Giving Compass' Take:

• Master chef and advocate Alice Waters is pushing for free, sustainable school lunch for all K-12 students in California. In this Food Tank interview, Waters argues that local sourcing will help create “civil and meaningful" meals.

• How will this initiative impact school budgets? Could this be a model for the rest of the United States?

• Many students rely on free or reduced-price school lunches to live. Read about these initiative that are expanding access to free lunch for students during the summer time.

For almost 50 years, Alice Waters has used food as a catalyst for social, environmental, and political change. Now, she is advocating that schools across California adopt a pledge to offer a “free, sustainable school lunch for all students K-12.” Waters proposes that schools source their food directly from farmers and ranchers who take care of the land, transforming school lunch into something that is “civil and meaningful,” and she claims costs will remain the same. Using California as a model, Waters hopes that schools across the United States and around the world embrace this pledge.

Schools, like farms, are becoming increasingly industrialized, focusing on productivity through test scores and minimizing costs through food choices, according to Waters. “Cafeterias have been so contaminated by fast-food culture, it’s a free for all. It doesn’t smell good, it doesn’t look good, it doesn’t have any connection or pleasure for students,” Waters says. Even at King Middle School, home to the Edible Schoolyard Project (ESYP) and with a cafeteria that sources locally, grows organically, and cooks from scratch, there remains a stigma about school lunch.

Read the full article about school lunch for all by Sarah Axe and Katherine Walla at Food Tank.