This year, USDA is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Partick Leahy Farm to School Grant Program. One of the inaugural recipients of a USDA Farm to School Grant back in 2013, DC Central Kitchen (DCCK) has a long history of providing nutritious locally sourced meals to schools throughout Washington, DC. Through their initial grant, DCCK strategically expanded their food processing, storage, and packaging capacity to serve even more local foods in roughly 4,000meals per day they were providing to DC Public Schools at the time. This expanded capacity led DCCK to increase their spending on local foods for their school foodservice program by 35% in 2014.

In the past decade, DCCK has become a leader in providing fresh scratch-cooked meals to schools and summer feeding sites, with over half of each meal now coming from local sources. The story behind how those meals are prepared however, is even more remarkable. For over 30 years, DCCK has led a Culinary Job Training program that has helped more than 2,100 adults facing barriers to employment launch culinary careers. Equity, empowerment, and both personal and professional development are at the center of DCCK’s 14-week training program, through which trainees receive hands-on culinary training to prepare them for jobs with dignity in the culinary and foodservice sectors.

One of DCCK’s Culinary Job Training graduates and valued member of their Healthy School Food team, Nyenpu Kamara, reflected on her experience saying, “You think you’re learning how to cook – and you are – but you’re also determining who you really are. The look on my son’s face when I graduated was amazing! I’m glad he was able to see the outcome of hard work.”

While many who graduate from DCCK’s culinary training program continue on to work in DC’s thriving culinary industry, others pursue employment with DCCK to prepare school meals, community meals, and meals for DCCK’s catering program and three local cafes. This means that the meals DCCK provides to schools are not only packed with nutrients and local flavors, but also help provide meaningful living-wage careers for at-risk adults who have completed DCCK’s training program. The recent opening of DCCK’s new Michael R. Klein Center for Jobs and Justice in Southwest DC, a beautiful light-filled kitchen and training facility, is allowing them to train even more culinary students, prepare even more meals, and meet the community’s growing needs for food and nutrition resources. 

DCCK’s success in procuring local foods didn’t happen in a silo. Purposeful partnerships with local producers and organizations like Dreaming Out Loud (DOL), a non-profit focused on creating economic opportunities for DC’s marginalized communities through building a healthy, equitable food system, helped make DCCK’s locally sourced meals a reality. Central to DOL’s programming is The Farm and Food Hub at Kelly Miller, a two-acre urban farm including a youth garden, community raised beds, fruit tree orchard, multi bin composting system, and event space. The farm provides local vegetables, fruits, and herbs for DOL’s farm share and wholesale markets, including sales to DCCK.

DCCK is poised to expand their meal program to more schools and source more local food from the community. With their new Center for Jobs and Justice up and running, as well as budding partnerships with local schools and producers, the infrastructure is in place to continue their cooking demonstrations, taste tests, and nutrition education lessons in schools they serve. They are a shining example of what’s possible for a former Farm to School grantee committed providing locally sourced meals in an equity centered way that meets community needs.

Pilot Light Highlights Food Advocacy Work

The USDA Farm School Program team recently visited Pilot Light, a Chicago based food education nonprofit and Fiscal Year 2021 Farm to School Program Grantee that partners directly with educators across the country to integrate food into everyday classroom learning. During the visit Pilot Light Food Education Fellowship Alumna, Rita Leary lead a presentation on her experiences with Pilot Light, highlighting food advocacy work led by her students. With support from USDA’s Farm to School Grant Program, Pilot Light has partnered with 13 educators for professional development sessions on teaching food education, resulting in 500 students helping develop local-food centric recipes for their school meal program. Pilot Light’s partners at Just Roots Chicago hosted the visit at their community farm.

Farm to School Grantee in Georgia Spotlights Aquaponics

Baldwin County School District, a Fiscal Year 2022 Farm to School Program Grantee is focused on integrating gardening and farming education in their schools’ curricula. This past spring, they engaged students in a variety of hands-on learning activities including raised bed gardening, taste-testing local produce, and visiting an aquaponics lab. Kindergarten students from Lakeview Primary School got up close and personal with fish at the Baldwin County High School Aquaponics Lab and explored the mechanics behind aquaponic food production systems.

USDA Unveils Farm to School Sign at the People’s Garden in in Washington, DC

USDA recently installed at the People’s Garden outside the USDA headquarters in Washington, DC a new sign that describes farm to school activities and encourages organizations to start farm to school programs. The People’s Garden in DC has many signs that describe gardening and local food related programming throughout the Department, and the farm to school sign will be the first to describe how USDA encourages food and agriculture activities in schools.

Healthy Meals Incentives Recognition Awards for School Food Authorities

As part of a cooperative agreement to develop and implement the USDA FNS Healthy Meals Incentives Initiative, Action for Healthy Kids (AFHK) is offering Recognition Awards to celebrate School Food Authorities that have made significant improvements to the nutritional quality of their school meals. The Recognition Awards will spotlight innovative practices, student and community engagement activities, and strategies schools have used to provide meals that are consistent with the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Find more information on eligibility, awardee benefits, and applicant resources here. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis through June 30, 2025.

On September 21, 2023, from 3:00 – 4:00pm ET, AFHK will host an informational webinar about the Recognition Awards. Register for the webinar here.

National Pollinator Week: Farm to School Grantee Highlights Pollinators

June 19 - 25 was National Pollinator Week! This annual week of recognition raises awareness on the importance of pollinators and practices we all can adopt to protect bees, butterflies, birds, and other important pollinators. West Central Missouri Community Action Agency, a FY 2021 Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grantee, recently connected Belton School District #214 with two local beekeepers to educate elementary schools students about honeybees, pollination, and the honey-making production process. A highlight of these pollinator activities for students was seeing the inside of a beehive, learning about the many uses of beeswax, and seeing a beekeeper suit. Additionally, the school purchased the local honey to share with their staff and students!  

Advancing Food and Nutrition Security 

On June 14, Dr. Caree Cotwright, the Director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity at the USDA Food and Nutrition Service spoke at the National Farm to School Network’s (NFSN) Racial Equity Learning Lab Public Webinar. During the webinar, Dr. Cotwright provided opening remarks and answered questions on the importance of advancing racial equity within our food systems to ensure access to healthy, safe, culturally appropriate, and affordable foods for all Americans. Supported by a cooperative agreement between USDA and NFSN, the Racial Equity Learning Lab will cover topics such as approaches to addressing racial inequities in the food system through farm to school and strategies on building a resilient food system that works towards racial healing. This supports USDA’s work to advance nutrition security in an equitable way that supports resilient and sustainable food systems for all by raising awareness and building key partnerships. Dr. Cotwright closed her remarks by asking the webinar participants to be creative and share their ideas for advancing nutrition security through the farm to school movement.