Local Food in Schools

Appalachian Sustainable
Agriculture
Project
306 West Haywood Street
Asheville, NC 28801
Voice: 828-236-1282
Fax: 828-236-1280
Email Us

Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

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When cafeterias buy from local farms, kids get fresher, healthier, better tasting food. Local farmers, who may have limited markets, especially in rural areas, get a new source of income. And the school’s food dollars stay in the community.

Take advantage of our region’s wealth of family farms and get your school to buy local. To make it easy, ASAP is working within existing systems and involving food service distributors many schools already use.

Check out these resources, then contact us.

How It Started: Background on Farm to School and Local Food in Cafeterias

Resources

Best practices for using produce from school gardens (PDF)

Farm to School: From the Grassroots (workshop resource notebook 2008)

Links

Bringing Local Food to Local Institutions (ATTRA)

Eat Smart: Farm Fresh! A Guide to Buying and Serving Locally Grown Produce in School Meals

Enhancing Commercial Food Service Sales by Small Meat Processing Firms

Food and Nutrition Services Small Farms/ School Meals Initiative

Healthy School Meals Resource System

How Local Schools and Food Service Buyers Are Building Alliances

The City Of Portland- Recommendations for integrating local produce into school meals

Kids Comments on Farm to School

From Nikolay

The garden lets me learn outside of school. It let me be able to smell different smells. I like to taste things in our garden.

From Ashley

The school garden helps me make good food choices when I'm shopping with my folks.

From Sam D.

Thank you for teaching us about growing and planting plants. It was graet seeing Swiss chard and kale plants. And zinnias lettuce and onin seeds. We will all water and wamth.

From Breanna

I platid some onions. I appreciate you lating us have a garden. It was fun pulling the weeds. And fun plating the seeds. When some of them need pold we will pull them up.