School meals are about to get a lot less local — and less healthy

Farm to School programs

Since it was launched in 2012, 45.6 million kids at almost 75,000 schools have participated in Farm to School-based programming in one way another: visiting farms, planting school gardens, being fed more fresh foods at school meals. And while it’s good news that USDA did release those Farm to School funds, they come with timing and other challenges. For starters, the grants are bigger — between $100,000 and $500,000. And as in previous years, they have a mandate that applicants like farmers, school meal directors and school districts find money from other entities to match 25 percent of the grant. Says Sunny Baker, senior director of programs and policy at the National Farm to School Network, an applicant has to “find $33,000 [of] outside [money] just for the minimum grant, which does make this exceptionally hard for smaller-scale communities.”

Additionally, there’s a new requirement that grant seekers apply with a child nutrition partner. “That’s an awesome idea but in practice, that means you have till [application deadline] December 5 to build trust, build relationships, get this together to apply,” Baker says. And as Nelson points out, many state and municipal agencies are already experiencing budget crises. In one fiscally challenged Massachusetts town, “They’re like, ‘We literally can’t apply for grants,’” she says, because budget constraints mean there’s no longer the staff to fill out applications.

Kids attending schools in California, however, benefit from the state’s vibrant and deeply considered Farm to School program that received $100 million in (state) grants between 2021 and 2024 and was just infused with an additional $20 million. Rather than focusing just on helping farmers offset their costs related to selling to schools and helping schools buy local, California has “facilitated the whole supply chain,” says Beth Katz, a food systems researcher who was co-lead of a new study on the initiative. It has trained school food workers and invested in kitchen infrastructure to facilitate scratch cooking. And it has supported nonprofits and other groups working to support local procurement and education programs. For example, there are now permanent staff housed within the state’s food and agriculture department who make introductions between producers and school district reps, and translate school needs — what produce is desired, at what price and in what amounts — to help farmers plan what to grow. Says Katz, “It really dwarfs any other state or federal program.”

Local food for schools

One Biden administration response to fragile supply chains created by the Covid-19 pandemic was to simultaneously improve both school nutrition and regional food systems with the Local Food for Schools (LFS) program. This USDA grant opportunity was intended to strengthen state initiatives boosting schools’ ability to buy fresh food from local farmers. This past March, the Trump administration cancelled LFS and its $660 million worth of funding.

“While a lot of schools do have the capacity to still buy local within their current budgets, that LFS money” — what Baker calls a “much-needed boost to school food budgets” that encouraged many food-service directors to buy local for the first time — was starting to create necessary, longer-term changes that are now threatened. Baker mentions an Arkansas farmer who “amped up his infrastructure in order to sell to schools, purchased equipment, and was working on getting his hamburger patties to the exact specs that the school districts needed. He lost those contracts when LFS was cancelled.” Some farmers have responded to these sorts of funding loss by hiring fewer workers and cutting back on plantings; another potato farmer whose school contract was cancelled donated the crop to a food pantry — a lovely gesture belying the uglier reality of his lost income.

State initiatives

What would help ease the challenges poised to hit school meal programs across the country? Katz and other sources see hope in the push for Universal School Meals, which offers free breakfasts and lunches to all students regardless of income. During the pandemic, when universal meals were temporarily enacted for all states, “We saw how well it worked to help reduce the paperwork burden [for schools] of separating kids into three categories: free kids, reduced-price kids, kids with the ability to pay,” Katz says.

Nine states have passed universal meals to date. One of the major advantages to this sort of legislation is that it increases participation in school meals. Explains Katz, “The more kids who are eating school food, the more reimbursement dollars come back to that district [from USDA], and the more they can reinvest in their program” — preferably favoring local procurement (New Mexico incentives this) and increasing wages for cafeteria workers.

Still, “We’re depending right now on exceptional food-service directors to go out of their comfortable budget range to provide the really good food that kids deserve,” says Baker. “With the changes that we’re seeing happen and the funds being rolled back, it’s going to be so much harder for school districts to work with local farmers, because we’re not going to have as many local farmers. It’s going to be harder to stretch your budget to buy local blueberries when you’re worried about so much else.”

Where does she see hope? “The resilience and the strength of the communities that are doing this work is incredible. It’s much harder to cancel a contract with a watermelon grower if you are going to see him the next time you’re at the farmers’ market. Those relationships are where my hope lies.”