The Stats
This is the number of school breakfasts and lunches served in the USA each day.
What is 45 million? 30 million school lunches and 15 million school breakfasts, sometimes making up half of a students weekly nutrition.
The National School Lunch Program was started in this year and for this reason.
What is 1946? And what is support US agriculture and safeguard the health of our nations children? During WWII, the draft of young men for military service found that 1/3 of recruits were malnourished. And the US started subsidizing farmers during the Great Depression, so had created a glut of commodities to move.
These components make up the 3 C's in the 3C approach to Farm to School.
What is Classroom, Cafeteria, and Community? This 3 C approach is a successful model of change that connects efforts in the Cafeteria, Classroom, and Community to achieve robust and sustainable farm to school programs.
This is how much money the USDA reported was spent on local food for schools in 2023.
What is $1.8 Billion? That is approximately 16% of the total food spending.
This is where and when farm to school got started.
In the mid to late 1990's Florida, California, and Vermont all were individually forming the approaches that would later be named Farm to School.Native Farm to School gained momentum in 2017.
This is a program that is trying to improve the statistic that 91% of the seafood consumed in the US is imported.
What is Sea to School? The effort to strengthen education around local seafood and strengthen local fisheries. There is 9,000 miles of coastline in the 7 Northeast states.
This is the number of states that have some form of farm to school policy or legislation that is encouraging the expansion of farm to school and farm to early childhood efforts.
What is 46 states?
The Northeast Farm to School Institute has had this many teams attend, impacting this many students.
What is 150 teams and over 185,000 students from the 7 Northeast States?
These are the people in your school community that can actually make farm to school changes happen.
What is EVERYONE? It can start with food service, teachers, early childhood educators, parents, administrators, farmers, school nurses, summer and afterschool staff, non-profit staff, government officials, college professionals, and anyone in the community that wants to help make positive change.