September 8, 2022

This Week in Farm to School 

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

Educate Your Candidate Webinar

September 12, 2o22 // 4 pm ET

One of the best chances to educate policymakers about the importance of school and early care (ECE) meals is before they are in office! Join the National Farm to School Network to learn how you can engage in nonpartisan candidate education efforts this fall, including successful strategies from state and local food systems advocacy, and network with others working in your region. Featured speakers Melanie Wong and Jen Schaap from Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities and Rebecca Miller from the Massachusetts Food System Collaborative will share strategies and tools to engage with candidates. 

Register here.

Cooking Matters at Home with Carolina Hunger Initiative

September 13 - October 18, 2022 // 7 pm ET

Join the Carolina Hunger Initiative online for FREE online nutrition and cooking education lessons! The Cooking Matters at Home program shares information about buying healthy, affordable foods that families can prepare and eat together at home. This series will highlight seasonal ingredients of fall in healthy, affordable ways. All lessons will be held via Zoom. The Zoom link will be sent to participants after completing the registration form. Participants have the opportunity to receive a $10 grocery store gift card, provided by the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle. 

Learn more and register here.

Change For Good 2022: Addressing the Student Mental Health Crisis

September 14, 2022 // 12 pm - 1 pm ET

The Healthy Schools Campaign is hosting their annual Change for Good forum, a virtual event highlighting important efforts to address the national crisis in student mental health. This timely event will provide a forum for national leaders from the US Surgeon General’s office and the US Department of Education to hear first-hand about successful state and local efforts and for them to respond and share what their agencies are doing to address student mental health. 

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 & 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.

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.

Fun Fall Apple STEAM Activities

Looking for fun STEAM activities to highlight apples? Perhaps you want to share more about local apples with your students. Check out this list of possible activities you can do in your classroom. 

Find the list here.

School Gardens: Using Gardens to Grow Healthy Habits in Cafeterias, Classrooms, and Communities

School gardens have been around for over 100 years, and school districts continue to use them today to encourage healthy eating habits, offer educational tools for the classroom, and promote community inclusion. This fact sheet, created by the United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service, provides resources for continued growth and examples of school gardens that have taken root for farm to school stakeholders.

Learn more here.

The American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture and Grow with Google Foundation Fellowship

Today! Deadline: September 8, 2022

The fellowship is an 8-month opportunity for select educators to help create place-based lessons that incorporate agriculture, technology, and key digital skills into an Applied Digital Skills lesson. Fellows will also serve as program ambassadors and provide training for other educators and external stakeholders in their communities. Lessons created by the Grow with Google Applied Digital Skills Fellows will be featured and promoted on the Applied Digital Skills and American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture websites. Fellows will also receive a $25,000 stipend, Chromebooks for their classroom and 1:1 engagement with teams at Google. 

Learn more and apply here.

USDA Equitable Access in Child Nutrition Programs

Deadline: September 12, 2022

The USDA Food and Nutrition Service is seeking an academic or research institution to administer a grant program that will provide funds for research projects related to equity in Child Nutrition (i.e., school lunch, school breakfast, summer meals, Child and Adult Care Food Program). $2,000,000 of funds are available, which will cover both the administration costs and the grants themselves. 

Learn more and here.

2023 CHS Foundation and National Agriculture in the Classroom Grant Application

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

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.

How School Meals Are Funded

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. 

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.

North Carolina Youth Food Initiative Brings Young People into Social Transformation

Duke’s Sanford World Policy Center explored one way that young people in North Carolina are working to improve their local food system. The Food Youth Initiative is a program based in the Center for Environmental Farming Systems, which is housed at North Carolina State University. They interviewed the Program Coordinator, Bevelyn Ukah, and the Program Partner, Ree Ree Wei, of Transplanting Traditions Community Farm.

Listen here.

NC Crunch Countdown!

Schools provide a great opportunity to serve and highlight local food. One way communities celebrate local food is through #NCCrunch.

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 contributed to feeding our youth and communities.

Register here.