1.http://www.statesman.com/ap/ap/west-virginia/schools-seen-as-big-market-for-wva-farm-products/nZtSx/
2. Category: Food Safety, Environment, Health, Children
3. Level of issue: State
4. The article concerns an enacted policy that has been passed to increase the consumption of locally grown foods in West Virginian schools.
5. This is important to individuals and families because it has the potential to improve school nutrition and increase revenues for local agriculture.
6. My views on the policy:
Win, win, win. West Virginia has done well with plans to invest in farm to school infrastructure. This program will increase the amount of local produce and meat purchased by school districts. Not only will this improve the nutrition of school meal programs, it will also support local agriculture. Farm to school programs are gaining in popularity, but many school districts cite problems with the infrastructure. The benefits of farm to school programs are known, but the means of implementing them can be challenging. Dealing with small scale farms is more time-consuming than placing orders with large national food suppliers such as Sysco. The state agriculture department of West Virginia has acknowledged this and has invested a million dollars program's infrastructure, making it easier and less expensive for school districts to choose local sources of food. It will be fascinating to see this program continue to roll out. I hope that there are plans to study the return on investment as well, in order to show other states that by investing a bit into these types of programs, the state will recover the invested money in the long run.
I think that this is about as good as it gets for student lunches with this new deal in place. For students to have a well rounded meal at school is such a beneficial program to offer their students. It will help with the overweight population being able to eat something substantial and it will also help with the students who get free lunches because due to belonging in poverty. The program will also help tremendously with the local economy and it will have a great cycle attached to it. I do worry that because buying local can sometimes be a bit more expensive than buy from mass producers, that the lunches will cost more and the students who don't get free lunches will decide not to buy at school. I would love to know how this all turns out in the future and hopefully it will have a big impact for other states to follow in their footsteps.
ReplyDelete