Barriers and Opportunities to Participating in Farm to School Programs Across Kansas
Written by Cayden Fairman, Vaughn Gessley, Maureen Kassing, Abby Neal, & Meredith Shaheed Students from the University of Kansas Environmental Studies program partnered with the Kansas Rural Center for their capstone project to help lay the groundwork for developing a Farm to School curriculum for producers across Kansas.
The world’s increasingly globalized food system has made it more convenient than ever to access food products regardless of season or locale. However, this convenience often comes with a cost to local food systems, small farmers, community connections, and nutrition education. Farm to School programs, established at the federal level in 2010, seek to solve some of these issues by providing benefits to farmers, schools, and entire communities. These programs encourage use of local food in school lunches, as well as agricultural education in the classrooms.
Although the United States and Kansas specifically has a long agricultural history, the days of small-scale farming as a sustainable and attractive career choice seem to many to be waning. In addition, the connection between communities and the food that sustains them is weakening as agricultural profits and control over food systems have become more consolidated into the hands of a few large corporations. According to a study conducted for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2019, the production of agricultural commodities has followed a trend of increasing consolidation and corporatization, leaving small farmers with higher rates of debt. To compound this, the average age of farmers is increasing as fewer young rural residents view farming as a financially stable career choice. Farm to School programs seek to give small farmers access to new markets and economic opportunities by providing grants and assistance to partner with local schools for food procurement and agricultural education.
Farm to School programs exist in all 50 states, with over 42,000 schools and 23.6 million children participating in Farm to School programming nationwide. These programs are intended to benefit all stakeholders involved: farmers, schools and students, and surrounding communities. A recent USDA review of academic research on Farm to School programs found that, when implemented, these programs are successful in fulfilling their goals. Program participation was associated with increased knowledge of nutrition in students, increased spending on local foods community-wide, economic benefits to small farmers, and increased investment in local economies. Other studies of Farm to School programs have found that participation can create an enhanced sense of community, reduce costs of food procurement for school meal programs, provide students with higher-quality produce, provide small farmers with a market in which they are prioritized over industrial agricultural operations, and reduce costs for farmers to ship their products long distances to distributors. Due to these benefits, among others, the USDA review found that participation in Farm to School programs is increasing nationwide.
Previous work by the Kansas Rural Center has shown that Farm to School programs have significant potential to benefit rural communities. In a 2020 KRC town hall on Farm to School programs, speakers from participating schools described the benefits of students engaging with the local agricultural system. In order to implement these beneficial connections between farmers, schools, and communities, it’s necessary to understand the barriers that are limiting the expansion of Farm to School into more communities across the state. Our group reached out to 40 farmers, most of whom do not currently participate in Farm to School programs, to identify the attitudinal, logistical, and structural factors preventing more widespread participation.
In April of 2021, we interviewed six of these farmers from across the state. The interviews revealed producers’ general perceptions of Farm to School, as well as the barriers to participation they encountered. Farmers’ background on Farm to School programs ranged from: being involved, not being involved but are familiar with the programing involved and not at all aware of Farm to School. While each of these three groups represented diverse farming practices and geographies, common themes emerged in their responses. Each group saw benefits to becoming involved in F2S as well as significant challenges to participation.
Whether or not a producer was involved in Farm to School or not - the greatest benefit, and personal motivator, for producers to become involved in Farm to School is the opportunity to educate kids while providing them fresh, local, healthy food. Producers who were involved expressed desire to educate children about the food system at large, and even welcomed the opportunity for schools to take students to their production sites for more hands-on demonstration of the food process. Those who were not involved, once given more information on Farm to School, also saw feeding and educating children as one of the greatest potential benefits of involvement. Interviewees also spoke of the potential benefits of diversifying their markets as a means to increase scale and/ or find their own personal niche.
Farmers perspectives of barriers to entering the Farm to School market varied but contained common themes. Concerns raised by producers generally centered around financial and logistical barriers. Interviewees expressed concerns that profit margins for selling to schools may be prohibitively low compared to conventional markets. Other barriers and concerns included paperwork, certifications, and licensing that is often time-consuming and can be confusing, the difference in seasons for farming and school sessions make crop and menu planning difficult, and some small farms worried about a lack of labor on their farm to meet new demands. Some producers interviewed felt that their local schools did not prioritize healthful, sustainable foods or integrating curriculum about local food systems. Other interviewees stated that they did not have the capacity or ability to market their products to local school districts.
Ultimately, several barriers prevent producers from participating in the Farm to School program. However, producers show great interest in the program, especially after receiving further information on Farm to School and the benefits it may provide to farmers and their communities. The producers expressed enthusiasm even in the face of the barriers mentioned above, proving the deep motivational force for participation. As one interviewee, Bernadette Mills, stated, “The kids are worth it.”
Kansas has great potential for Farm to School programs. These programs benefit rural communities, farmers, and children. Increasing connections between schools and local farmers has the potential to allow local farmers to continue their work in the agricultural sector in ways that are more sustainable and locally-focused, while also increasing future generations of farmers and citizens’ knowledge of agriculture, food systems, and nutrition.