The National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) and the National Farm to School Network (NFSN) recently announced a partnership with the USDA Food and Nutrition Service’s Office of Community Food Systems (OCFS). The new partnership will be an effort to develop farm to school trainings for agricultural producers.
The farm to school training and curricula cooperative agreement was announced on May 21, as a national three-year, $1.8 million project. The purpose behind the partnership is to help develop and enhance opportunities for ag producers to market to schools. In collaboration with state agencies, a needs assessment will be conducted among agricultural producers looking to enter the market in order to develop curricula. Trainings will then be promoted and offered using a tiered, train-the-trainer approach
Director of the project for OCFS, Gwen Holcomb noted the importance of the project for the agricultural producers who can produce and then distribute food for Child Nutrition Programs in schools and school districts. “With more than 30 million students participating in the National School Lunch Program each day, schools provide a large, stable, long-term market for producers,” Holcomb said in a press release.
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