If you have had ever arrived at a U.S. airport from another country, one of the first characteristics you may have noticed about Americans is that many are overweight. The problem starts at a young age—almost one-third of all U.S. young people are categorized as overweight or obese!
During the past four decades, obesity rates have more than quadrupled among American children ages six to 11 in the United States, more than tripled among adolescents ages 12 to 19, and more than doubled among children ages two to five. The problem is due to sedentary behavior—not enough exercise—combined with increased consumption of foods that are high in calories and low in nutrition.
Virtually every American knows a youngster who could be the poster child for American kids’ disdain of eating healthy fruits and vegetables, or trying new foods. “It’s yucky,” is often the immediate reaction to almost any food that hasn’t been deep-fried, layered with cheese, or purchased from a drive-thru window.
Getting young people to appreciate healthy foods means helping them understand what they're eating, and how it gets onto their plate and into their lunchbox. Vermont Food Education Every Day (VT FEED) is leading the way with one of the first Farm to School programs in the United States.
Farm to School programs connect schools from kindergarten through grade 12 with local farms in order to serve healthy meals in school cafeterias, improve student nutrition, provide opportunities to learn about agriculture, health, and nutrition, and support local and regional farmers.
In some Vermont schools, 99 percent of children have such low family income that they are eligible for the National School Lunch program, the U.S. government program that provides low-cost or free lunches to children each school day. For many of the children, the school lunch provides the majority of their daily calories.
The state of Vermont began working on a Farm To School program more than ten years ago, before the term existed. “We started working on this because it just made sense,” said
Megan Camp, Vice President & Program Director of Shelburne Farms, one of three partners in VT FEED.
“What is exciting about Vermont is that, as a small state, we can make change happen and see the evidence of a few people really making a difference. We often say that sustainability is just a newfangled word for an old Vermont tradition. We feel like we have responsibility to tackle the more complex work in the world, because if it can’t happen in Vermont, where can it happen?”
Two other nonprofit organizations in Vermont—Food Works at Two Rivers, and the Northeast Organic Farmer’s Association of Vermont,—united to create VT FEED and became early pioneers in establishing Farm To School as a nation-wide movement.
VT FEED’s role has evolved from matching farmers to schools into a more complex web, Camp notes. It now swork with school cafeterias to teach them to implement systemic change throughout the school that involve developing recipes, acquiring adequate equipment to prepare fresher foods, and integrating nutrition and other topics into the school curriculum.
“For example, a fourth or fifth grader learns about history by visiting local farms and studying the history of agriculture,” Camp said. “Geography classes teach children to map where different foods come from.
"Math involves cooking and measuring, and creating bar graphs that use the statistics collected from taste tests of new recipes that are developed by middle and high school students. Extracurricular classes involve cooking and gardening.”
The cafeteria is generally not the best place to get a child to try something new. But VT FEED’s approach is to get a group of children to come up with a recipe, such as apple crisp or minestrone soup, and then distribute it in tiny thumb-sized samples for other kids to try. The children get to give the recipe a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, to see if it gets put on the lunch menu.
Because Vermont is a small, largely rural state, many of its schools aren’t able to offer a wide range of extracurricular programs, so VT FEED has worked with many schools to design enrichment programs that involve gardening and cooking. For example, through VT FEED’s 2010 Junior Iron Chef competition, 57 middle and high school teams participated in a statewide event that gives students an opportunity to gain hands-on experience with preparing and cooking nutritious, farm-fresh foods.
For one student, cooking has emerged as his first career choice when a local culinary school offered scholarships to the winners. This student will now be his family’s first generation to attend a post-secondary school because of the mentoring and college access offered by VT FEED’s Junior Iron Chef competition.
VT FEED has created a program linking schools with farmers that is an expanded version of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). CSA has become a popular way for consumers to buy local, seasonal food directly from a farmer.
Here’s how it works: a farmer offers a certain number of "shares" to the public. Typically the share consists of a box of vegetables, but other farm products may be included. Interested consumers purchase a share, and in return they receive a box of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season.
VT FEED took this consumer-based model and expanded it to a school-sized program. The schools pay in February for zucchini or cherries (or other produce) that they will get later in the season.
By purchasing the products up front for six months, it is easier for schools to integrate the food purchase into their funding. This Increases the farmers' sales and helps them plan their crops and reduce cash flow problems during the non-harvest season.
"Our 3-C model of farming, food, and nutrition education within Classrooms, Cafeterias and Communities has been the foundation for our success,” Camp said. “The 3-C model is our theory of change.
"Every school in Vermont has at least one relationship with a farm. It might just be apples, or seasonal vegetable or fruits, but many other schools have multiple farm relationships.”
Today there are about 300 Vermont farmers working with schools, creating benefits for nearly 9,000 students. VT FEED’s goal is to get every Vermont school involved in the program, and then become a regional leader for schools throughout the entire Northeastern United States.
“The Ashoka Changemakers competition helped us to be a catalyst for change in local communities, and allowed us to promote Farm To School as a social justice issue,” Camp said. “Our plan is to better support the entire food and student system by reducing the number of miles that food is traveling, and measuring our impact on students’ health—through body weight indexes, and total daily consumption of fruits and vegetables. We want share promising practices nationally and think systemically, but we love our work locally.”
![[carousel-42095:]Megan-Camp-carousel1-950x300.jpg](http://cdn.changemakers.com/sites/default/files/Megan-Camp-carousel1-950x300.jpg){kind=link}
![[square-42095:]Megan-Camp-square-275x275.jpg](http://cdn.changemakers.com/sites/default/files/Megan-Camp-square-275x275_1.jpg){kind=link}
![[banner-42096:]Megan Camp, Vice President & Program Director of Shelburne Farms](http://cdn.changemakers.com/sites/default/files/Megan-Camp-banner1-640x275.jpg){kind=link}
![[square-42096:]Megan-Camp-square-275x275.jpg](http://cdn.changemakers.com/sites/default/files/Megan-Camp-square-275x275_2.jpg){kind=link}