Farm to School – TrayTalk.org

Working toward zero waste in the cafeteria

One Florida school district has been making great strides toward its goal to reduce the amount of waste it sends to the local landfills. Alachua County Food & Nutrition Services is enlisting its youngest community members to help get there!

Students at Stephen Foster Elementary School separate their lunch leftovers and trash for compost and recycling, with some food scraps repurposed to feed pigs at a local farm. The Food & Nutrition Services department received a grant from the State of Florida to launch its new accelerated composting system.

School meals in WA include cultural flavors

School recipes that reflect culturally relevant flavors from within the school community are welcoming to students in the cafeteria. When Highline Public Schools in Washington asked for student feedback about new lunch and breakfast menu ideas, requests included Hispanic food, vegetarian options, and Foods Native to WA, such as Salmon and berries.

Providing free fresh produce all day

Carts full of fresh fruits and vegetables provide options to nourish elementary students through the school day in McLean County, Kentucky. Students looking for a healthy snack are able to grab one off the hallway cart at any time of day in school, thanks to a grant.

Bringing more local foods to school lunch

October is National Farm to School Month, an opportunity for school districts to shine a light on all of their efforts to provide local foods on student lunch trays.

In central Minnesota, Nay Ah Shing and Pine Grove Nutrition Services Coordinator Deborah Foye has been cultivating relationships with area farmers for produce and meat for the last decade.

School Greenhouse Grown Veggies on the Menu

Produce grown in the district’s new greenhouse will be on the menu this fall in Denver Public Schools‘ (CO). According to school officials, the 28,000 square foot greenhouse is the first of its kind in the United States and will eventually hold up to 35,000 plants.

Taking Farm-to-School Food on the Road

To get farm-to-school and locally sourced foods to more students, Buffalo Public Schools (NY) invested in a food truck, which went on the road in October of 2020.

“We only serve New York-made beef, hotdogs and hamburgers on the food truck. Any entree served comes from local farms, such as locally grown eggs, New York grown potatoes and hydroponic lettuce,” said Bridget O’Brien Wood, Food Service Director for Buffalo Public Schools. The menu is dependent on the current growing season.

Lettuce for CA district grown in freight farms

An innovative freight container system modified into a vertical hydroponic garden produces just over a thousand heads of lettuce each week, served fresh for Ann Sobrato High School students to enjoy at lunch. The freight farm is just 320 square feet and sits on a concrete slab outside the California school, in Morgan Hill Unified School District.

Montana Made Marinara is a Hit on Lunch Menus

There were rave reviews from some young food critics when meatball subs with locally produced marinara were served at Belgrade School District #44. The sauce was made with ingredients grown on Montana farms and the initiative was started to help solve a problem brought on by supply chain shortages. The goal was to have a product consistently available for school nutrition programs.

Connecting Classroom to Cafeteria in CT

When a student going through the lunch line asked why there was a potato in the fruit basket, Kate Murphy, SNS, Food Service Director for Naugatuck Public Schools in Connecticut, had an “ah ha moment.” Realizing that the child didn’t recognize a pear, Murphy determined more had to be done to support nutrition education.

While researching ideas for CT Grown for CT Kids Week, Murphy identified resources available from local farmers that could be used to create lesson plans. She knew it had to be something kids would be interested in – that’s when she got her big idea: pickles!

Dairy Princesses Visit New York Schools

The princesses visiting New York schools aren’t wearing crowns or looking for glass slippers. The fairy tale for these “dairy princesses” is the story of farmers, cows, milk and farm life.

Shelby Benjamin, one of more than two dozen dairy princesses in New York, teaches students about the dairy industry as part of her job with the American Dairy Association North East. Her journey started as a teenager, showing a cow at a local county fair and realizing there was so much more to the dairy industry to learn and share.