Last month the USDA eliminated two programs that help schools, child care centers, and food banks buy food from local farms. This cut erased more than $1 billion in support, and a USDA spokesperson said these programs “no longer effectuates the goals of the agency.” Now, school districts and local organizations are scrambling to save these programs. 

To talk about school nutrition and farm to school programs, host Douglas Haynes is joined by Erica Krug, the Farm to School Director at Rooted, Kaitlin Tauriainen, the President of the School Nutrition Association of Wisconsin, and Jennifer Gaddis, a scholar and advisory board member of the National Farm to School Network. 

They talk about potential changes to SNAP eligibility, the health benefits of eating local foods, potential cuts at AmeriCorps, and Governor Evers’ “Year of the Kid.” Gaddis says that cuts to the farm to school programs would not only be devastating to kids, but to the future of local, regional, and national food systems.

Farm to school programs do a number of things, from purchasing food from local farms to serve to students, engaging students in hands-on gardening, and teaching students in agriculture and health programs, says Krug. These kinds of programs are popular in Brown County, where Tauriainen works. She says that across the state 1-in-6 kids are food insecure and the number of families utilizing food banks is rising. 

Rooted also gets funding from the Leahy Farm to School Grant, which has been cancelled. Krug says that Rooted’s programs aren’t going away, but they are concerned about how long they can sustain their programming. They’re starting to look to the local community for support. 

You can learn more about the end to the Leahy grant here, and share your stories of farm to school programs with the National Farm to School Network.

Jennifer Gaddis is an associate professor of Civil Society and Community Studies at UW-Madison and an expert on school food policy. She is also an advisory board member of the National Farm to School Network.

Erica Krug is Farm to School Director at Rooted, a nonprofit based in Madison. Erica supervises a gardener-in-residence program that provides garden-based education at Madison Metropolitan School District schools and works to connect local farmers to school districts in order to get more local food in school meals.

Kaitlin Tauriainen is Child Nutrition Coordinator in the Ashwaubenon, Wisconsin School District and President of the School Nutrition Association of Wisconsin. 

Featured image of lunch served at a DC public school via Wikimedia Commons. 

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