Giving Compass' Take:

• In honor of national farm-to-school month in the United States, Sarah Axe collected 29 stories of successful farm-to-school programs around the world. 

• How can new and existing programs learn from the work that has already been done in this area? 

• Learn about efforts to bring students food when school is out. 

October is national Farm-to-School Month in the United States. Thousands of schools, education sites, and organizations across the world, are embracing food education through school gardens, educational farms, and school meals filled with nutritious, local, and seasonal ingredients. It’s time to celebrate farm-to-school organizations from around the globe.

Farm-to-school programs can help bring locally sourced and nutritious food to school cafeterias, improve child nutrition, provide agriculture, health, and nutrition education opportunities to young people, and support local farmers. 20 years ago there were less than 10 farm-to-school programs in the United States, and now, more than 40 percent of schools host programs, reaching over 23 million children.

Food Tank is celebrating farm-to-school month by featuring 29 inspiring and innovative farm-to-school programs from around the world. These programs are working to build connections between schools and farmers, making significant impacts on child health, school attendance rates, food security, and farmer livelihoods in many communities.

Ghana School Feeding Programme, Ghana:

The Ghana School Feeding Programme (GFSP), launched by the former Ghanaian government in 2005, started in just 10 schools and has now grown to feed more than 1.4 million children across 4,500 schools in Ghana. The program has helped increase school attendance, domestic food production, farmer and household incomes, and food security in many communities across the country. Active across 170 districts, the GSFP is helping reduce child hunger in some of Ghana’s most isolated communities.

Purchase from Africans for Africa Program, multiple countries:

The Purchase from Africans for Africa Program (PAA) links smallholder farmers with local schools in Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, and Senegal. In its pilot phase, more than 1,000 metric tons of locally procured food was served to nearly 130,000 students across 420 schools. Family farmers’ productivity rates have increased by more than 100 percent because of this guaranteed market for the food they produce. PAA is a partnership between the Government of Brazil, the Government of the United Kingdom, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the World Food Program’s Purchase for Progress initiative.

Read the full article about farm-to-school programs by Sarah Axe at Food Tank.