'Connecting students with where food comes from': Farm bill could mean fresh school meals

A Massachusetts Farm to School bill would create a grant program that schools could use in order to incorporate fresh local food into their student meals and food education into their curriculum.

Massachusetts schools would be able to incorporate local fresh food into school meals — and food education into their curriculum — under a Massachusetts Farm to School grant program working its way through the Legislature.

The funds could be used to cover the costs of kitchen equipment and infrastructure, training for school kitchen staff or creating outdoor education programs such as school gardens. In order to apply for the grant, schools would need to prove an existing or anticipated relationship between the school and a Massachusetts farm, fisherman or distributor of Massachusetts food products.

“Local farms are a source of healthy local food, so we’ve been trying to encourage school districts to work with their local farming communities,” Rep. Paul Schmid D-Westport, said in a Wednesday phone interview. “For instance, the New Bedford school system serves over 2 million meals a year and that's a real opportunity to change what kids eat.”

New Bedford Public Schools has been offering free meals to students since 2009, as part of the Community Eligibility Provision and serves up to 90,000 meals a week, according to Rob Shaheen, the director of food services.

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The Oct. 19 policy briefing, which was held by Massachusetts Farm to School and Massachusetts Food for Massachusetts Kids presented the new bill alongside a panel including a farmer, a school service worker and an educator. The bill was presented by its sponsor, Sen. Eric Lesser D-Longmeadow and Massachusetts Farm to School Co-Director, Lisa Damon.

“One dollar spent at a local farm stays in Massachusetts to buy seed, repair a tractor at a local mechanic, or to pay a worker,” Lesser said at the briefing. “That dollar gets circulated in our local communities many times over in a way that you don’t get if you buy processed food that is shipped in from other places.”

Food shortages due to the pandemic persist and continue to affect school cafeterias who rely on shipments from far away, according to Ellen Nylen, food service director at Webster Public Schools.

“Farm to School means connecting students with where food comes from, as well as to agriculture, gardening, science and nature,” Nylen said during the briefing. “School food service is faced with a supply-chain crisis. As I sit here today, we are waiting for a truck which was supposed to arrive yesterday, which was already a week late and still has not arrived. These are real logistical challenges we are managing.”

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Incorporating more local foods in school cafeterias could alleviate some of the supply chain problems caused by waiting on shipments that may not be coming, according to Nylen.

“The people in the food service in schools, they’re really good people,” farm owner Joe Czajwoski said during a phone interview last week. “I’d like to see more local stuff in schools, and I’d like to see more local stuff in general.”

While there is no direct opposition to the bill, Czajkowski pointed out that these efforts to support farmers are normally not directed at farmers.

“It might help the farmers,” Czajwoski said. “But these grants, they never come down to the farmer, where the farmer gets a refrigerated truck or machines or whatever. The money is always everywhere else.”

Of Massachusetts’ 7,241 farms, 94.2% are small farms and 79.7% are family or individually-owned, according to the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources.

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The district received $1.4 million in grants last year through the Food Insecurity Infrastructure Grant Program. The money was used to renovate the New Bedford High School cafeteria and replace kitchen and serving equipment, according to Shaheen.

Other programs the district is working on include incorporating a school garden into all New Bedford elementary schools. Six were built last year and Shaheen hopes another six will be constructed by the end of this year.

“We have great participation and the revenue is really good in the district to reinvest back into the programs,” Shaheen said in a phone interview. “I think this bill will also help [programs] to go through and offer more grant opportunities for other districts that might not have a lot of funds to do these programs to get them off and running.”