12/10/08 Farm to School

Farm To School. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Where does the food your kids eat at school come from? That is the question being asked and addressed by Washington State Department of Agriculture's new Farm-to-School Program. Tricia Sexton Kovacs is the programs coordinator. KOVACS: Our job will be to support farms and schools to find each other for purchasing relationships. So for snack programs and lunch programs but also for education so that the students are also learning about Washington agriculture and where their food comes from so they're a little more connected to food. We have all heard stories of kids not realizing that that dozen eggs or gallon of milk comes from somewhere other that the grocery store. But just paring up farms and schools is not as easy as it might seem. KOVACS: Each one has to be tailored even down to the school district because each school district has its own purchasing policies, its own liability insurance requirements. The Mt Vernon School District I think it's called has its own policy that they purchase Skagit produce where possible. So some school districts are really already doing this and some have never heard of this. Kovacs is launching the project with a free, all-day workshop on building successful farm-to-school connections in local communities. KOVACS: I've geared that to agriculture professionals, extension agents and other people like that who do advocacy work with farms or business planning work with farms and my goal is to have people all around the state who can talk to the farms, who know the farms in their area, what they're growing, how big they are, how much they could grow, where the processing happens, how the delivery system works in their area. So that's just the farm side. The seminar will be held on Thursday, Dec. 11 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the WSU Puyallup Research and Extension Center. Videoconferencing will be available from the WSU Extension offices in Kennewick, Spokane and Mount Vernon. KOVACS: We're also going to educate them how to work with schools because extension at least has a lot of food sense and other nutrition education programs and 4-H youth development so they also have an education component and figuring out how the schools can not only provide Washington grown food to the students but educate them about our agriculture system and food and farming in general. For more information contact the Washington Department of Ag. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.