Farm To School Partners & Other Links
Below are some of the most popular links for Farm to School.
National Farm to School
Farm to College
Agriculture in the Classroom
Action for Healthy Kids
NM Department of Agriculture
New Mexico School Nutrition Association
Please see the Farm to Table Partners and Other Links for more Farm to School Partners and Other Links.
See below for new Farm To School Partners and other interesting Sites.
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One in Four Households with Children in New Mexico Reporting Food Hardship
Post Date: Monday, August 15th, 2011
This just in from the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC): More than 28% percent of households with children in New Mexico reported they suffered from “food hardship” (an inability to afford enough food) in 2009-2010.
FRAC announced the numbers in the latest report in its “Food Hardship in America” series, which analyzes data that were collected by Gallup and provided to FRAC. FRAC has analyzed responses to the question: “Have there been times in the past twelve months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?”
Some food hardship details for New Mexico:
• In 2009-2010, 28.3 percent of households with children in New Mexico said they were unable to afford enough food. The food hardship rate for households without children was 16.5 percent.
• For the Albuquerque Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), the food hardship rate for households with children was 28.2 percent in 2009-2010, and 15.8 percent for households without children. The Albuquerque MSA ranks the 19th highest MSA out of the 100 largest MSAs for food hardship.
• Two of the three congressional districts in New Mexico had more than one in four households with children reporting food hardship in 2008-2010.
The food hardship data were gathered as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index project, which has interviewed more than one million households since January 2008.
Find out more at FRAC’s website http://frac.org.
Topics: Education, Health and Nutrition, Partners & Other Links |
Local Organic Food & Farming Can Help Revitalize the Economy
Post Date: Thursday, February 12th, 2009Opportunity Knocks When it Comes to a Local Food Economy
By Olga Bonfiglio
Common Dreams, February 6, 200
Community-based agriculture has the potential for creating jobs, developing small business entrepreneurships and keeping precious dollars in the community.
“As manufacturing jobs decrease, food jobs are increasing,” said Dr. Kami Pothukuchi, associate professor of urban planning at Wayne State University in Detroit.
This is especially good news for a state like Michigan whose economic engine has been dependent on the declining automobile industry.
Out of a total GDP of $381 billion, agriculture is the state’s second largest industry pulling in $63.7 billion annually compared to $68.4 billion from manufacturing, according to the Michigan Department of Agriculture (MDA) and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
However, the present “industrialized food system” is made up of a handful of “mega-corporations” that control food production, processing, distribution and preparation, said Pothukuchi. Change to a community-based system is difficult because these corporations have a lot at stake in keeping the current system.
The U.S. industrialized food system was designed in the 1950s to increase production in order to provide the nation with cheap and plentiful food that was easily accessible. As a result, the United States became a top food producer in the world.
A variety of food-related jobs in processing, marketing and distribution also emerged even though the number of farmers declined. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Census (USDA) reported that farms increased in size averaging 155 acres in 1935, a peak year when the country had 6.8 million farms, compared to 2002 when farms averaged 441 acres and numbered 2.1 million farms.
It is important to remember that the industrialized food system was developed at a time when most American businesses were creating systems for mass production and economies of scale. Because volume is critical to the profitability of this system, farming methods developed to support a large-scale, energy-intensive monoculture that uses huge amounts of water and chemicals for herbicides, insecticides, and fertilizers. Tons of animal waste products also accumulate and pollute land, water and air because factory farming methods keep animals indoors and free of disease instead of allowing them to graze in pastures.
Actually, the cost of the industrialized food system outweighs its benefits. For example, most food in the industrialized system ends up in supermarkets after traveling an average 1,300 miles to get there. Fruits and vegetables may spend seven to fourteen days in transit. So freshness and taste are sacrificed for the products’ ability to travel.
Transporting products has been possible through cheap fuel. However, when oil reached over $100 a barrel last spring, the expense incurred over such long distances proved problematic. For example, world food prices averaged an increase of 43 percent over the past year, which inadvertently created a global food crisis that is causing political and economical instability and social unrest in both poor and developed nations.
Unseasonable droughts in grain-producing nations also affects high food prices just as falling stockpiles, the increased use of biofuels in developed countries and increasing demands for meat products in Asia’s middle class, according the BBC (May 2008).
The Consumer Price Index estimates that U.S. retail food prices increased in 2007 by only 4 percent, but this is the largest spike in 17 years-with more expected to come.
Industrial farming practices were developed when world population was only 2 billion. While these practices increased the carrying capacity of the earth then, they are slowly destroying the earth’s long-term carrying capacity for today’s population, which is 6.7 billion and climbing.
Over the past two decades as the industrialized food system has expanded to the global level, concerns over food safety have emerged, like the recent tainted food imports from China.
The industrialized food system has had a detrimental effect on the local economy, said Pothukuchi. Our food system should be a community-based system that revolves around small, polycultural farms that practice sustainable agriculture, preserve regional biodiversity and help build local economies. This is already being done in many ways.
First, local food networks like community gardens, food co-ops, Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA), farmers’ markets, and seed savers groups keep money in the community.
Second, as more people prefer organic food products, organic farming represents a profitable alternative for local economic growth and sustainable agriculture since organic farmers tend to sell to local markets (within 150 miles). More acreage is being dedicated to organic farming. From 1997 to 2005, the number of U.S. certified organic acres grew by 63 percent, while Michigan certified organic farmland increased by 166 percent.
In actuality, the number of industrialized farms converting to organic farming methods remains steady, but small. Michigan’s 45,500 certified organic acres comprise only 0.4 percent of the state’s total farmland and 1 percent of the total 4,000,000 certified organic acres in the country according to the Michigan Organic Farm and Food Alliance (MOFFA). But the potential for growth is there, especially when organic food processors/handlers are figured into the economic mix. The USDA reports that there were over 3,000 organic-certified facilities nationwide in 2004, with 41 percent of those located on the Pacific Coast and almost 800 in California alone.
Local organic food is admittedly more expensive than food from large, industrialized farms, however, organic advocates claim that prices in the industrialized food system are cheap because their true cost omits governmental price supports, direct payments or tax breaks and road infrastructure.
Third, colleges and universities across the country are looking for ways to support sustainable agriculture. One way they are doing it is by supplying their cafeterias with food grown by local farmers. These institutions teach students how to grow backyard and community gardens as well as food-related careers like urban farming. Pothukuchi started an urban gardening program at Wayne State, which is distinguished as the largest inner-city campus with a comprehensive food systems program that is not run by an agriculture school.
Some areas of the state are actively recruiting youth for community-based farming careers through hands-on learning situations. The 4-H Entrepreneurs Club in Kalkaska County has youth pick and buy produce at area farms in order to sell it at five different farmers markets. There are similar programs in Detroit and Monroe County.
Fourth, regions like Grand Traverse in the northwestern lower peninsula, are rebuilding their local economies through agriculture by forming partnerships among businesspeople, economic developers, schools, grocers, restaurateurs and food retailers, reported the Great Lakes Bulletin News Service. As these partnerships work to bring more food-related jobs to the area, they not only support local farmers but they also protect precious income-producing farmlands from being overtaken by urban sprawl.
The Michigan Land Use Institute (MLUI) speculates that the Grand Traverse region could stimulate more job growth and entrepreneurship by supporting its 2,229 farms through cooperative efforts like the Food and Farm Network. Moreover, a 2006 MLUI study found that farms could generate 1,889 new jobs across the state and $187 million in new personal income by selling more fresh produce locally.
Fifth, state programs can provide yet another opportunity for local economic development, like the MDA’s Agricultural Innovation Program. This competitive grant seeks to establish, retain, expand, attract or develop value-added processing and production operations in Michigan through innovative financing assistance to processors, agribusinesses, producers, local units of government and legislatively-authorized commodity boards in Michigan.
All these efforts for change, however, have barely dented the deeply-entrenched industrialized food system. Michigan residents, for example, spend $26 billion on food with only 10 percent from the state’s farmers, according to a 2001 MLUI study.
“Michigan has the second most diverse agriculture in the United States [with 150 crops],” said Pothukuchi. “We could add another $2.6 billion to the state’s economy if we increased production of local food by another 10 percent.”
Olga Bonfiglio is a professor at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and author of Heroes of a Different Stripe: How One Town Responded to t…. She has written for several national magazines on the subjects of social justice and religion. Her website is http://www.olgabonfiglio.com/. Contact her at olgabonfiglio AT yahoo DOT com.
Reprinted from the Organic Consumers Association website.
Topics: Health and Nutrition, National News, Partners & Other Links |
Let’s help the schools make better food choices for our kids
Post Date: Wednesday, February 11th, 2009Wednesday, February 11, 2009
By Denise Miller
Of the Journal
Mornings are hectic at my house. The kids are eating breakfast, coffee is brewing, my middle-school daughter is preparing her lunch, and I’m usually tripping over someone to make lunch for the boys.
My kids rarely buy lunch, so I am lucky enough to know most of what they will eat each day. Lunches aren’t fancy — lots of peanut butter, local raspberry jam, whole grain bread, sliced turkey, carrots, apples and dinner leftovers.
But in New Mexico, where 218,000 children are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, sending a brown bag isn’t always an option, according to the fiscal impact statement for the Senate bill SB107 seeking $1.44 million for more produce for school lunches.
The challenge for school food-service directors is to provide a balanced meal when, after expenses, they are left with $1 per meal, and 30 cents of that is spent on milk, according to the fiscal report on SB107.
New Mexico, like most other states, doesn’t spend a penny on school lunch, according to Mary Ann McCann, school nutrition coordinator for Taos Municipal Schools, and Corrine Lovato, retired state director of school nutrition. State budget allocations only assist with school breakfast.
In 2007, $85,000 was set aside under the Valley Cluster program to give 6,000 Albuquerque Public Schools students two more servings of fruits and vegetables — locally grown when available.
Eight school districts are serving New Mexico-grown produce to 165,000 children statewide, according to the fiscal impact report for a bill before the House of Representatives to fund an increase in the amount of state produce in schools.
The proposed program would more than double that existing fruit and vegetable provision.
Mind-numbing statistics about obesity in today’s youths and the related health risks of diabetes and heart disease are easy to find. More fruits and vegetables can help combat the potential health epidemic our country may face.
Worried about our cash-strapped economy? Remember the current economic costs of health care related to obesity and diabetes in New Mexico are estimated to be $324 million and $876 million, respectively, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Diabetes Association.
Rep. Rhonda King, D-Santa Fe, introduced HB386 seeking $3.3 million to buy New Mexico grown fruits and vegetables for school lunches. A second, similar House bill also has been introduced.
Sen. Pete Campos, D-Las Vegas, is sponsoring a similar bill, SB107, seeking $1.44 million.
An interim committee of Health and Human Services has designated the issue a priority. The New Mexico Department of Agriculture has supported farm-to-school programs for years.
We all know it’s going to be a tough year or two at the Legislature.
But when it comes to the health of our kids and our economy, perhaps the real question is whether we can afford not to fund the bill.
So here’s a recipe for a healthy school lunch:
~ One dedicated cadre of school food-service personnel;
~ One committed partner at the New Mexico Department of Agriculture;
~ One large helping of New Mexico farmers eager to have their produce consumed by school kids;
~ An informed, vocal public that tells legislators they want them to support the bills to add New Mexico produce to school lunches;
~ A passing vote on the bills at the Legislature and the governor’s signature.
We have most ingredients. With everyone’s support, we will have all of them. The value of this recipe is priceless.
Topics: Education, Health and Nutrition, Partners & Other Links, Regional News |
Albuquerque Journal Article: Growth Spurt
Post Date: Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009ABQJOURNAL EDUCATION: Growth spurt
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Growth spurt
<!–COPYRIGHT:Copyright 2009 Albuquerque Journal–>
For the Journal
Blake Matheson loves pigs.
He also likes to sing and perform in school plays when he’s not helping out with the family’s cattle.
But his real passion is the National FFA — formerly the Future Farmers of America — and Matheson says you don’t have to be from a farming family to join.
“You don’t even have to work with animals if you’re a member of the association,” the 16-year-old Belen High junior said. Matheson is president of the Belen FFA chapter and vice president of the district that includes Los Lunas, Belen, Socorro and Truth or Consequences.
“It’s a real passion,” he said. “I really enjoy going to a place where there’s a wide range of members,” … from city dwellers “who have never had livestock in their lives” to students whose families have hundreds of cattle.
Matheson is one of 3,726 students in New Mexico who are members of the national organization, which offers agricultural education classes, career development and leadership skills.
New Mexico is predominantly a rural state, but most of the group’s membership comes from Belen, Los Lunas, Roswell, T or C, Tucumcari and Las Cruces, said Jerrod Smith, New Mexico’s FFA executive secretary.
“These are larger towns that have grown around agricultural centers and still have agriculture as a huge part of their local economy,” he said. “We currently don’t have any chapter in the Albuquerque Public Schools system — most of these chapters were dissolved in the ’80s because of budget cuts. We are trying to get programs in urban areas started up again.”
Smith said Rio Rancho’s Cleveland High School, slated to open next school year, is in the process of starting an agricultural education/FFA program, which he hopes will begin an “urban agricultural education trend.”
“As an agricultural education teacher, I had seen firsthand how the program can change the lives of students,” Smith said. “I had several students who didn’t have a place to belong, and the FFA became that place.”
It also helps students plan careers or “guides them to a college education with special scholarships for FFA members,” he said.
Opening an APS chapter also is the goal of Paul Moya, a 2006 Los Lunas High graduate who recently became national president — the first New Mexican to hold that position, according to FFA officials.
For Matheson, the biggest benefit was learning how to speak in front of an audience through FFA speech competitions and talks at 4-H events.
“I remember I used to tremble when I talked in front of people, but now I can talk in front of my class all day with no issue at all,” he said.
Topics: Education, Get Active, Partners & Other Links |
Community Food Security Coalition
Post Date: Sunday, May 11th, 2008Please visist Farmtocollege.org! This site presents information about farm-to-college programs in the U.S. and Canada collected by the Community Food Security Coalition.
About farm to college
Farm-to-college programs connect colleges and universities with producers in their area to provide local farm products for meals and special events on campus. These programs may be small and unofficial, mainly involving special dinners or other events, or they may be large and well-established, with many local products incorporated into cafeteria meals every day.
The Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) has a National Farm to College Program, which works to help farmers, food service personnel, students, faculty and others to establish and maintain farm-to-college programs.
Beginning in Fall 2004, CFSC has been working to create a comprehensive list of active farm-to-college programs in the United States and Canada.
If you would like to add information about your college’s farm-to-college program, please see instructions on the survey page.
Topics: Partners & Other Links |