By Mark Winne
Hartford Courant
March 13, 2005
On Jan. 12, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson presented the federal government's new dietary guidelines to the American public. They told us several things that most of us already knew: We're too fat, we don't exercise enough and we don't eat enough fruits and vegetables.
The guidelines replace the old ones, which advised us to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. The old recommendations weren't quite a rousing success. Most of us never came close to the five-a-day goal. Barely 20 percent of American high school students, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ate their five servings.
In the face of such an overwhelming national failure, the USDA and HHS chose to motivate us by setting the bar even higher. Like the Army drill sergeant who tells the flagging recruit to give him 20 more pushups after he collapsed at 10, the federal government now wants us to eat nine servings of fruits and vegetables each day!
How are we going to get our flabby bodies over this higher bar? Although taking personal responsibility for what we eat is the ultimate answer (even Uncle Sam can't make us eat our broccoli), public institutions must do more, especially for children, to help us along.
In our nation's schools, which serve lunch to 29 million children each school day, food service directors and local farmers are teaming up to put more fresh native fruits and vegetables on kids' cafeteria trays. Instead of little Johnny from South Windsor eating a mushy apple from Washington state, he's picking a sweet Macoun, grown 10 miles away in Glastonbury, off the school cafeteria line.
Food service directors at more than 400 school districts across the country are now buying fresh produce from local farmers, or telling their wholesale vendors they want locally grown food - not that jet-lagged stuff from South America. At the same time that local farmers are starting to feed local kids, innovative teachers are building history, biology, geography and health lessons around the locally produced food that students are eating in the cafeteria. Schoolchildren are starting to identify their food with a place and even the face of the farmer.
South Windsor is one of about 25 Connecticut school systems that are running what are called Farm-to-School Programs. Under the leadership of food service director Mary Ann Lopez, South Windsor's 5,100 students are getting a taste of Connecticut-grown, even when there's snow on the ground. Thanks to South Windsor farmer Dave Shaffer, who produces Russet potatoes on 12 acres of land and stores them in a 60-year-old potato barn, Lopez has created a popular school potato bar that operates long after the last potato has been dug. "His potatoes are perfect and beautiful," Lopez says, "and because they are so fresh, the kids love them."
She has also been able to extend the "local eating season" for her kids by buying apples from Joey and Sandy Dondero's orchard in Glastonbury. Although she buys Empires, Red Delicious, Granny Smiths and MacIntoshs, as well as Bosc pears, as soon as they are tree-ripe, the Donderos' cold-storage unit allows them to hold and sell their sweet, crisp apples well into the winter. "It always drove me nuts that we were buying Washington state apples. Now that we're buying Connecticut apples, the kids are eating more," Lopez said.
She's optimistic about further expanding the share of Connecticut-grown produce in her school menus. Because her annual food purchases are a respectable $650,000, there's a decent opportunity for Connecticut farmers to start making some serious money from the state's 160 school districts. She thinks the new guidelines, with their emphasis on fresh produce, will inspire school districts to place a greater focus on farm-fresh produce.
Indeed, it's humbling to think that something as mundane as locally produced fruits and vegetables might be so salutary. If Connecticut farmers can start to produce millions of dollars of produce for the state's schools, there would be additional market incentive to reduce the dramatic loss of farmland. Likewise, if Connecticut kids start eating more healthy food, especially locally grown produce, it will reduce the high levels of overweight and obesity that now plague 61 percent of the nation.
Research at the University of California at Davis seems to support this double bottom line. In a study of a farm-to-school program in Davis, researchers found that children will eat more fruits and vegetables when they are given a variety of fresh produce to choose from. Over the course of running the program, the Davis school district shifted 38 percent of its produce purchases to area farmers. In other words, the program benefited both kids and farmers.
Jean Palazzi and her husband, Mark, started selling apples two years ago to the Killingly, Brooklyn, Plainfield and Scotland school districts. Although they already sell much of their 50 acres of apples, peaches and vegetables directly to consumers, the schools gave them another outlet that was very near their Killingly farm. According to Jean, they get a better price selling their apples to the schools than if they sold them to a wholesaler and, just as important, she likes the steady sales throughout the fall and winter. "They even return the boxes to me," she said, noting that this saves her money.
Barbara Otero, head of food service for the Killingly school district, says that the arrangement also works well for her. She observes that many of her district's 2,600 students (almost 40 percent of whom are eligible for the USDA free and reduced-price meals) just aren't getting enough fresh fruits and vegetables at home. But when she started selling local apples, the school's fruit sales doubled. "We put those apples right in their face," she jokes, acknowledging at the same time that this is serious business because she is now seeing more overweight and obese children in the elementary schools.
Last year, Congress passed the Farm to Cafeteria Act, which authorizes grants to schools that want to start programs like the ones in South Windsor and Killingly. The program would help school districts pay for start-up costs such as menu planning, developing purchasing arrangements with local farmers, special equipment, staff training and even school gardens. U.S. Reps. Rob Simmons and Rosa DeLauro were among the bill's first co-sponsors, but to date, Congress has not funded the program ($10 million per year was requested). A small assist from the federal government could meet twin policy objectives: encouraging the consumption of more fruits and vegetables and enhancing the viability of small and medium-sized farms. It might be a good time to drop your member of Congress a line.