keenan Haley said the school has partnered with VT FEED for more than a decade to bring nutrition education into the classroom and more local food into the cafeteria.

Haley said a Farm to School grant helped make that work possible. With it, the school was able to start gardens that are used for both eating and learning.

“We’re not so much buying a lot from farms right now as we are making our own food,” he said, explaining that vegetables from school gardens are harvested and processed to be used in the cafeteria.

He said the initiative has evolved from being only about food education to include more holistic aspects of wellness such as outdoor learning and practicing mindfulness activities like yoga.

“I think what this pandemic has shown us is that people need to learn how to be healthy,” said Haley. “It’s something we can teach in school through science, math, reading and social studies. It’s a great catalyst for teaching those subjects. Kids enjoy it. They’re engaged.”

jim.sabataso @rutlandherald.com