Schools should partner with family farms to provide nutrition and education

Student filling lunch tray with fruits and vegetables.
A student fills their lunch tray from the Farmers Market Salad Bar in Riverside Unified School District.
Courtesy: Center for Ecoliteracy

California residents know that winter brings plentiful bright-flavored citrus fruits. These fruit trees have been part of Southern California’s landscape since 1871 when they were first planted in the Inland Empire, and are an enduring symbol of the Golden State.

Unfortunately, many children don’t understand the connection between California’s natural systems and the nutrition they need for their growing minds and bodies. Some kids are confused about what blood oranges are, but later relish in their lightly sweet, hint of raspberry flavor. Some kids have adamantly argued peaches don’t have pits or skin. Their experience is often confined to a can and suspended in syrup.

It is understandable kids may feel disconnected from where food comes from — even though much of it is grown in their backyard. But given California’s recent investment in the School Meals For All program, Farm-to-School partnerships and our state’s world-renowned agricultural production, schools in our state are especially well-positioned to build vital nutrition programs for children.

As a first-generation farmer and a school nutrition director who have worked together for more than a decade to make healthy food more accessible to students, we urge our communities and state leadership to support more opportunities for family farms and schools to engage children with fresh, nutritious California-grown school meals. We can be a model for more than half the country where legislators are currently considering universal school meals legislation as temporary federal funding has ended and schools and families are left struggling to provide nutritious meals for students.

March was both Women’s History Month and National Agriculture Month, a ripe time to cultivate relationships between family and women-owned farms and school nutrition professionals. In California, women represent 37% of producers in the state and play a growing role in feeding their communities healthy food.

Schools are natural partners for local growers. Riverside Unified School District’s Central Kitchen and Riverside Food Hub currently source fresh produce from over 20 farmers, including seven female farmers. Since 2013, Alba’s Oranges, a women-owned business on 10 acres in Riverside, has doubled its orders with the Riverside School District. As a result, the farm is thriving and has increased the variety of trees to include cara cara oranges, lemons, mandarins, peaches, avocados and blood oranges.

Given the evidence that proper nutrition improves academic success — and improves lifelong health outcomes — we must do all we can to encourage students to try new, locally grown fruits and vegetables, talk about food choices and think about where our food comes from.

As a member of the Center for Ecoliteracy’s California Food for California Kids Network since 2014, Riverside Unified School District is dedicated to serving our students more fresh California-grown food. Our district has applied for state Kitchen Infrastructure and Training funding to provide staff with the tools they need to prepare more locally sourced produce. And we are committed to having all 30 elementary schools host colorful displays of fruits and veggies at Farmers Market Salad Bars as well as Harvest of the Month taste testings. (Citrus fruits from Alba’s Oranges were featured as the “Harvest of the Month” in March.)

With increasing food costs and dwindling pandemic-era federal nutrition programs, food insecurity has reached its highest level in four years. For the 1 in 3 California households that struggle to meet basic needs, free school meals have been a game-changer. A mother of two recently said she saves about $150 a week in groceries now that her two daughters eat their meals at school — calling it a huge difference.

Now it’s up to us to protect California’s progress by expanding opportunities to nourish families and children with locally grown nutritious produce that supports our often women-owned local agriculture industry and celebrates “California food for California kids.”

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Adleit Asi is the director of Nutrition Services at Riverside Unified, and Alba Landaverde owns and farms Alba’s Oranges with her husband, Guillermo Landaverde.

The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.

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