Farms Do No Harm: Volume I - Spring-Ford Could Adopt Farm to School

With the multi-faceted benefits of buying regionally raised food becoming broadly recognized, more and more schools and districts throughout the country are moving toward purchasing the freshest samplings of nourishment. Farm to School on the national level is a widely encompassing program standing for several different components and can take on a variety of shapes depending on where it is being brought to the proverbial table.

It can mean students going on field trips to farms to learn about and taste-test locally grown food, raising and learning from planting and tending to their own food in a school garden, bringing in regional food by non-commercial farmers and anything related to tying together children, education and farms.

With this concept in mind, officials at the Spring-Ford Area School District are considering the farm-to-table approach for its students and staff during lunch periods, said Paula Germinario, coordinator of food services.

Joining the district in her position just a few months ago, serving in the same position at the Methacton School District for a decade, Germinario said any likely implementation of the program would not happen until 2012-2013. The delay comes because the district is waiting to receive word of new school food regulations from the United States Department of Agriculture. These regulations will not be ironed out until next January.

Some specifics already made public with the newly passed legislation involve increasing the numbers of fruits and vegetables included at each meal for certain age groups. Other details involve regulating set figures for dark leafy greens and even other vegetables according to color, as in greens, reds and yellows. Starch totals served to students per week are also under examination by the USDA, Germinario said.

Fruits and vegetables retain the highest nutrient-value when they are ripe, and as soon as are picked, the healthy particulars of the plant begin to dwindle.

The district currently purchases almost all of its fresh farm foods from Mastrangelo Produce in Phoenixville, Germinario noted, adding that the majority of the supply probably comes from regional farms.

“Most of our vegetables are frozen, with the exception of salads,” Germinario elaborated. “Most of our fruit is fresh.”

Germinario explained that she orders flash-frozen vegetables whenever possible, which means that they’re picked and quickly frozen so that they lose the least amount of important nutrients before becoming iced and cold for storing.

She named logistics and price as major factors that will influence the district’s potential dive into the more local movement in the near future.

“It’s pretty much a struggle for everybody in food service, not even necessarily just here,” Germinario said. “The price of food in general is going up.”

“You go to the grocery store, and it costs a dollar for a cucumber; sometimes the quality isn’t even that great,” Germinario added.

At the middle and high schools in Spring-Ford, lunch costs students $2.85. At the elementary buildings, it is $2.65 per student.

“The fresher the food is, the less far is has to travel, the better it is health-wise for the students — plus, it’s supporting local farmers, so it’s a win-win for everybody,” Germinario said about prospects ahead.

With Pennsylvania taking the reins in its largely agricultural landscape, bringing in the hard work of regional farmers is etching itself as a more known habit in schools.

“It exposes students to new and different types of fruits and vegetables at their peak of freshness so they’re very high-quality, and students are more likely to accept them, liking them,” said Elaine McDonnell, state representative for Farm to School and coordinator for Project PA, which is a collaboration between Pennsylvania State University and the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

“Great Valley School District has a very extensive school garden which provides produce for their school meals program,” McDonnell said, illustrating how the Farm to School approach can take on different applications. “They have a lot of community input and assistance and host visits to see how the garden operates.”

McDonnell posed that increasing national attention is reaching this issue from the USDA, but there is no standard definition for what “local” means other than within a short driving distance or within a state.

In the meantime, look for the community-reaching and supporting possibilities of bringing locally raised food into the Spring-Ford Area School District in 2012.