Hallie Casey
SFC awarded a USDA Farm to School Grant.
In partnership with the Texas Department of Agriculture, Common Market, and the City of Austin, Sustainable Food Center aims to increase the amount of fresh, healthy, local food available in Central Texas school systems with a new two-year grant.
SFC is thrilled to announce that we have been awarded a Farm to School Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Together with our partners, the Texas Department of Agriculture’s Farm Fresh Initiative, Common Market Texas, and the City of Austin’s Office of Sustainability, we will increase the amount of fresh, healthy, local food available in Central Texas schools. Our project employs three strategies to achieve this goal:
SFC will provide coaching, educational resources, and matchmaking to Central Texas school districts working to expand their local food buying. Each school district involved in the project will work with SFC to set goals and then, over two years will add local, fresh, healthy foods to their cafeterias.
At two school districts, the project team will pilot a set of metrics that will help schools achieve long-term goals and enable data to be pooled across schools to better understand our region’s impact. This will be the first data collection of its kind in Texas—an exciting step.
In partnership with the Texas Department of Agriculture’s Farm Fresh Initiative, SFC will foster a learning community of school nutrition staff across the state who are interested in expanding their farm-to-school programs. This community will create an opportunity for peer-to-peer relationship building, knowledge and resource sharing, and hosting and disseminating learning opportunities.
As SFC continues to grow our systems-level approach to transforming the way we grow and eat food, projects like this one enables us to bolster and deepen our network of partners working to create big change in our food system.