The Challenge.

The term “Farm-to-School” describes efforts by parents, educational and health professionals, and local food advocates to increase the amount and quality of locally grown food served to children in school.

Most Farm-to-School projects seek to improve academic performance; to reduce the incidence of childhood obesity and nutrition related health problems; to promote community economic development and to strengthen local small farm agriculture.

These are broad, ambitious goals. Their achievement faces a series of structural obstacles that grow out of the predominant industrial food system and a political culture that does not invest in children’s health.

In a time of squeezed school budgets, there is little political appetite to institute changes that are perceived to cost more money. Federal purchasing regulations limit the ability of schools to source food locally. USDA’s Child Nutrition Commodity Program supplies subsidized food to schools that directly contributes to childhood obesity and weakened student health.[1] Farmers receive little incentive to supply food for local school menus. Few preparation and storage facilities exist to supply local food to school during non-growing months. Children are targets of fast food industry marketing campaigns that promote high sugar, high fat, high salt “happy meals”.[2] Of the $12 billion spent on advertising food to children, less than point 1 percent (0.1%) is used to promote consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables. These are just a few of the obstacles.

Confronted by the magnitude and number of these obstacles, most Farm to School programs to date produce merely symbolic and marginal actions, with very little healthy food actually going from local farms to local schools.

To succeed, Farm-to-School efforts must be based on a new food system paradigm – a paradigm that turns to the information systems of the natural world for its design and inspiration. Farm-to-School is about an agriculture and a food system that builds student health through food grown locally in healthy, living soil. The healthier the soil, the healthier the plants, the healthier the food, the healthier the students.

The Project.

The Muskegon County Farm-to-School Project – called Healthy School Meals for Our Children – was organized in the Summer of 2008 by a group of parents, teachers, food service directors, public health advocates, and farmers to develop a Business Plan to feed all Muskegon County school children (in both public and private schools) school meals sourced 100 percent from local farmers growing using National Organic Program standards, year-round.

This ambitious goal precludes symbolic gestures or marginal steps. We seek to understand and delineate the step-by-step actions we need to take as a community to feed our children healthy, locally grown food in school while transforming our rural economy in the process. To do this, we will need to consider and surmount the structural obstacles that exist today. Our Business Plan will prescribe concrete steps with dollar figures attached to each action.

The goal is to present a Business Plan to Muskegon County residents in early 2010 that details how to offer county children school meals, year-round that…

• Serve 100% locally grown food raised to National Organic Program standards or the equivalent year-round,
• Increase the offering of locally grown fruits and vegetables, nutritionally dense, minimally processed and unrefined food,
• Reduce the offering of foods with trans and saturated fats and added sweeteners,
• Eliminate foods produced with hormones, non-therapeutic antibiotic use, additives, and pesticides.

This Business Plan will be researched and developed by community volunteers working in an informal task force under the coordination of the Center for Economic Security. Membership on the task force is open to all Muskegon County residents. Meetings will be held regularly at the MAREC Building (Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center) just off the intersection of Terrace Street and Shoreline Drive in Muskegon.

Schedules, agendas, and detailed notes of every meeting will be posted on this website – www.HealthySchoolMeals.org -- along with relevant scientific articles, studies, and media coverage. The goal is to operate the task force with total transparency to allow all concerned citizens an opportunity to participate to the extent they are able.

The task force website (www.HealthySchoolMeals.org) will function as a kind of public square on which all steps taken, all questions and answers considered, all expert resources accessed will be available to anyone in the community who is interested. The site will also establish a community blog to allow people to offer thoughts and feedback.

The Business Plan will include:

1. An Executive Summary
2. Business Description
   1. Description of current school food system.
   2. Data on current student health and correlation with student nutrition.
   3. Data of student educational performance affected by student nutrition.
   4. Profiles of school food service operations in 13 public school districts and 12 private schools in Muskegon County.
   5. Scenarios to achieve goal.
3. Market Analysis
   1. Existing sources of local food
   2. Potential for new sources of local food
   3. Adoption of organic growing standards
   4. Current prices and price trends.
   5. Preparation, preservation and storage for year-round supply.
4. Budget and Finance
   1. Cost of different scenarios
   2. Potential funding sources
5. Management and Implementation
   1. County wide vs. district
   2. Public vs. private
   3. Government vs. non-profit

The completed Business Plan will be presented to county residents through the website, a print publication, and series of public meetings in 2010. Expert speakers will be invited to speak throughout the Business Plan development period to educate the general public about the issues involved in Farm-to-School.

[1] “Impact of Federal Commodity Programs on School Meal Nutrition”, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, September, 2008.
[2] “Obesity on the Kids’ Menus at Top Chains”, Center for Science in the Public Interest, August, 2008.