Farm to Institution: Links & Resources

Farm to… school, college and hospital programs, plus curriculum.

General

National Farm-to-School Listserve
To further discussion and action of the National Farm to School Network, which connects schools with local farms with the objectives of serving healthy meals in school cafeterias, improving student nutrition, providing health and nutrition education opportunities that will last a lifetime, and supporting local small farmers.

To subscribe: send a blank e-mail to [email protected]

Bringing Local Food to Local Institutions
This publication provides farmers, school administrators, and institutional food-service planners with contact information and descriptions of existing programs that have made connections between local farmers and local school lunchrooms, college dining halls, or cafeterias in other institutions.

Center for Energy and Environmental Education’s Local Food Project
The Center strengthens the local food economy in Iowa through connecting institutional food buyers to nearby farms and processors, fostering a growing relationship among consumers, grocers, meat lockers, restaurant owners, farmers and local government, and assisting local independent food and farm businesses better communicate their positive impacts in the local economy.

Environmental Education Council of Marin School Food Project
EECoM’s Marin Food Systems Project (MFSP) is a broad coalition of teachers, parents, and community leaders who recognize the important connection between a healthy diet and a student’s ability to learn effectively and achieve high standards in school.

The Food Studies Institute
The Food Studies Institute is devoted to changing the health destinies of children through proper nutrition and education.

Project Food, Land and People
Project Food, Land & People promotes approaches to learning to help people better understand the interrelationships among agriculture, the environment, and people of the world.

Small Farm and Direct Marketing Program
The mission of the Small Farm and Direct Marketing Program is to increase the economic viability of small farms, build community vitality, and improve the environmental quality of the region.

Farm to School

California Farm to School Program
The California Farm to School Program connects schools with local farms with the objectives of serving healthy meals in school cafeterias, improving student nutrition, providing health and nutrition education opportunities that will last a lifetime, and supporting local small farmers.

 Cornell Farm to School Program
Cornell Farm to School develops strategies and disseminates information to increase the amount of locally grown food served in New York’s schools, colleges and universities.

Going Local: Paths to Success for Farm to School Programs
A new resource from the National Farm to School Program, Center for Food & Justice, Occidental College and the Community Food Security Coalition. With case studies from eight states, the publication provides a snapshot of the diverse ways in which farm to school is making a difference nationwide.

Hartford Food System Project Farm Fresh Start
Works to increase the purchase of locally grown produce by the Hartford school system’s food service and encourage young people to make high quality, nutritious food a regular part of their diet.

National Farm to School Program
An extensive resource for both emerging and established farm to school projects, this webpage offers ideas for implementation, funding, and evaluation. They also offer a network of existing programs, links to important organizations, and updates on policy changes affecting nutrition and education.

New Hampshire Farm to School Program
The NH Farm to School Program is a project to connect NH farms and schools by integrating agricultural production, school food procurement and school curriculum.

Rethinking School Lunch
The Rethinking School Lunch program uses a systems approach to address the crisis in childhood obesity, provide nutrition education, and teach ecological knowledge.

Seven Generations Ahead Fresh from the Farm Program
SGA’s curriculum activities work with children in the classroom and on the farm to teach them about nature’s growing cycles, organic cultivation, the nutritional characteristics of specific fruits and vegetables, what it’s like to be a farmer, and the emotional, academic, and physical health benefits of living a healthy eating lifestyle. Fresh from the Farm is a resource for school districts looking to incorporate healthier, locally raised food into school lunch menu offerings. Fresh from the Farm’s procurement specialist works with local school districts to explore linkages to healthy, local food, and supports menu development, producer-vendor linkages, and marketing and publicity strategy development.

Sunfield Farm
Waldorf Farm School with community education projects and information on how to link food programs with low-income communities.

Taste the Local Difference
Taste the Local Difference works to save farmland and improve children’s health by putting local farm foods onto cafeteria menus.

USDA Small Farms, School Meals Initiative
A step-by-step guide on how to bring small farms and local schools together.

Vermont FEED – Food Education Every Day
VT FEED works with schools and communities to raise awareness about healthy food, the role of Vermont farms and farmers, and good nutrition. They act as a catalyst for rebuilding healthy food systems, and to cultivate links between the classrooms, cafeterias, local farms, and communities.

Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch
The Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch Project seeks to introduce healthy foods grown locally and sustainably to Madison schoolchildren while developing stable markets for the producers and processors of those foods.

Willamette Food and Farm Coalition Farm to Cafeteria Program
Works in partnership with school districts, food service providers, parents, students, community members, farmers and food distributors to create the best possible Farm to Cafeteria program in Lane County, Oregon.

Farm to College

Columbia University Food Sustainability Project
The Columbia University Food Sustainability Project is a student-led initiative. The group is committed to working with Dining Services at Columbia to support a more sustainable environment, economy and way of living

Farm to College
Links to information about individual farm-to-college programs, with information about each program’s history, items purchased, organizational structure and more.

FoodRoutes Network
FoodRoutes Network has partnered with the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) and the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture to develop a set of resources and information for students interested in starting farm to college programs at their universities.

University of Montana
The University of Montana takes the farming to college project to a whole new level by allocating 17 percent of the school’s food budget to local farms.

Yale Sustainable Food Project
The Project was established with the understanding that many of the world’s most important questions regarding health, culture, the environment, and the global economy are deeply connected to what we eat and how it is produced. The Project seeks to nourish a culture in which the pleasures of growing, cooking, and sharing food are integral to each students experience at Yale.

Farm to School Curriculum

Chef Ann Cooper
Chef Ann Cooper offers consulting services for school administrators engaged in reinvention of school lunch programs. She provides nutrition and food choice education to students and works with schools to incorporate curricula that promote and increase the availability of healthy food and nutrition choices for kids and teens.

Cooking With Kids
Cooking With Kids is an experiential food and nutrition education program that engages elementary school students in hands-on learning about culturally diverse foods that are healthy and appealing. Each curriculum guide includes teacher information and introductory class lesson plan, with lessons for tasting and cooking activities, and each comes with a master copy of a bilingual Spanish/English Student Food Journal.

Ecotrust Made-from-Scratch Kitchen Program
This program boasts three primary components: the Scratch Kitchen model, a pilot project where made-from-scratch meals are cooked on-site using fresh ingredients; the Garden of Wonders, an outdoor garden where students participate in growing plants and which serves as a living laboratory and the Garden of Wonders Classroom, a physical classroom space where the Garden of Wonders and the Scratch Kitchen are used as the centerpiece for practical, hands-on classroom science, math, language, history and art lessons.

The Edible Schoolyard
The Edible Schoolyard, in collaboration with Martin Luther King Middle School, engages 950 public school students in a one-acre organic garden and a kitchen classroom. Using food as a unifying concept, students learn how to grow, harvest, and prepare nutritious seasonal produce. Experiences in the kitchen and garden foster a better understanding of how the natural world sustains us, and promote the environmental and social well-being of our school community.

Food Is Elementary
Food is Elementary educates children about nutrition by providing a positive experience of food and food preparation that is fun, hands-on and sensory-based.

The Food Trust Kindergarten Initiative
This new initiative promotes healthy communities by teaching young children and their parents about food, farms and nutrition. The Kindergarten Initiative works with kindergarten (and pre-kindergarten) students through the classroom, integrating nutrition concepts into the regular school curriculum as well as providing healthy fruit and vegetable snacks grown by local farmers.

French Fries and the Food System: A Year-Round Curriculum Connecting Youth with Farming and Food.
This agricultural curriculum features powerful, original lessons written and developed by The Food Project’s growers and educators. Organized by season, the material teaches youth how to develop a deep understanding of and appreciation for the land and local food systems. Lessons can be done both indoors and outdoors and can be easily adapted by instructors working in school-based plots, urban food lots, and environmental education programs.

The School Lunch Initiative
The School Lunch Initiative (SLI) envisions revolutionizing school lunch by making food a central part of the academic curriculum. SLI includes gardens, kitchen classrooms and lunchrooms as contexts for learning. It restores connections between what children are taught and what they experience, between nutrition, health, and the ability to learn, between local communities and the farms that feed them.

Farm to Hospital Programs

Center for Food and Justice Farm to Hospital Report
Drawing lessons from existing farm to hospital programs and a burgeoning farm to school movement, the report provides a snapshot of current hospital food conditions and a vision of a healthier hospital food environment based, in part, on local, farm-fresh food.

Duke University Hospital and Cafeteria
Holds a market in front of the medical center, and sponsors a mobile market to help get vegetables to professors.

Health Care Without Harm
Health Care Without Harm is working with hospitals to adopt food procurement policies that provide nutritionally improved food for patients, staff, visitors, and the general public; and create food systems which are ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially responsible.

IATP Healthy Food, Healthy Hospitals, Healthy Communities
The report offers several case studies of hospitals finding ways to offer more fresh food, raised locally or organically, to patients in their rooms, in cafeterias and via on-site farmers markets.

Kaiser Permanente
Sponsors over 60 farmers markets at their medical centers in California, Hawaii, Georgia, Oregon and Washington.

Physicians Plus Insurance Corporation
Insures 95,000 people in Wisconsin, Physicians Plus launched a program that encourages its members to buy fresh, healthy foods from local, community-supported agriculture farms. The farms charge an up-front season fee for weekly produce boxes, and Physicians Plus pays part of the cost.

Updated 10/2013

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