“School food is not what you think it is anymore,” according to Patrick Durgan, executive chef for Bellingham Public Schools.
“We’re really trying hard to serve quality food to kids,” said Allison Johnston, director of food service and warehouse in the Sedro-Woolley School District. “We operate on pretty tight budgets,” she added.
School districts are doing better for their kids through Farm to School programs, incorporating fresh, nutritious and local food in cafeterias, classrooms and gardens.
Funded by federal and state grants — and supported by volunteers and staff — these programs serve immediate needs while planting seeds for healthy habits and fundamental changes in the food system.
Give it a try
When the Farm to School program started in Concrete public schools a decade ago, Jaci Gallagher, the district’s principal of teaching and learning, said, “one of the major goals was to get kids more healthy and eating and trying healthier foods.”
The school offered Taste Test Tuesdays for the elementary school and Harvest of the Month, a common element in Farm to School programs.
“We’d bring a farmer and volunteers in to walk the cafeteria with samples, and then we’d try to feature it on the menu sometime during that month,” said Rachel Muia, the healthy eating supervisor for United General District 304, the community health outreach arm the public hospital district in Sedro-Woolley. Muia coordinates the Farm to School efforts in Concrete.
Seeing the farmer in person makes a difference.
Durgan recalled one instance where he was in a local school sharing focaccia bread made from Cairnsprings Flour and a chunky sauce featuring tomatoes from Cloud Mountain Farm Center. A kid politely declined offered food. Then, Durgan pointed across the room. “See that lady right there?” he asked. “She grew these tomatoes.” The boy thought a bit longer and tried it. Putting a farmer’s face to a tomato means something, said Durgan.
School gardens are part of many Farm to School curricula. They can be adapted to many subjects and grade levels from science to social studies. Investing in gardens pays multiple dividends.
Nutritious, fresh, local food is expensive and not all kids have access at home. But all kids deserve access to this kind of food, said Adele Eslinger, who is the Farm to School coordinator for Viva Farms and a program coordinator with United General District 304.
Mike Brondi, a volunteer in Concrete and a school board member, agrees. When he arrived in eastern Skagit County in 1978, he said, “Everybody had a garden.” Much of that practice and knowledge has disappeared. Brondi now sees people going hungry and says there is no need for that. “That is a personal motivator,” he said, “to make sure these kids know they can grow food, cook it and eat it.”
In school gardens, like the one on school grounds in Concrete surrounded by the North Cascades, kids see links between seeds of a carrot and later pulling it out of the ground and eating it.
“You see that connection go off. It’s so beautiful, and I think it’s so important to do our best to offer that arc, ending in the cafeteria that they have access to, eating that food and then going home and sharing that with their families what they tasted,” said Eslinger.
This is true even for food you might not expect … like “kale salad, probably not an elementary school favorite,” Durgan said, “unless they knew that they planted it, nourished it, grew it, harvested it, and we prepared it for them. I’ve never seen kale salad fly off the salad bar as quick.” The sense of ownership makes the difference, and then kids bring the recipe home and ask their parents to try.
In small examples like this, Farm to School programs nudge kids and their families into healthier habits.
Local farms, healthy kids
Schoolchildren and farms are mutual beneficiaries of these programs’ principal target, which is why Farm to School programs are housed in departments of agriculture.
More than 67,000 schools nationwide participate, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Washington’s program dates to 2008’s Local Farms-Healthy Kids Act and has experienced fluctuating funding.
The law intended to “strengthen the connections between the state’s agricultural industry and the state’s food procurement procedures in order to expand local agricultural markets, improve the nutrition of children and other at-risk consumers, and have a positive impact on the environment.”
To meet those goals, Annette Slonim, the Farm to School lead with Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA), works with several partners, including the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
In 2021, the legislature directed $5 million from the American Rescue Plan Act to Farm to School programs to support purchasing grants. According to WSDA figures, more than 400,000 students comprising 90 school districts and 900 schools are participating. Schools in San Juan, Skagit, and Whatcom counties in the 2023–25 grant cycle are receiving $419,000.
This helps all school districts and food service directors promote healthy eating.
“I just am passionate about health and wellness,” said Johnston, the food service director in Sedro-Woolley. “I love being with the schools and feeling like I’m making an impact on kids earlier in life for making healthy behavior changes.”
Most of the food that Johnston orders for the district comes through wholesale distributors. Working with one or two big distributors can save time. They know federal and state guidelines for school meals and can operate on a huge economy of scale.
The extra time and work to develop relationships with individual local farmers can be “a big hurdle to overcome,” said Johnston, but “it’s worth it.
WSDA staff help connect districts and farmers and provides technical assistance that eases some of the administrative burdens.
The grants help districts like Sedro-Woolley “purchase maybe some items that are a little bit higher priced than what we might normally be able to purchase,” said Johnston. She mentioned whole-grain tortillas from a company in Lynden, yogurt from a producer in Whatcom County and a lot of local produce grown in fields students might have driven by on their way to school.
Viva Farms executive director Michael Frazier sees Farm to School initiatives as connected to two key missions: developing economically viable farm businesses and ensuring that everybody has access to local, healthy food.
“It’s a really large market potential,” said Frazier, as well as the “tremendous value” of getting nutritious food to kids.
Although the potential is there, farmers and school districts have specific needs they are still sorting out. Farmers have discussed the need for a minimal processing center that could make the difference needed for local school kitchens. Many school kitchens are organized mainly around a heat-and-serve model and do not have equipment or staff capable of handling scratch cooking.
WSDA has helped with grants to purchase necessary equipment or find the needed culinary training.
Schools benefit by combining efforts. Food service directors across eight districts are working on a collaborative purchasing agreement, which provides a larger market and stable funding that can make a difference for farmers with Viva, according to Eslinger who has been participating in these meetings.
The work is complicated and time-consuming but is worth it to Frazier, who takes a long-term view. If kids can “understand the value of local food, then hopefully they’ll be future consumers and purchasers of that local food because they’ve had the connection to it.”
And that helps the future prospects of agriculture in Northwest Washington.
Changing the system
Farm to School programs constitute a small slice in school food and the food system at large, but those who are involved see potential to produce big differences. In many communities, after all, the school cafeteria is the biggest restaurant in town. Making change there ripples out to kids, their families and farmers.
“The school food system is a good kind of litmus for how our society actually works and how our economy is set up,” said Eslinger. “How do we start to shift the systems that are really entrenched in some of these parts of our society that don’t favor local food?” Schools can help move that, she believes.
Farmers benefit too.
Several years ago Durgan and another Bellingham chef separately talked to farmers who had each plowed under more than a thousand pounds of tomatoes that were perfect except for their appearance. Durgan saw an opportunity to obtain cheaper, fresh and local tomatoes and to help farmers earn something on what might otherwise be a wasted crop. So for the last two years, he has produced what he calls “Two-Ton Tomato Sauce” that the district freezes and uses throughout the year.
Strengthening connections helps keep local food supply chains robust. During the pandemic, Durgan noted, only local food chains stayed strong.
Prospects for a triple win
Participants in Farm to School programs are pleased with their progress and imagine an even stronger future.
Stable funding will be essential to that. Developing more infrastructure and training in schools and among farmers will extend benefits, too.
“I’d love to continue building upon what we’ve started,” Johnston said.
Dreaming even bigger, Gallagher said, “The ultimate goal would be if we could source all of our food” from local farmers.
Already, school meals exceed old expectations. The future may build even further, tipping the food system toward mutually beneficial relationships and add to other efforts to build regionally resilient food systems.
When Farm to School programs thrive, a triple win is achieved. “Schools win, kids win, and farmers and communities win,” said Slonim.
The Salish Current is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, online local news organization serving Whatcom, San Juan and Skagit counties by reporting local news with independence and strict journalistic integrity, and by providing fact-based information and a forum for civil commentary.
