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Farm-to-School: More than Sloppy Joes in South Carolina |
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Written by Kiki Hubbard
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Wednesday, 27 February 2008 |
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There's a new farm-to-school program in South Carolina – the first in the state – that illustrates the nationwide trend and the growing concern over the slop we're putting in our kids' mouths everyday, like the recently recalled beef.
Across the U.S., nearly 11,000 schools in 38 states have a farm-to-school program. These programs are connecting schools with local farms to improve student nutrition and support the local economies of area farmers.
South Carolina's Anderson County established the state's first farm-to-school program last week, which is taking farmers into new terrain and children back to the farm.
The "Grow With Me" program supplies the county's schools with fresh produce from local farms, everything from melons and strawberries to broccoli and sweet potatoes. For some farmers, this is their first foray into vegetable and fruit production. Yet they view the risk as minimal. After all, a school lunch program provides a steady market, and vegetables and fruits fetch a higher price than their commodity dairy milk, for example. And kids get to visit the farms where their food is produced, which might make lunchtime that much more interesting (outside the jello experiments).
I mean, when the National School Lunch Program spends 72 cents per kid on ingredients, how can food taste like it should?
Sources: IndependentMail.com and National Farm to School
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