Many barriers keep fresh, organic food out of school lunches

At Seattle Public Schools' central kitchen, 72 gallons of taco meat simmer in a steel kettle the size of a small hot tub.

· Olympia district's program a role model
· How various farm-to-school programs got their start

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Pumped into bags that resemble backpacking bladders, entrées join shrink-wrapped servings of lettuce, jicama and applesauce in a cavernous cooler.

The ingredients in this single school lunch of nachos served in September traveled more than 7,500 highway miles before reaching a cafeteria tray in Seattle.

The beef came from California ranches by way of a federal program that provides commodity items to schools at no cost. Tomatoes ripened in the San Joaquin Valley. Beans likely traveled from Minnesota or North Dakota.

Those items could have been bought from farms in our backyard, but weren't.

In the Puget Sound region, consumers increasingly want local food -- for the fresh taste, to curb carbon emissions or because of concerns about the safety of food grown overseas.

While schools are offering healthier menu choices, what seems like a no-brainer -- feeding local kids locally grown food -- is surprisingly hard to do.

"It's an altogether feel-good idea on every front. Philosophically, it's go, go, go," said Andrew Stout, owner of the organic Full Circle Farm in Carnation.

Practically, it's challenging to align local, seasonal values with a "broken food system that cafeterias have co-opted for delivering a certain amount of calories for very little money," he said.

Institutions such as hospitals and schools have substantial purchasing power and serve populations that arguably need the healthiest food. Across the country, they've been tough markets for even midsize farms to crack.

But from New York City to Berkeley, Calif., public school districts have tapped private money to help forge connections. An estimated 10,800 schools in 34 states have farm-to-school programs.

Language proposed in the farm bill being debated now in Congress would remove a huge barrier by making it legal for schools to favor local farm suppliers.

In Washington state, groups with interests as diverse as climate change, conservation and childhood obesity voted last week to make farm-to-school a top legislative priority for next year.

But significant barriers exist:

• Schools have roughly one dollar per student to spend on food for a nutritious lunch of protein, fruit, vegetables, milk and bread -- less than the cost of a single tomato bought at a farmers market.

• The scale of many family farms doesn't easily match an industrial cafeteria served by large distributors and government commodity programs.

• Schools have ripped out kitchens and replaced them with closet-sized rewarming centers with no capacity to deal with things such as dirty carrots.

• Seasonal availability, liability insurance requirements, lack of processing equipment and distribution networks prevent smaller farms from being able to reliably deliver products that schools want.

• State procurement policies treat food the same as pencils, focusing on the lowest bid.

The Olympia School District overcame those hurdles to develop a nationally cited program. But few others have replicated that success here. (See related story.)

A coalition that includes the Washington Environmental Council has begun asking why such an agriculturally rich state hasn't done more to get its food into schools.

Other states have more aggressively encouraged public institutions to buy local food -- by loosening bidding regulations or funding school lunches that include fresh produce.

"This is something that people care about, that parents care about, that the governor cares about, that farmers care about," said the council's policy director, Mo McBroom. "Why are we behind on this?"

In Seattle, the school district serves 19,000 lunches a day -- a scale more easily serviced by large food providers such as ConAgra and Food Services of America.

The district's produce distributor buys Northwest and organic items when they're available and comparable in price. It has supplied Yakima-grown apples, plums, carrots and cucumbers this fall.

Past conversations about working more directly with farms in the region have stalled out pretty fast, said Wendy Weyer, the district's dietitian and quality-control supervisor.

"I've actually scared a lot of farmers when I say, 'On this day I want this, but I need a gazillion pounds of it, and, oh, I can't pay you $5, I can pay you 25 cents,' " she said.

'Creating gold out of straw'

In the kitchen that feeds 65 Seattle elementary schools, workers use a 6-foot-tall mixer to whip up batches of oatmeal cookie dough from scratch. It smells like Grandma's kitchen, but looks more like a Ford assembly plant.

Homemade desserts serve two purposes: Nutritionists control fat content and they save a few cents per meal.

Given its food budget, the district has worked minor wonders to offer healthier grains, brown rice and daily choices of fresh fruit and vegetables. But it's a constant exercise in juggling pennies.

Whole wheat bread costs 2 cents more per slice. Milk went up 5 cents a carton. That nearly wipes out the entire fruit budget for each child's lunch, which is a dime.

Weyer, who writes the school menus, can't skimp on the "center of the plate," where kids get most of their protein.

She'd like to make more entrées from scratch, instead of serving preprocessed corn dogs or fish nuggets. But that requires labor, which already eats up 59 cents out of every dollar the kitchen receives.

With rising costs and flat revenue, "how do we move in the direction of local and organic?" Weyer said. "It's a yearly dilemma."

Seattle School Board member and nutrition advocate Brita Butler-Wall acknowledges that the district hasn't made as much progress as some would like. But she understands nutrition managers' constraints.

"Most of us couldn't feed our kids on the kind of budget they run. They're creating gold out of straw as far as I'm concerned," she said. "But the food around here is so good and plentiful I'd love to see our kids get more of it."

Large districts can use purchasing power to move distributors in that direction. New York City Public Schools, which serves 860,000 meals a day, recently switched to sliced apples, frozen vegetables and seasonal fruit grown in-state.

		Meryl Schenker / P-I
	Workers prepare prepacked meals in the Seattle Public Schools central kitchen. The district's dietitian and quality-control supervisor would like to make more entrées from scratch, but it is a challenge.

Funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation paid for a consultant to find local farmers and processors, and distributors eager to keep such a huge contract now buy from them at no additional cost.

Duck Delivery of Washington, Seattle's produce distributor, recently hired two new employees to meet growing demand for local items.

But smaller farms often avoid wholesalers, which take a cut of profits. And growers must have $2 million in liability insurance and meet stringent food safety standards.

"I know people want it done quickly, but our food safety piece is something we have to feel comfortable with," said Duck Delivery President Ernie Spada Jr. "But I guarantee you next year we'll have local broccoli."

Schools also receive free commodity foods that the federal government buys in bulk from farmers. Though the government spent $41 million on Washington agricultural products this year, there's no guarantee the food winds up here.

When state officials once tried to request a type of Washington apple, it ended up with a truckload of green, mealy fruit from Michigan.

Parents would pay more

Many Seattle parents who can afford it simply opt out of the school lunch system.

Beth Lee, who has two children in Seattle elementary schools, loathes making lunches. But she doesn't want her kids eating processed chicken fingers or commodity meats she can't trace.

After discovering that her fourth-grader was sneaking allowance money to buy Teddy Grahams and pizza, she relented and lets her eat one school lunch a week.

"If I could get organic foods at lunch that were made in the kitchens, I'd pay good money for that for my kids," she said. "But there is an equity issue."

Two-thirds of children who eat Seattle school lunches qualify for free or reduced-price meals. For reduced-price and free lunches, the district receives between $2.07 and $2.47 in federal funds per child. Recently, the state and school district have used their own funding to close that gap.

After the state started subsidizing breakfasts, about 400 new students showed up. That suggests to district officials that some students may have been going hungry because they couldn't afford to pay 30 cents for eggs or pancakes-on-a-stick.

Logistics and facilities also limit what can be served. Twenty-two high schools and middle schools have their own kitchens that need deliveries.

		Paul Joseph Brown / P-I
	Beacon Hill Elementary students, from left, Vanessa Ho, Anna Swarringen, Juliana Lee, Ilham Ismail, Emilie Rigor and Yi Ci Huang line up for one of their favorite meals: nachos. A renovation allows cafeteria-style rather than shrink-wrapped servings.

About two-thirds of elementaries get cooked products and produce from the central kitchen. The meals are heated, assembled and served on colorful trays by traditional "lunch ladies." Nineteen elementaries with limited space or low lunch participation get prepacked meals.

Each item -- from handfuls of salad to hamburger buns -- comes in individual shrink-wrapped servings. No cleaning is required; everything goes in the garbage can. Schools don't even have dishwashers.

Parents who've volunteered to cook or chop vegetables have been told their unpaid labor could run afoul of contracts with unionized kitchen workers.

"It's like the life that's in food has been taken away," said Barb Rose-Leigh, whose children attend View Ridge Elementary. "It's not a pleasurable thing to be taking these little containers and peeling back plastic. You can't see the food, you can't smell the food."

No one argues it's ideal. But decisions made years ago to scrap school kitchens are difficult to reverse. Even in newer buildings, cafeterias do double duty.

Five minutes before lunch at Beacon Hill Elementary, teachers scoop up watercolors, stash paintbrushes in closets and slide panels to transform the art room into the back half of the cafeteria. Only a recent renovation allowed the school to switch from a prepack to bulk kitchen, where kids serve themselves from a salad bar.

Beacon Hill first-grader Deacon Moore, working on an oversized scoop of applesauce, said he eats a lot of things. Except lettuce.

"I don't like it. But I like carrots. I like chocolate milk. And I'm allergic to cats," he volunteered, just in case anyone needed to know.

'Not just the food nazis'

Skeptics say kids like Moore can't tell the difference between a Washington carrot and one grown in Florida. And that schools have more pressing problems.

That's why successful farm-to-school programs have strong educational components, incorporating nutrition and gardening into science classes, art rooms and schoolyards.

In Washington, groups are also looking to New York, Montana, New Mexico and Oregon, which have passed legislation or funded positions to help use public purchasing power to support state farm economies.

Here, they plan to lobby for funding for farm-to-school pilot programs and bidding regulations allowing public institutions to buy Washington food instead of cheaper national products.

Alison Leber, a Ballard parent who worked on the school district's aggressive nutrition policy three years ago, was happy just to get local and organic food on the radar screen. Now, far more people seem interested in a local, less-polluting food economy, she said.

"It's not just the food nazis. It's people who just want to know that all our beautiful land is not going to turn into strip malls and condos, because the farmer out in Duvall can stay in business."

ADVOCATES LOBBYING FOR CHANGE

Farm-to-school advocates are lobbying for changes in the farm bill Congress is considering. Those changes would include:

Buying local: Make it legal for schools to seek out locally grown food. The USDA says federal regulations currently prohibit schools from showing geographic preferences when purchasing food, though others disagree.

Community projects: Boost funding that supports farm-to-school startups, farmers markets, gardens and other nutrition programs in low-income communities from $5 million to at least $30 million. Make the funding mandatory, not discretionary.

Healthy-food business loans: Help businesses, co-ops and non-profits develop innovations in processing or distributing local agricultural products.

Fresh fruit and vegetable funding: Increase funding for a USDA program that gives selected schools an extra 75 cents per student per day to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. In Seattle Public Schools, only one school is allowed to participate. Growers have asked for as much as $300 million to expand the program.

ON THE WEB

• Community Food Security Coalition

• United Fresh Produce Association