September 15, 2022

This Week in Farm to School 

Farm to school connects local agriculture, schools, and partners to benefit students, educators, farmers, families, and communities.

NC Crunch Countdown!

NC Crunch events offer youth and adults an opportunity to taste and learn about locally-grown NC produce as well as honor all those who contribute to feeding our youth and communities.

Help us achieve our 2022 goal to reach 500,000 participants across ALL 100 North Carolina Counties!

Register below for a free guide with tips, templates, and links to resources.

Register here.

Growing School Gardens Summit Webinar Series: Grow & Preserve Food using NGSS/STEAM

September 21, 2022 // 2 pm ET

Join Hope Sickmeier of Southern Boone County Elementary in Ashland, MO to learn how schools teach STEAM and NGSS and preserve food in the 21st century. Hope will share ideas on how to use STEAM in the garden to enhance student learning (square foot gardening & garden design, creating a pollinator garden, designing and demonstrating methods of seed dispersal). You will also learn how to use garden produce to create fundraising ideas and incorporate economic lessons. This webinar will offer easy recipes for food preservation of produce. Recipes include refrigerator pickles, herbal salts, dehydrated apple chips, sun-dried tomatoes, and apple cider vinegar.

Register here.

Community Garden Leadership Academy

October 29th and November 5th // 9 am - 3 pm ET

Join North Carolina A&T University for a FREE two day intensive training for community garden leaders. This training will cover the community building skills and horticultural knowledge needed to start and sustain a community garden. Lunch will be provided.

Register here.

Recording - How We Work Together: Supporting Local/Regional Food Systems through Collaboration

Across the country, statewide food system plans or charters bring together cross-sector stakeholders to collaborate on complex issues in food and agriculture. The North Central Regional Center for Rural Development offered a chance to hear from several food system plan coordinators in the North Central region on how they cultivate “collaboration infrastructure” to advance goals around local food and farm business, food access, and rural development.

Watch here.

USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Invests Over $2M in Service Learning Program Grants

North Carolina State University’s Cooperative Extension is one of twelve awardees that is a part of the Food and Agriculture Service Learning Program (FASLP) program. This program area priority supports programs intended to increase knowledge of agriculture and improve the nutritional health of low-income children and to foster higher levels of community engagement between farms and school systems, while developing leadership skills for K-12 students to prepare the next generation for agricultural and related careers. NC Cooperative Extension proposes to expand their growing online farm to school course into a Farm to School Collaborative Training Initiative (NCF2SCTI).

Learn more here.

Gardens in Tribal Communities

Tribal communities are growing gardens of all forms from medicinal gardens and small community gardens to larger food production gardens to school gardens. This United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service fact sheet highlights tribal school gardens.

Learn more here.

2023 CHS Foundation and National Agriculture in the Classroom Grant Application

Today! Deadline: September 15, 2022

The CHS Foundation provides $500 grants each year to pre-kindergarten-12th grade teachers who have classroom projects that use agricultural concepts to teach reading, writing, math, science, social studies and more. Eligible projects include classroom and schoolyard gardens, embryology projects, aquaculture projects and agricultural literacy reading programs to name a few. Teachers have until June 1 the following year to complete the project and submit a final report. Only state-certified classroom teachers employed by a school district or private school teachers are eligible to apply.

Learn more and apply here.

Indigenous Youth Nutrition Security Grants from Newman's Own Foundation

Today! Deadline: September 15 (Application)

Newman's Own Foundation launches its first-ever request for proposals (RFP) for Nutrition Security for Indigenous Youth. This RFP has been developed in collaboration with their partners at Tahoma Peak Solutions, a Native woman-owned firm focused on empowering and building up communities in Indian Country. Through this RFP, Newman’s Own Foundation will support organizations that build on the strengths of Native communities to enhance nutrition security for Native youth. To accomplish this, they are seeking organizations that are focused on improving nutrition security for indigenous youth.

Learn more here.

Budding Botanist Grant 

Deadline: October 14, 2022

The Klorane Botanical Foundation is committed to supporting programs that teach respect for the environment and protect nature through the preservation of plant species and biodiversity. Designed to further their mission, the Budding Botanist Grant will help students learn about plants, explore their world and inspire them to take care of the life they discover in their local ecosystems. In late 2022, twenty high-need schools across the United States will be awarded $1,000 in grant funding to support their youth garden programs. 

Learn more and apply here.

How School Meal Reimbursements Work

The North Carolina Alliance for Health’s new blog series, For What It's Worth, attempts to break down the intricacies and confusion around school meals and hopefully shed light on the “worth” of school meals. This week’s blog post explores how school meals are reimbursed!

Learn more here.

Reduced-Price School Meals Funding in North Carolina

The North Carolina state budget passed in July includes funding to pay school meal costs for families qualifying for reduced meals. 

Read more here.

2022 Questions for Candidates: A Voter’s Guide to Questions on Farm & Food Policy in the Carolinas

The Carolina Farm Stewardship Association (CFSA) works with policymakers and communities across the Carolinas to educate people on sustainable, local, and organic food and farming issues. CFSA also works with advocates across the Carolinas to prepare them to make an impact when they talk about the importance of sustainable farming and community food systems to policymakers. The 2022 Questions for Candidates equips you with questions you can ask candidates for elected office. This guide was developed to give candidates enough information to support them in thinking about and engaging with food, farming, food security, community gardening, and the environment. 

Learn more here.

Ten Lessons for Talking About Race, Racism, and Racial Justice

The Opportunity Agenda shares advice on having entry point conversations based on race using research, experience, and the input of partners from around the country.

Learn more here.

Cultivating Equality: Delivering Just And Sustainable Food Systems In A Changing Climate (Report)

In a changing climate, agriculture and food systems must be sustainable and productive – but our efforts cannot end there. They must be profitable for those for whom it is a livelihood. They must be equitable, to facilitate a level playing field in the market, to secure rights to resources for food producers, and to ensure access to nutritious food for all. They must be resilient to build the capacity of populations vulnerable to economic shocks, political instability, and increasing, climate-induced natural hazards to recover and still lift themselves out of poverty. This report was conducted by CARE USA and Food Tank.

Read the report here.

On Food Privilege: When Is Good Nutrition Code For Entrenched Social Status?

Freshly-grown fruits and vegetables used to be a staple in most rural communities, but they are now mostly the stuff of privileged people. Farmers' markets are now so mainstream that it is almost impossible to find a privileged community that doesn’t have at least one market a week. Author Francesca Moroney explores how privilege can negatively impact our food distribution system.

Read the opinion here.