CHAMBERLAIN, S.D. (AP) - Immediately, the difference was obvious.
“Everything tastes better, because it’s fresh. It’s picked and delivered the same day. Nutrition-wise, we’re getting as fresh as we can,” said Mike Renbarger, the food service manager at St. Joseph’s Indian School in Chamberlain. “There aren’t too many places in central South Dakota to buy fresh produce like that.”
When Mark Werner of Muddy Pumpkins Farms in nearby Oacoma contacted Renbarger several years ago and asked whether the farm could become one of the school’s food suppliers, the two struck a deal that put them on South Dakota’s leading edge of a national initiative.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm to School Program seeks to identify how much food school districts buy from local small farmers and increase the amount. The most recent numbers are from a USDA census in the 2011-2012 school year. It showed that nationally, schools spent more than $354 million on locally grown and raised food, 14 percent of their $2.5 billion total food expenditures.
However, South Dakota lagged. The survey showed schools in the state spent about $2.7 million on food, but only $137,419 was directed to local producers, about 5 percent.
But school officials are interested in making greater use of locally produced food. Renbarger’s review of the quality produce St. Joseph’s gets from Muddy Pumpkins Farms is indicative of what schools hope to gain.
This year, the USDA awarded 71 Farm to School grants in 42 states. In South Dakota, the Wolsey-Wessington School District is the only one with a grant. It will use that $21,631 to investigate opportunities to buy food locally and develop a plan to do so. Typically, such federal grant money is passed through the states. Because South Dakota didn’t have such a program, Wolsey-Wessington applied directly to the USDA.
Caroline McGillvrey, a teacher and technology coordinator, wrote the grant.
“Our goals are to assess our needs and examine our infrastructure to see if we can support an effective Farm to School Program,” she said.
The district wants to form relationships with at least six local producers. Already, four have shown interest: Dimock Dairy Co-op, Huron Custom Meats, Casavan’s Apiaries and Dakota Style. It makes potato chips and processes sunflower seeds. McGillvrey expects to reach the goal of six.
Tina Roth of Dimock Dairy Co-op said “we are very interested in promoting healthy eating and getting our product out there.” From the cheese manufacturer’s perspective, to work with the school district “all they have to do is get their orders to us in a timely fashion,” Roth said. “We have a van route in that area. It would not be out of our way to get cheese to them.”
Having an opportunity to buy local cheese, meat, honey and sunflower seeds that already have been processed would enable Wolsey-Wessington to overcome a common challenge districts face. Many school kitchens are not equipped or staffed to do food preparation.
“If you have squash, it’s kind of challenging from a school’s perspective to take 100 different squash and cut them up. It’s incredibly time consumingg. It’s a lot easier to deal with something that is already diced, frozen and all you have to do is heat it up,” Alison Kiesz said.
She’s an agriculture development representative with the state Department of Agriculture and promotes locally produced food in schools.
This is where the planning grant will prove its worth, Kelly Wagner figures. She has been hired by the Wolsey-Wessington school district to oversee the development of its potential Farm to School program.
“I want the cooks to really stop and think what is going to be available to us. We can’t get too far ahead of ourselves,” she said. “I want to know where they’re coming from. Their No. 1 complaint is freezer space.”
Even now, it is clear the district will have to make capital investments in its kitchen to fully embrace a Farm to School program. However, a steering committee formed to do the planning this year is enthusiastic about the work, Wagner said.
“We have no idea what is going to happen. But if you want to go anywhere, you’ve got to set goals and you’ve got to try.”
As districts such as Wolsey-Wessington explore Farm to School programs, something else becomes obvious. Size matters. It is a lot easier for a small farmer to meet the needs of a Wolsey-Wessington School District, with its 310 students, than Sioux Falls Public Schools, with more than 23,000.
One way farmers in other states are trying to surmount that is by combining into cooperatives and by creating food hubs to serve large districts. It hasn’t happened in South Dakota yet, because in so many ways the state is just starting to explore what is possible. Holly Tilton Byrne of Dakota Rural Action, is South Dakota’s lead in the national Farm to School Network, and she points out South Dakota was the last state to get a Farm to School lead.
“We are definitely still in the early stages,” she said. “One thing I always say is Farm to School is baby steps.”
As farmers look at how they can work together to serve larger institutions and, indeed, determine what they need to do individually to meet the needs of smaller districts, and as schools such as Wolsey-Wessington investigate what it takes to develop a Farm to School program money looms as an issue, Tilton Byrne said.
“As with a lot of things like this, it’s hard to find funding. It’s hard for schools to find funding for equipment. It’s hard for producers to find funding to gain access to commercial kitchens” to do food preparation.
“Interest does increase in little increments,” she said. “I think it will continue to happen. But it’s just not happening here as fast as it is in other states.”
For fruit and vegetable growers, another challenge to overcome is South Dakota’s short growing season. Without greenhouses and high tunnels, farmers can realistically hope to provide produce to schools only in early fall and late spring.
Because Linda Krsnak has developed a relationship with the Flandreau Indian School to provide leafy greens, tomatoes, watermelons and winter squash, she is motivated to experiment with high tunnels and winter production at Linda’s Gardens in Chester.
If she’s successful “it may be the only time we have no production is in January and early February.”
Krsnak said she and school officials are trading ideas on what she can grow to help expand the school lunch program.
“Instead of iceberg lettuce all the time, incorporate arugula, mustard greens, kale, Brussels sprouts, things like that,” she said. “The goal is to get more variety and more nutritious type food into each kid.”
Schools have to meet farmers half way, she adds.
“I know schools would rather work with one producer than 10 little ones. It’s a little more work on their part, more paperwork.”
Krsnak, like Kiesz and Wagner, notes the challenge of school kitchens.
“Meals are not prepped at individual schools anymore. I think the Farm to School program is going to take a while to overcome that paradigm. Schools have been doing it this way for the last 20 years.”
In trying to change that model “it will require a lot of work and effort on people’s parts, and not everybody’s going to want to do that,” she said. “Smaller schools are the key to this program, from what I’ve seen.”
The example of what it all could lead to remains the St Joseph’s Muddy Pumpkins partnership. After Mark Werner contacted the school about providing it tomatoes, melons and squash “St Joseph’s was very cooperative. They did everything they could to encourage us to participate. We did the same, and it has been fairly successful,” said Hal Werner, Mark’s father.
Werner would e-mail him a list of what produce would be available in the coming, Renbarger said. An order from last year illustrates the quantities St. Joseph’s purchased: 100 pounds of red potatoes, 20 pounds of tomatoes, 10 pints of cherry tomatoes, 40 pounds of cucumbers, two pounds of swiss chard and 12 bunches of two different kinds of kale. The farm supplied the school from August until the first frost and from April through June.
Mark Werner is in graduate school this year and away from the farm, but Renbarger hopes St. Joseph’s can continue to serve its students, staff and guests Muddy Farms produce. In considering how this has worked out for St. Joseph’s, he offers a motto for South Dakota’s efforts to expand Farm to School programs across the state.
“If somebody’s willing to grow fruits and vegetables of that quality,” Renbarger said, “why not use it?”
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Information from: Argus Leader, https://www.argusleader.com
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