Farm to School Program: Where There's A Will, There's A Way

I keep trying to get off the topic of how innately messed up our nation's agriculture policies are, and it just keeps coming back to haunt me. About a month ago I decried the sneaky dealings behind the inaptly named Child Nutrition Bill. Essentially, the bill that passed through the Senate Agriculture Committee didn't even maintain the status quo when it came to getting healthy food to schoolchildren. Furthermore, the alleged "increases" in funding are coming not from trimming the fat on taxpayer subsidies, but from farm conservation programs and food stamps.

The Childhood Nutrition Bill is now stalled in both the Senate and the House, but the Congresspeople who know what's good for them (and their kids) are rallying around a Farm to School program. The goal is simple: bring healthy food from farmers to schoolchildren. Kids get to eat healthily, and rural farmers reach new markets. The current bill asks that $50 million be allotted to the program, which has not been funded since 2004. Key players in both food and education have even come together to create FoodCorps, an AmeriCorp-like program that would support the Farm to School initiative.

Sadly, the bottom line in both houses is the wrong kind of green: questions of funding have stalled the entire bill, for now. For good reason, people are upset about the proposed cuts to SNAP benefits and conservation programs. But FoodCorps founders are optimistic—and crafty. The founders want to create the program at the behest of the 2009 Kennedy Serve America Act, which establishes 180,000 new AmeriCorps positions by 2017. Founder Curt Ellis, creator of the documentary "King Corn," told the Washington Post:

"It’s unbelievably hard to make change at the federal level. You do years of lobbying just to get money for that extra apple. By creating an AmeriCorps program, we can go to the back door into schools, where they really need the nutrition help, but we can get it there with federal dollars.”

Cue applause. That's the kind of thinking we're going to need to get around the farming policies our nation has set up. Seriously? You're on the agriculture committee and you can't find a way to get kids vegetables? You're not even the one who has to make the kids eat them!

Photo via Natural Mom.