May '06

When, at the turn of the last century, nearly 50% of Americans farmed, the school calendar allowed children to help on the farm during summer's busy season. Even though less than 2% of Americans are employed in agriculture today, the traditional school schedule has endured. While we may lament the fact that the school season and the growing season don’t overlap as much as we’d like, we can also celebrate summer time opportunities that allow youth and kitchens to explore local food and farming.

In this issue we look at some ways schools, youth programs, and others have taken advantage of the fact that school’s out for the summer. Lily Perkins-High of The Food Project introduces us to a week long world-wide effort to celebrate local food: Eat In, Act Out week. Kerry Cesan, for our Community article, interviews Kristin Brennan about a summer youth program in Springfield called Gardening the Community. Finally, in Cafeteria, we learn about Chicopee’s effort to buy local food year round! This will be an introductory article about Chicopee's food service program. Over the course of the next several issues, we will delve into the hows and whys of Chicopee's local food efforts. These articles highlight a few of the many ways summer can be used to strengthen agriculture education and school food programs.

With the school season ending, I want to thank Kerry Cesan, a graduate student at Antioch New England and CISA's Farm to School intern this past semester, for her work writing articles and compiling events and news items for this e-news. As always, I invite you to share your own Farm to School story ideas, event announcements, or articles.

Grow well,
Kelly Coleman

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(Community)

Did you know an average vegetable travels 1,700 miles before reaching your plate? That’s about the distance from Boston, Massachusetts to Dallas, Texas. That is part of the reason we celebrate Eat In, Act Out Week from July 31 to August 6!

Eat In, Act Out Week was invented by and is sponsored by The Food Project Youth in Boston. Throughout the week groups from around the world promote public awareness about how and why to eat local food through various actions. Last year, over forty different groups in twenty-five states and three different countries sponsored events.

But why dedicate an entire week to promoting local food?

Local food is better for you because it’s fresh. Fresh food has had less time to lose its nutrients. Local food tastes better. Think about the color and flavor of a u-pick strawberry versus that of a strawberry that you buy at a supermarket in January. Local food supports your local economy because it cuts out the middleman. This means more money goes to your farmer and stays in your community. Local food is better for the environment. Transporting a vegetable 1,700 miles also requires fossil fuels that contribute to climate change.

Want to organize an event this year?
Last year organizations held great events that promoted local food. Here’s a sampling. In Brooklyn, NY, East New York Farms sponsored a bike tour of local community gardens. An organization in St. Lucia sponsored an organic farming conference, and Seeds of Leadership in Orange, MA organized a meal for local seniors with produce from their educational garden. One Food Project event was a “Day of Action”. On this day, the Wednesday of the week, teens employed by the Food Project passed out 2,000 carrots in Boston’s Copley Square. We’d love for you to organize an event with your school or farm. Please go to the Eat In, Act Out page for more details and to register your event.

Get involved.
Even if you can’t organize an event, there’s much to be done on an individual scale. To make local food mainstream we need your help at every level. A second action that you can take to promote local is to participate in The Food Project’s Eat Local Challenge. To participate, log onto The Food Project’s website (www.thefoodproject.org/eatinactout) starting mid-July and pledge an amount of money that you intend to spend on local food for that week. Your pledge will provide a clear goal for you and your family and work to publicize support for local farms.

This year Eat In, Act Out Week runs from July 31-August 6. To make the week truly effective in its goal of promoting local agriculture we need your help, so organize or pledge and Eat In, Act Out!

Lily Perkins-High is an intern at The Food Project working to encourage groups to organize Eat In, Act Out activities! For more details on the Seeds of Leadership's Eat In, Act Out activity entitled "Breaking Bread: Seeds of Leadership Youth Serve Their Harvest", check out our archived September newsletter here.

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Gardening the Community:
Good Growing in Springfield
By Kerry Cesan

The following is from an interview conducted in April with Kristin Brennan, the coordinator of Gardening the Community, a youth program in Springfield, MA. Kristin started by introducing Gardening the Community (GtC).

Kristin: Gardening the Community is a project of the Northeast Organic Farming Association/Massachusetts Chapter Inc. It is an urban agriculture program that provides first time job experience for youth while introducing them to the principles of local and organic agriculture, community development, sustainability and environmental stewardship, and food systems. The program works with 12 youth between the ages of 12 and 18 during the spring, summer, and fall. We garden on city lots and grow vegetables and fruits.

The program is in its fifth season. We will be growing collard greens, kale, onions, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, hot peppers, potatoes, lettuce, spinach, peas, watermelon, and cantaloupe. This year we will also be growing flowers. The food is distributed in 3 major ways: sold at our roadside market, donated to various shelters and food pantries within the city, and given to our youth to take home.

Kerry: How long have you been involved with the program and what is your background?

Kristin: I moved to Springfield in the fall of 2003. My husband and I bought our Springfield home because it had a lot of land to garden on – we presently grow all of the vegetables we use throughout the year and have invested in lots of perennial fruit bushes and trees. I wanted to be involved with urban agriculture, gardening, and youth. I started to volunteer for GtC and wrote several press releases and gave some support to fundraising activities. I had been working in youth and urban agriculture programs at The Food Project in Boston where I coordinated the Urban Education and Outreach Program which did direct work with backyard gardeners, focusing on soil remediation and organic gardening techniques. Before that, I had worked on a youth gardening project in St. Paul, MN which ran a small CSA, farmers market, and offered classes to children on ecology, art, and cooking in the garden.

Kerry: How many children have been involved with GtC since the beginning?

Kristin: We figure there have been about 60 youth from Springfield involved in the program. There have been many more youth exposed through classroom visits and school field trips, both from Springfield schools and schools from other towns.

Kerry: What do kids actually do?

Kristin: The kids begin in the spring and are taught all of the stages of vegetable growth, from seed to harvest. They are exposed to the principles of organic farming – composting, organic fertilizers, organic pest management, and companion planting. They are taught some of the basics of small business economics since they will be running their own farm stand. They participate in community outreach through vegetable donations to local pantries and soup kitchens. At the same time we have a regular curriculum that exposes them to concepts such as sustainable living, environmental justice, and food security.

Kerry: What, if anything, is different about urban agriculture?

Kristin: Urban agriculture has several challenges that set it apart from suburban or rural agriculture – we are always dealing with space constraints, so we need to grow very intensively. Urban gardeners also need to be aware of potential hazards in the soil from former buildings, air pollution, or trash disposal on formerly abandoned plots. Many urban gardeners have to deal with shade issues that do not as commonly afflict rural farms. We deal with buildings and tree shade. Often city real estate, because of the space constraints I mentioned, is more expensive and we have to make an argument for “higher use” – letting gardens be an equally important feature of an urban landscape along with housing, business, park space, etc.

Kerry: Why do you think programs like GtC are important?

Kristin: These programs are a visible reminder to all of us who live in the city about where our food comes from. They expose youth to healthy life activity, keep them in shape, and get them eating fresh vegetables which are often hard to come by in teenage diets. It touches on the role youth and individuals can play in revitalizing our neighborhoods. It prompts us to understand how cultures can find common ground through food, how we can create community around the basic needs that we all have. It gets youth to reach out to those who have less than they do. It connects youth to elder citizens – especially since many of our grandparents were involved somehow with agriculture.

Kerry: How are children selected to participate?

Kristin: Focused recruitment was done this year in collaboration with Springfield Public Schools School to Career Office. At the Elias Brookings School, 7th and 8th graders were surveyed about their interests and passions and 18 were selected as good candidates for the gardening program. We also put up flyers in local organizations and churches. Interested youth fill out an application which includes 3 essay questions. Each candidate is interviewed by our staff. We try to create a group that has a diversity of ages, cultures, backgrounds, and even abilities. This year 30 students applied for the 12 positions.

Kerry: What are your hopes for the future?

Kristin: We are hoping for a permanent site of at least 20,000 square feet. We want to increase our visibility in the neighborhood and increase our revenue through our farmers market, our flower share, and our other enterprise experiments. We want to increase our volunteer base, possibly providing a one-on-one mentoring relationship for each young person. We want to invest in bicycles and trailers, on which we deliver all of our produce to market in order to reduce fossil fuel use, encourage alternative transportation methods, keep our youth active and healthy, and create a program in which the youth are not reliant on being picked up and driven from place to place – they pedal themselves! We want to assist residents in starting backyard vegetable gardens to increase local food security. We want to set up rain-water collection systems. We also want to identify a site where we might have a store front office/community space where we work out of, and welcome youth into, as we work for community and youth gardens in Springfield.

Kerry: Are there any special events planned for this year?

Kristin: We have four field trips planned for the season – Heifer International, Many Hands Farm, Food Bank Farm, and to a Ludlow farm. We end our season with a Harvest Party. This fall we will be sponsoring our first bike-a-thon to raise money for our project. The bike route will bring us by all of the community gardens and several backyard gardens in Springfield – lots of fun and lots of good fall harvest foods!

Kerry: How can people help/contribute?

Kristin: VOLUNTEER! We have lots of volunteer opportunities starting May 20th from 9-12 at the Central St. site or during any of our youth sessions this season or to help us plan and execute our Garden to Garden Bike-a-thon fundraiser. Also we pay the young people for taking part in the program so we are always looking for financial contributions and have a wish list of needed materials. To be added to the email list or for more info contact Kristin.

Kerry Cesan interned with CISA's Farm to School program while finishing a graduate program at Antioch New England. She is volunteering this summer with Gardening the Community!

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What's For Lunch, Chicopee?
By Kerry Cesan

During the summer of 2004, Chicopee Public Schools started buying produce from Czajkowski Farms of Hadley, MA, with the help of Kelly Erwin who contracts with the MA Department of Agriculture Resources and Anne Carter an Assistant Professor at the University of UMass.

Today that connection is strong and the benefits are many. Joanne Lennon, Food Service Director for the Chicopee Public Schools and past president of Massachusetts School Nutrition Association, recently told me that all 15 schools in her district use produce purchased from local farms. “The students love the real mashed potatoes…and they love the green beans.” Lennon reported. Although the district purchases more produce during summer and fall, they buy local food throughout the year.

Chicopee school cafeterias are using blueberries, strawberries, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, apples, onions, potatoes, green beans, and carrots grown in Massachusetts soil. Lennon is pleased with the fruits and vegetables because they are “fresher, taste better, and are definitely a good product.” What Mr. Czajkowski doesn't grow on his farm or when he needs more of a crop, he works with other local farmers to fill the school’s order. Sometimes the Chicopee schools will freeze produce and use it at a later date; for example, blueberries are frozen and later thawed to make smoothies with yogurt and milk. Blueberries have also found their way onto student trays partially frozen in cups and as blueberry crisp. Soup is a daily staple of Chicopee’s school cafeterias and local vegetables often appear in these soups. Notations are made on the school lunch menu when a local product is used.

Beyond the cafeteria, many classes in Chicopee’s elementary schools visit farms on field trips. Joanne Lennon explained that this is an important lesson as it is easy for some children today to think that food comes from the store and know very little about how food is grown or where it comes from. All third grade classes in Chicopee also receive lessons in nutrition presented in cooperation with the extension service at UMASS.

Chicopee is reaching beyond the school day and into the community with a fall Harvest Festival that celebrates locally grown food. This dinner is presented at the Moose Family Center and any resident of Chicopee is invited to attend through an advertisement run in the local newspaper. Six Chicopee schools work to prepare the dinner and volunteers from the schools serve the meal. Chicopee Provision donates kielbasa and the rest of the food comes from Czajkowski Farm. Many residents enjoy a meal of baked potatoes, butternut squash, white turnips, lazy pirogues with cabbage, and apple crisp.

Lennon believes she will be purchasing food from Czajkowski and local farms in the future. She reports that the cost is similar to purchasing from other vendors. She agreed that a “farm to school” movement is happening and that more food service directors are purchasing from local farmers.

Stay tuned for the next Farm to School E-news where we will explore more of the details of Chicopee's work! Kerry Cesan interned with CISA's Farm to School program while finishing a graduate program at Antioche New England.

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Events

June 21-24, Atlantic City, New Jersey
Ag in the Classroom National Conference
Come celebrate the 25th anniversary of Ag in the Classroom and “Unlock the Treasures of the Garden State.” Workshops will help you introduce agriculture concepts to your students and cover topics from crops and cows to biotechnology and biofuels. For a complete workshop and tour schedule visit the Agriculture in the Classroom website.

July 19, Brooklyn, New York
LIFT Training
Join the Food Project and others for a LIFT Training at Added Value in Brooklyn, New York. The LIFT initiative is a 3 year USDA-funded Training and Technical Assistance program designed to build capacity and lend support to agriculture-based food security organizations working to build an equitable, just and sustainable food system. In partnership with local organizations across the country, workshops are tailored to address the most pressing training needs of each community. Specific information about this training will be available here soon.

July 31 - August 6, Everywhere!
Eat In, Act Out Week
Groups around the world are celebrating local farmers and food grown and raised in their own community. Learn how to host an event or find one near you!

August 9, Hartford, CT
LIFT Training at GROW Hartford in Hartford, Connecticut
See July 19th, above. Specific information about this training will be available here soon.

August 10-13, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA
Northeast Organic Farming Association Conference
The 32nd Annual NOFA Summer Conference will feature over 150 workshops for all ages from games and wellness activities, to how-to practical skills lessons and farm tours, to issue-oriented discussions. The conference will also feature music and local food. For more info go to the NOFA website.

July 27-29, St. Louis, Missouri
National Children and Youth Garden Symposium
Presented by the American Horticultural Society and hosted by the Missouri Botanical Garden, the theme of this year’s Symposium is “Cultivating a Sense of Place: A Youth Gardening Adventure.” Workshops, tours, and networking opportunities are capped by the keynote address by Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder. Learn more at the American Horticultural Society website.

Announcements

New Funding
Thinking of starting or expanding a summer food service program?
Project Bread has funding available to help new or expanding summer food service sites. Funds can be used for promotion, buying supplemental materials, etc. For more information contact Project Bread at 617-239-2539 or Christina_Jordan@projectbread.org.

Grant Resource
Kids Gardening and Massachusetts Ag in the Classroom
To find a listing of grant resources for school garden programs and farm to school projects check out Kids Gardening! and Massachusetts Ag in the Classroom’s quarterly newsletter (to sign up for the newsletter email Debi).

Graduate Credit Course for Educators
“Growing Agriculture in the Classroom”
Using farms as classrooms, teachers will learn how agriculture can enhance the curriculum, enthrall students and meet many MCAS requirements. The course meets Wednesday, June 28 and Wednesday August 16 in North Grafton and requires attendance at five additional on-farm workshops. For more info visit MA Ag in the Classroom.

Youth Leadership Opportunity
Join the 2006-2007 BLAST Cadre
The BLAST Leadership Cadre is a year long program for young leaders who are working to create sustainable food systems by growing food, working with youth, promoting local food, or advocating for and crafting policy. The Cadre program provides 18 to 25 year olds with intensive training in advocacy, communication and leadership, opportunities for public speaking, networking, group work and exploration of the food system. To learn more see the Food Project Webpage or contact Monica.

Funding Opportunity
Healthy Sprouts Awards
These awards support school garden programs that use the garden to teach about nutrition and the issue of hunger in the United States. Sponsored by Gardener’s Supply Company. In this grant cycle awards will be presented to 25 schools or organizations. Each will receive a $200 gift certificate to Gardener’s Supply Company and a curriculum package from the National Gardening Association. Apply by October 15, 2006.

New Award
Golden Carrot Award
Learn about these cash awards that recognize school food service professionals who make a difference through innovative programs and nutrition education. Deadline September 15, 2006.

Curriculum available
Harvest of History online curriculum
Created by the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown, New York, in collaboration with the National Gardening Association, the site focuses on agriculture in New York, but the interdisciplinary lessons are applicable for schools across the country. www.kidsgardening.com

Youth Contest
Rapper 50 Cent Serious About Food- $100,000 scholarship
50 is a spokes-rapper and judge for a nationwide cooking competition aimed at preventing childhood obesity by improving high school students eating habits. It is sponsored by Glaceau (partly owned by 50 Cent). Student chefs will compete to create the most “nutrient rich” cafeteria lunch recipe. The closest competition site is Boston, June 1st. To learn more see click here.

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By the age of four, one in three children in New York City is obese according to a report released on April 5, 2006 by the City Department of Health. City officials examined the records of 16,000 pre-school children in the federal Head Start program to yield their results. Learn more here.

According to data collected by the USDA, non-organic vegetables have fewer vitamins and minerals than they did 50 years ago. On an overall scale of all produce tested, protein has declined by 6 percent, iron has declined by 15 percent, vitamin C dropped 20 percent, and riboflavin declined by 38 percent. This research did not compare organically produced crops. To learn more click here.

After surveying high schools across the state, researchers at Pennsylvania State University concluded that early lunch periods lead to poorer eating habits. Schools with lunch periods starting at 10:30 A.M. or earlier were found to have higher a la carte sales than later lunch periods. The early lunch hours appeared to foster more snacking. To learn more click here.

News

Packaging Waste in CA
The Edna Maguire School in Mill Valley, CA has instituted a “Pack-In Pack-Out” policy requiring students to take all their lunch packaging home. The policy has generated tremendous savings in reduced trash hauling charges. In Santa Cruz, CA two entrepreneurs created a compartmentalized, interlocking, reusable Laptop Lunch System. They then teamed up with parents, students, and teachers and founded the “Waste Free Lunch Program.” This is now a national movement that includes composting, recycling, and other steps towards less wasteful lunches.

New Food Labels In Montana
The Western Montana Sustainable Growers Union has launched the “Homegrown” label, which guarantees that products sold to consumers are not only organic but were also produced within a 150 mile radius.

School in Harlem Allows No Outside Food
The Promise Academy, a charter school in Harlem, is fighting childhood obesity by serving only nutritious and healthy foods and when possible food that is locally grown. The school cafeteria looks like an upscale dining room with white tablecloths and the students are used to having no desserts other than fruit.

Coke Accused of Targeting Kids
Coke recently announced a deal with the Clinton Foundation to stop selling non-diet sodas in public schools and to reduce the size of other popular drinks. This hasn't stopped states such as CT from pursuing more restrictive regulation. Lawmakers in CT have been battling for several years to ban soda in public schools. Although, Gov. Jodi Rell vetoed a bill that would have banned most soft drinks and junk food from Connecticut schools last year, this year, she has signed a similar bill.(AP)

When in Rome – Organic School Meals
In 2002, a program was begun to improve school meals across the city of Rome, Italy. Initially organic fruit, vegetables, eggs, and cereals were introduced, followed by organic mozzarella cheese and yogurt in 2003. By 2005, almost all of the food served in schools was organic, except for bananas and chocolate which are Fair Trade and meat, which is sourced from mainly extensively reared national breeds. 140,000 organic school meals are served every day, including special recipes for 4,000 children with dietary restrictions due to health and religion. Seasonality is incorporated into menu cycles and fried/frozen and genetically modified foods are banned.

Bill Introduced on 4/6/06 – Child Nutrition and School Lunch Protection Act
A bipartisan group of 7 Senators introduced legislation to update nutrition standards for foods sold outside of school meal programs on the school campus during the day. The bill would authorize the USDA to help schools regulate sales from vending machines, at school stores and snack bars, and in a al carte lines in the cafeteria. Bill # S.2592 in the Senate and a companion bill in the House is # H.R. 5167

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Funding for CISA’s 2006 Farm-to-School program is provided by CISA’s community and farm members and by a grant from the Lawson Valentine Foundation.

Pictures in header are used with permission from The Food Project, CISA's Local Hero Campaign, and parents.