Area farmers and producers helped to prepare lunch at the Riceville Community School District on Sept. 25, 2024 for Iowa Local Food Day. (Photo courtesy of Riceville CSD)
Students in the Riceville Community School District often make an interesting lunchtime request: pea shoots.
The kindergarten- through 12th-grade students learned about the nutrient density of the microgreens during a presentation about locally grown foods, and now ask for the superfood to appear on the salad bar at lunch.
Nancy Eastman, the district’s food service supervisor, stocks her kitchen with local food as much as possible, and grants like Local Food for Schools from the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS) have allowed her to afford it.
“It’s making it easier to bring local foods into the school than it was before,” Eastman said. “And it’s a lot healthier.”
Typically, Eastman stocks the salad bar with locally sourced fruits and vegetables, but on Wednesday, Riceville students ate a 100% locally sourced meal in celebration of Iowa Local Food Day.
“Everything that we are having, besides condiments, are going to be local items,” Eastman said leading up to the Wednesday feast of burgers, fresh buns and fun veggies like purple cauliflower.
Nancy Eastman (left) celebrated Iowa Local Food Day with representatives from Iowa Healthy Harvest (right) at Riceville Community School District. (Photo Courtesy of Riceville CSD)
Local Food for Schools (LFS) is a $200 million program with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and states. Since it started in 2022, IDALS has awarded over $1.7 million total to 137 Iowa school districts.
Participating schools like Riceville are in the third and final round of the funding, which will end December 2024.
Funding local food
Through the grant, school districts work with their local food hubs to source Iowa grown produce, dairy, meats, eggs and other local foods. Riceville has worked with the Iowa Food Hub, which serves the Driftless area.
Peter Kraus, Iowa Food Hub’s general manager, said most of the schools he sells to use LFS funds.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
It’s been a good way to consistently partner with schools, but Kraus said to truly support a local food system, the state needs to offer more permanent funding.
“It’d be really nice if the state would have a consistent program that was something that producers and food hubs and schools could depend on,” Kraus said. “But so far, it’s been in little blips here and there, and that’s just really hard to design a business around.”
Kraus works for both the producers and the purchasers. He helps the producers know what to grow to meet the customers’ needs, and he helps the schools, colleges and early childhood centers that buy from the hub know what’s in season and available.
The LFS grants have given him an idea of what schools would want to purchase and how much they could use, but as the funding runs out, he’s skeptical if many of the schools will continue to buy locally.
“Producers are wanting to know, ‘What can I grow next year?’ and I can’t really tell them how much to grow or what to grow, because I don’t know what the demand is going to be,” Kraus said. “All the food hubs in the state are trying to scramble and figure out what is going to be the new normal.”
Schools can apply for other programs that support local food procurement, like Choose Iowa and USDA Farm to School, but Kraus said those programs are also not continuous.
Kraus hopes Iowa will create a program similar to Michigan’s or New York’s programs, which give reimbursements or incentives to schools that purchase locally.
Top: On Local Food Day, Eastman hung signs to show where each of the items came from. For everyday lunches, students can see the local foods written up on a whiteboard in the lunch line. Bottom: Nancy Eastman was excited to serve locally grown, purple cauliflower to Riceville students on Wednesday. (Photos courtesy of Riceville CSD)
“It’s not like LFS, where schools were given a chunk of money that was basically free local food,” Kraus said.
LFS worked to introduce schools to local procurement, but he worries that won’t be incentive enough when kitchen managers are staring down their budget sheets.
Eastman said she plans to continue serving as much local food as she can once the LFS funder ends.
“Local is more expensive, but it’s a lot better for us,” Eastman said. “Those LFS dollars, they helped show you how to and where to get these items … but I wish that we could do everything local.”
Schools that participate in the National School Lunch program with the USDA, can purchase certain foods that are part of USDA approved commodities. It gives schools the ability to affordably feed their students, but Eastman said she wishes that funding could be used at the food hub.
“I wish that the government funding, (that) more funding would go to the local foods,” she said.
Plus, in her own experience, the local food is more expensive, but she said “it lasts a lot longer.”
In addition to celebrating the statewide local food day, and offering local foods on the salad bar daily, Eastman is planning a fall farmers market for the over 400 students in her district.
Riceville Community School district won the 2024 Golden Root award for school of the year, by the Iowa Farm to School and Early Care, because of its dedication to engaging students in its local food program.
SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST.