Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch II: Maximizing School Food Service

The WHL educational component has been unmistakably successful. We have learned that a farm-to-school program can facilitate the acceptance and consumption of fresh vegetables by elementary school children. We have shown teachers and parents, as well as the students themselves that children can learn to enjoy daikon radishes, Swiss chard, raw sweet potato sticks, and striped tomatoes in addition to the ubiquitous carrot. Teachers and principals have welcomed our curricular programming. Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction is planning to distribute WHL educational modules statewide. The project has established classroom practices and school activities that will continue in the pilot schools when direct WHL support has ceased. Over a dozen additional MMSD elementary and middle schools wish to participate in WHL programming. For specific numbers of students impacted by WHL’s educational programming see the ‘Results/Discussion’ section above.

Even though the MMSD Food Service is currently ordering very minimally from the co-op’s kitchen, they have had and continue to have a purchasing relationship with the co-op and are aware of this option should they choose to utilize it in the future.

The lack of progress with the MMSD school meal program encouraged WHL to move toward a classroom snack program which has been very popular at participating schools. Plans for the fall of 2007 have the Willy St. Co-op kitchen processing 200lbs of vegetables into a snack form once a week. These include sweet potatoes, carrots, and kohlrabi and will provide a snack to 1,600 students in four schools. With funding coming from local corporate sponsorship and funds from parents and PTO fundraisers, it looks as though schools will be able to continue funding this program. Additional schools want to participate but we have reached capacity to produce snacks at the Co-op’s kitchen. The model is effective but now another or a larger processing kitchen is needed to expand to additional schools. $7,500 worth of local produce (sweet potatoes, carrots, kohlrabi, and apples) was purchased to supply one school with snacks for the 2005-06 school year and four schools for the 2006-2007 school year. Local sweet potatoes and kohlrabi have lasted through December/January and local carrots and apples have lasted through March. After March, snacks have either taken a break or carrots and sweet potatoes are purchased through the co-op’s regular organic distributor.

Willy St. Co-op’s kitchen has identified which vegetables they can economically process for the school district and for WHL’s classroom snack program. The relationship between WHL and the co-op remains strong and it is anticipated that the classroom snack program will continue in these four schools on an ongoing basis. Expansion will be limited however, so additional processing capability will need to be identified.

The positive press generated by WHL activities along with continual exposure to school food services across the state via conference workshops, presentations, and WI Department of Public Instruction (DPI) newsletter articles has created interest among school districts outside of Madison. WHL has begun to engage with the meal programs of these relatively smaller school districts to assess their farm-to-school potential. Based on work already begun in a few of these districts it’s clear that simply getting away from a pre-pack system in a central kitchen and more toward on-site preparation provides more opportunity to integrate fresh and local foods into a school meal program. Phase III of WHL will be focused on piloting farm-to-school programs in some of these smaller districts that express a strong interest to determine what opportunities exist there that do not exist in Madison.

The alternative school fundraiser begun by WHL is poised for continued growth in future years which bodes well for schools trying to come up with funds for various needs including farm-to-school programming. The fundraiser is moving toward sustaining itself since a portion of the sales go to REAP to support running the fundraiser and tools are in place to allow an intern to take on most of the coordinating.

Additional discussion of outcomes from the WHL project:

Structural barriers. The three central barriers to success for farm-to-school projects that are consistently pointed out include cost (local and especially organic produce is sometime most costly than through a distributor), procurement (institutions appreciate the efficiency of ordering from a small number of vendors), and supply (farmers need to provide sufficient volumes of product consistently and often in a ready-to-use form).

While WHL certainly encountered these issues, we also confronted a variety of obstacles that have not so far been raised in the farm-to-school literature. We found that some of these obstacles were structural; that is, they were broader social issues beyond the control of a particular school, food service, or farm. The constraints on WHL imposed by such structural issues must be addressed through changes in the overarching frameworks of policy or governance. Other obstacles had more immediate solutions, and could be dealt with by WHL staff through tactical choices. While the lessons we have learned are to some degree site-specific to Madison, both the structural and tactical obstacles faced by WHL have been and will be encountered by farm-to-school projects across the country.

Overarching food culture. Farm-to-school programs are embedded in an overarching fast food culture that actively opposes their purposes. The average American is overweight and nearly 20 percent of all energy intake in the U.S. diet is derived from soft drinks, burgers, pizza, chips and pastries.1 The food industry spends some $30 billion per year advertising its products and promoting the development of what has been called a “toxic food environment.”2 Such statistics indicate wide-ranging preferences, practices and attitudes that thwart the prospects for WHL, and other farm-to-school programs, achieving their goals.

We have often heard MMSD food service, administrative staff, and teachers say that “kids just won’t eat vegetables.” We disagree with this. It’s not that kids won’t eat vegetables, it’s that they don’t eat vegetables because adults don’t generally model their consumption, they haven’t been exposed to them, and school meals don’t include them. WHL educational programming and in-class tastings demonstrated that children in our pilot schools can learn to enjoy a wide variety of fresh vegetables when they are not competing with French Toast Stix in the cafeteria or candy in the classroom.

However, without significant changes in American food culture generally and school food policies particularly, farm-to-school initiatives such as WHL may do little more than alter the preferences of a few students in a few schools. The attention given to the film "Supersize Me," the popularity of such books as Fast Food Nation, Food Politics, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and the growth of the market for organics are encouraging evidence that societal attitudes toward food are shifting. The challenge is to ensure that changing attitudes are translated into concrete public policies. Proponents of farm-to-school programs should be as attentive to public policy as they are to their schools’ lunch menus. Enhanced regulation of food industry lobbying, labeling, and marketing practices— especially regarding marketing to children—could do much to facilitate the emergence of a more healthful food culture in this country.6,7

At the local level, school districts can develop policies that eliminate junk food vending, limit the availability of empty-calorie food and beverages that compete with school breakfast and lunch programs, discourage the use of sweets as incentives for classroom performance, encourage the provision of nutrient-dense foods in school meals, and use the cafeteria to vigorously promote healthy eating habits. The federal requirement for the development of school wellness policies provides a framework for accomplishing this. Although disappointed by the damaging effect of our unabashed advocacy on our relationship with the MMSD food service, we regard our influence on the overall character of the MMSD Wellness Policy as one of the signal achievements of WHL.

Across the United States, the great majority of public school food services are stand-alone financial units that are partially uncoupled from the revenue-based allocation of public funds for education. Except for staff salaries, which are underwritten by the city, the MMSD food service must recover all of its operating costs. This income comes from meal sales and reimbursements received from the USDA in return for maintaining specific nutritional standards and providing reduced-price meals to students from low income families. Since both revenues and USDA subsidies are a function of the number of meals sold, the food service treats students as customers and has a powerful incentive to serve what they will buy. According to the MMSD food service director, “The single biggest challenge in school food service is to serve a nutritious lunch that students will actually eat.” School food services are simultaneously expected to meet the nutrition standards of the USDA, provide affordable meals to low income students, and also compete with children’s tastes and preferences shaped by the fast-food culture. These conditions produce a race to the bottom in which food quality degenerates as food services, in an effort to retain student customers, mimic commercial fast-food competitors. Making matters worse, they cut costs by using USDA commodity foods and pre-packaged meal items that are assembled rather than cooked.

As long as this quasi-privatized structure persists, it is hard to see how the MMSD food service, or similar public school food services, can successfully implement a farm-to-school program. Piecemeal introduction of healthy menu options, especially without a robust educational support program and restrictions on the availability of competing foods, risks erosion of sales and fiscal crisis for the food service. The answer to this conundrum again lies in public policy change, requiring school districts to treat food as an integral part of education and consider assumption of full financial responsibility for the provision of quality meals.

Scale/industrialization. In the 2005-06 school year, an elementary school hot lunch in the MMSD cost $1.90, with the food ingredients accounting for $.68 of that total. These low cost and price levels are possible because of the large scale, mechanization and routinization that characterize the MMSD food service operation. Like many medium-sized and large school districts across the nation, the MMSD utilizes a single centralized production and distribution facility from which approximately 15,000 meals a day (3.2 million per year) are distributed by truck to the 45 schools in the district.

The absence of in-school kitchen facilities and the journey by truck requires meals to be pre-packed in disposable aluminum or plastic containers, usually one hot pack and one cold pack per meal. These packages are compiled and sealed on an assembly line each morning, trucked to schools, reheated as needed, and handed out for students to unwrap, eat, and dispose of during their twenty-five minute lunch period. All menu items must conform to a reheating system, and all transportation and service infrastructure such as carts, truck interiors, trays, refrigerators, and reheating ovens must comply with a strict set of physical parameters. Coupled with the financial restrictions within which it must operate, the scale and technical organization of the MMSD food service make even small changes disproportionately difficult.

A lesson from WHL is that it may be advantageous to initiate farm-to-school programs in small rather than large school districts, or in districts where production facilities and protocols are not so rigid. In Wisconsin, only two other school districts—Milwaukee and Green Bay—operate at Madison’s scale, and both share its centralized style of food service. Many smaller school districts in our region have retained in-school kitchens, continue to work with significant quantities of whole vegetables, and have relatively more flexibility in terms of labor, food preparation, and presentation. While most farm-to-school projects are located in urban centers, rural school districts may have an interest in purchasing from farmers who are part of the community. A systematic review of the effects of scale and technical characteristics on their progress would bring some valuable perspective to the question of what kinds of school districts have the most success with farm-to-school projects.

Price, procurement, supply. The three barriers to project success most commonly cited in the farm-to-school literature are price, procurement, and supply. Of these, procurement proved least problematic to WHL. Like many school districts, the MMSD food service is required by contract to purchase approximately 80% of their food products through a national food distributor. However, the additional 20% can be purchased locally, and it was not administratively difficult to add a local farmer cooperative as a vendor. As long as small numbers of individual farmers become vendors, or farmers organize cooperatives or other collective arrangements, transaction costs should present no serious barrier to local purchasing. Pricing was more problematic and required creative solutions. Our partner cooperative grows and sells high quality, organic produce for high-end restaurants, and the farmers receive premium prices. Furthermore, this cooperative offers a wider variety of produce than the food service is accustomed to working with. The fresh vegetables purchased by the MMSD— baby carrots, chopped lettuce, and broccoli florets—are so ubiquitous in institutional food services that they are essentially commodities. We found, as others have,41 that the prices charged by the national distributor for other produce items varied widely and that local produce, even organic, could be competitively priced. The spinach, cabbage and carrots used for a WHL district-wide event were affordable, but the labor required to prepare them was not. Shredded carrots, diced potatoes, and mashed sweet potatoes were affordably integrated into recipes for muffins and soup. Food services using a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables can likely purchase local produce at acceptable prices. For WHL, supply was a deeper problem than either pricing or procurement arrangements. Through initiatives with the University of Wisconsin and local hospitals we learned that, while it is possible to generate institutional demand for significant quantities of fresh, local produce, it is difficult to identify commensurate sources of supply. South central Wisconsin has a wealth of vegetable growers using sustainable agricultural practices. But they specialize in capturing organic, niche, and direct markets. Critically, they are almost always geographically dispersed with limited production capacities. They are rarely collectively organized and often reluctant to expand their operations.

Ironically, Wisconsin is a leading producer of processing vegetables on a small number of large, conventional farms. In a classic conundrum of the “disappearing middle,” the small growers are reluctant to get bigger by expanding production and the large growers are reluctant to plant small amounts of fresh market varieties. The small growers are often disinclined to embrace the capital outlays, increased labor demands, and lower prices associated with expansion. The large growers tend to regard planting a few acres of an unfamiliar variety as a trivial addition to their operations. A further constraint is the “chicken-egg” problem: farmers want a market before they augment production, while food services want to know there is an adequate supply before they commit to buy. Given the tight profit margins both businesses operate under, it’s no surprise that no one wants to go first. With the exception of California, we suspect that farm-to-school programs in most regions of the country face these circumstances.

Processing. One feature of the MMSD food service that struck us forcefully was the degree to which it no longer cooks meals, but instead assembles pre-packed components. As a cost reduction measure, the food service has reduced labor wherever it can, and in the MMSD’s centralized kitchen there is little latitude for hand preparation of fresh, raw fruits and vegetables. This is true for many institutional food services that receive the vast majority of their fresh produce already washed, chopped, sliced, diced, and bagged. In most school districts across the country, locally purchased produce must arrive ready-to-use. Most farm-to-school programs will need to overcome this barrier. A local grocery cooperative which has a commercial kitchen is supplying WHL with some prepared vegetables. We explored the possibility of contracting with one of the few fresh processors left in Wisconsin, but this relatively small facility was too large to prepare small amounts of local produce at a price that farmers and the food service found acceptable. The cost of setting up a small, efficient processing plant in our region would be on the order of $1.5 million.8 This would be a substantial but not inconceivable undertaking for a group of farmers. Simple, stand-alone processing equipment is available for far less, but there is very little information available on how, or even if, it is being used for farm-to-school projects. There is a need to determine technical, labor, and cost benchmarks that illuminate the prospects for a small-scale processing enterprise. It is our experience that few farmers are interested in processing. If processing facilities are to be constructed to serve farm-to-school programs, public or private support is needed to underwrite their creation.

Tactical choices. While structural features such as the overarching food culture, highly industrial school food service, price, procurement, supply, and processing exerted an immediate and powerful influence over WHL, there was little that could be done to significantly alter their effects in the short term. On the other hand, project personnel were faced with a wide range of matters that they could influence and which meaningfully shaped the project. Below, we report our experience with some key tactical choices that other farm-to-school projects are likely to face.

Leadership. Farm-to-school initiatives involve a complex array of people. Projects must recognize the different interests of students, farmers, food service staff, parents, teachers, and custodial staff, and coordinate their participation. Leadership is welcome from all participants. However, it is our experience that effective guidance from principals and food service directors is critical. Schools and food services are hierarchical institutions, and principals and food service directors are both gatekeepers and decision makers who can facilitate or impede a farm-to-school project. It is difficult for enthusiastic teachers or food service staff to overcome resistance on the part of their leadership. Conversely, principals and food service directors who are active supporters of an initiative can create a climate in which participation in the project is encouraged and rewarded. Food service directors are especially pivotal. If the food service director does not want the project, it will fail. If he or she is indifferent to the project, it will most likely fail. If the food service director is enthusiastic about the project, there is a chance of progress. However, a food service director can also easily become disenchanted with a farm-to-school project as the difficulties imposed by the structural barriers discussed above are manifested. As WHL plans its expansion to new schools, we seek to work exclusively with districts in which the food service director understands the motivation of farm-to-school advocates and actively seeks to make serious changes in lunchroom operations.

Creating change. Like most of its counterparts, the MMSD food service had previous experience with a variety of external initiatives intended to alter the way Madison’s school children are fed. These initiatives did not take into account the conditions facing the school system, had little follow up, and were perceived as disruptive rather than constructive. A key strategy for WHL was to foster the emergence of professional, congenial, trusting, and responsive relationships with food service staff and proceed slowly, transparently, and inclusively. We consciously avoided encouraging parental and popular criticism of the existing lunch program in favor of an approach that emphasized constructive innovation. WHL staff worked successfully to generate positive media coverage of the program and took care to publicly acknowledge the difficulties faced by the food service as it implemented project activities.

As a result of this approach, the MMSD was tolerant of, though not enthusiastic about, working with us. However, our tactic of avoiding aggressive advocacy may well have contributed to a climate in which the food service felt little pressure to alter its performance. In retrospect, it would have been useful to have had parents, parent-teacher organizations, and school board members advocating for a set of goals and expectations complementary to those of WHL. Such reinforcement might have induced the food service to pursue proposed changes more vigorously. In their work with food services, farm-to-school programs need to carefully consider how to maintain an effective balance between cooperation and advocacy, provide incentives, and apply pressure.

Lunchroom or classroom? Although many farm-to-school programs incorporate a classroom component, they have emerged from the alternative agriculture movement as a strategy for developing new markets for local, sustainably grown food rather than as a mechanism for educational reform. WHL began with the sort of “farm-centric” orientation common to farm-to-school programs, it quickly became apparent that the educational component of this project was not merely a supplemental activity, but a fundamental necessity. Indeed, we now believe that successfully linking the land and the classroom is, in many cases, a prerequisite for successfully linking the land and the lunchroom.

While the health benefits of eating fruit and vegetables are widely documented, only 20 percent of children and adolescents eat the recommended five servings of those foods each day.9 Many children are unfamiliar with and think they will not like the fresh fruit and vegetables that farm-to-school programs offer. Happily, eating preferences and behaviors are modifiable, and this is particularly true of children. However, acceptance of a new food item is an adaptive process that is greatly facilitated by multiple exposures (10 or more are often necessary) that include tasting and presentation in a positive and engaging context.10 School food services will not be willing to serve fresh, local vegetables if students will not eat them. School food services may be willing serve fresh, local vegetables if students will eat them. Engaging students with educational activities such as tasting sessions, farmers and chefs in the classroom, and field trips will increase their desire to consume diverse fresh fruits and vegetables in the cafeteria.

Our experience with curricular development in WHL has been overwhelmingly positive. Students enjoy the hands-on, experiential activities. Teachers appreciate the assistance and material support. A strong educational component is extremely useful as an outreach tool for communicating with the wider community and involving parents. Development and dissemination of educational modules and materials will be the cornerstone of WHL’s programmatic emphasis in the future. Increasingly, farm-to-school programs and proponents are coming to understand that “school” includes both lunchroom and classroom. 11 This is a trend that should be embraced and reinforced.

1. Block, G. 2004. “Foods contributing to energy intake in the US: data from NHANES III and NHANES 1999 2000.” Journal of Food Consumption and Analysis 17:439-447.

2. Goode, E. 2003. “The gorge-yourself environment.” The New York Times (July 22): D1, D7.

3. Schlosser, E. 2001. Fast Food Nation. New York, NY: Houghton-Mifflin.

4. Nestle, Marion. 2002. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. Berkeley, CA:University of California Press.

5. Pollan, M. 2006. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York, NY: The Penguin Press.

6. Nestle, M. 2002. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. Berkeley, CA:University of California Press.

7. Landis, M., Ahrens, D. and Remington, P. 2005. “Improving student nutrition through school vending machine policies.” Issue Brief 6:1 (March), Wisconsin Public Health & Health Policy Institute.

8. Yellow Wood Associates, Inc. 2002. Preliminary feasibility study for a public market for Madison, Wisconsin. St. Albans, VT: Yellow Wood Associates, Inc.

9. Birch, L. and Fisher, J. 1996. “The role of experience in the development of children’s eating behavior.” Pp. 113-141 in Capaldi E. (ed.), Why We Eat What We Eat: The Psychology of Eating. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

10. Krebs-Smith, S.M., Cook, D.A., Subar, A.F., Cleveland, L. Friday, J. and Kahle, L.L. 1996. “Fruit and vegetable intakes of children and adolescents in the United States.” Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 1996:150:81-86.

11. Rethinking Schools. 2006. “Feeding the Children.” Special issue of Rethinking Schools 20:4 (Summer), 2006.

Economic Analysis

A total of $11,600 worth of local produce was purchased as part of the WHL program activities between October 2004 and April 2007. This number is broken down in more detail below.

Local food purchases by the MMSD Food Service totaled $4,650. This is mostly for trial meals at the pilot schools but also includes $700 worth of produce purchased for muffins and potato soup that could potentially become ongoing purchases. These are very minimal purchases. MMSD spent $2,000 on local produce for the chicken-vegetable fajita meal that was served in all 30 elementary schools. If this one meal was served once in every three-week cycle during the 42 week school year that would translate into $28,000 in fresh produce sales. MMSD spent $300 on local produce for the baked potato/chili meal at the three pilot schools. If this meal were served in all 30 elementary schools once every three-week cycle, that would translate into $42,000 in fresh produce sales. Even if just the shredded carrots and mashed sweet potatoes were purchased to serve muffins once every three weeks, at $420 each time that translates into $5,880 in sales. Those items can currently be provided by the co-op’s kitchen and have the added benefit of being able to be frozen which would allow the local crop to be purchased in season and frozen for the remainder of the school year.

A total of $7,600 in local food purchases were made for the classroom snack program.
$6,440 of this was just during the 2006-07 school year where four classrooms participated in the snack program for most of the year. If the co-op’s kitchen could double its output, or if another kitchen facility could prepare additional snacks, this dollar amount could increase accordingly. This appears to be the easiest way to increase fresh produce sales into the Madison Metropolitan School District for the near future.

The total value of local produce the Willy St. Co-op kitchen prepared for either MMSD or the WHL snack program is $5,360. Again, the majority of this, $4,430, was for the 2006-07 WHL snack program. Willy St. Co-op does add a mark-up to the price of the snacks, but not enough to fully cover their labor costs associated with prepping the snacks. They are likely covering their raw product and delivery costs, but not their labor costs. They are choosing this arrangement as a community service in order to keep the snacks more affordable for the schools. This may also hinder future potential for expansion if the snack program is seen as a break-even venture rather than a money-making one. Other businesses that may choose to take on this processing role will likely not be in a position to gift their labor and then the snack costs would need to be evaluated as to whether schools would raise enough funds to cover these real costs.

Separate from food purchases for the meal, snack, or educational programs, WHL’s Wisconsin Homegrown Holiday Fundraiser (three years worth) generated a total of $30,630 in sales to local businesses and farmers and a total of $24,890 for participating schools. Profit on the fundraiser averages out to be 45%. This fundraiser is poised to continue to grow each year and could potentially grow beyond the Madison school district to nearby districts. This year’s fundraiser brought created $18,500 worth of business for local vendors. $11,000 of this went direct to farm businesses (vegeatables, apples, cheese, sausage, honey, soap, etc..). A reasonable estimate would be to triple this figure in two years time, which could mean $33,000 going direct to farms and another $22,500 going to other local businesses (dried cherries, chocolate covered cherries).

Farmer Adoption

Through the classroom snack program WHL has been able to establish solid purchasing relationships with a handful of apple producers, one main carrot producer, one main kohlrabi producer, and a couple sweet potato producers in the area. These growers are happy to be selling to schools and are charging their regular retail store rate. The variety of additional producers that WHL has facilitated purchases from with the pilot meals and other special events would like to sell more but understand the constraints the schools are under. Farmers approach the school market in different ways, with some treating it like just another wholesale account and some have charged less in order to better meet the school’s budget because they believe in getting the wheels in motion and because they see a promotional value and take that into account with the sale.

WHL continues to communicate with two organized farmer cooperatives in the area who are currently supplying the restaurant market but could grow into institutional sales as the structural obstacles we have encountered are overcome. A relatively new initiative organized at the county level is facilitating purchases between county and other institutions in the area and a produce auction on hour north of Madison. This produce auction draws in a variety of growers, including some who are willing to increase their production on certain crops as the market presents itself. This past season the auction successfully sold and delivered produce to four local institutions and is currently in conversation with the Universities in the area for planning for next season.