Getting Ready for Local: VT Workshops Bring Together School Nutrition Professionals and Farmers

Apple orchards, sweet potato fields, and diversified farms. School nutrition professionals gathered on farms across the state this past August; for many, it was the first time seeing their colleagues from other schools since the start of the pandemic.

Jointly hosted by Food Connects, VT FEED, and the School Nutrition Association of Vermont, these workshops were a time for school nutrition professionals to connect with farmers, think about local purchasing, and the opportunities of a new state bill that incentivizes buying Vermont products for their programs. In addition to touring the host farm, participants prepared a menu item that featured local products from the farm and met the school lunch meal pattern guidelines. There was also plenty of time for everyone to share stories from the past year and hear about what’s been working and what hasn’t been. 

“The past 18 months have been especially hard on school nutrition professionals,” says Helen Rortvedt, Farm to School Program Director for NOFA-VT & VT FEED. “Working from home was never an option for them, and the need for healthy meals has only increased. It’s vitally important to have the time to come together, share best practices, and plan for restoring or expanding their local purchasing plans for the coming school year with colleagues.”

Made possible by a 2020 USDA Farm to School Implementation grant, participants got an inside look into the operations and hurdles local farmers contend with and discussed ways to get more of their products into school meals. A common theme throughout each of the workshops was the similarities between both professions in regards to the constant logistical details they had to consider—what’s the best packaging option for food, the constant battle for cold storage space, and how do you get your food to consumers (whether that be customers or students). 

At the forefront of everyone’s minds was the local purchasing incentive recently passed by the Vermont legislature. Schools have incredibly low budgets for food (under $1.50 per meal), making it difficult for them to buy high-quality, locally produced foods. This new grant will help by reimbursing schools that use local ingredients in their meals. Given how new the program is, everyone has questions about what implementation will look like. 

Food Connects is a natural partner for schools looking to increase local purchasing. The Farm to School Program works with school nutrition professionals, educators, and administrators to increase nutrition and farming education in classrooms, building interest in and demand for local foods by students. Once the demand is there, the Food Hub can deliver food from over 150 producers right to the school, providing schools an easy and affordable way to participate in the local food system.

Lessons from Chef Dan Giusti

Last month our Farm to School team had the pleasure of attending the annual meeting of the School Nutrition Association of Vermont. The meeting was held in Colchester and attended by Child Nutrition Professionals from all over the state with the shared vision that “feeding all children is recognized as an integral part of education ensuring all children will learn, thrive, and succeed.”

Chef Dan Giusti speaking at the SNA annual meeting.

The keynote was given by Chef Dan Giusti, former head chef of the world-renowned restaurant Noma in Copenhagen and founder of Brigaid, a non-profit organization that is challenging the school food status quo by putting professional chefs into public schools to cook fresh, wholesome food from scratch.

Listening to Chef Dan speak about the challenges of bringing scratch cooking to schools in New London, CT and the Bronx was incredibly inspiring. After 4 years of working to transform school meals, he is incredibly humble and spoke with clear honesty about the challenges faced by Child Nutrition Professionals in school kitchens around our country, and the deep respect he has for this profession, which he says is way more difficult than working as a chef in a restaurant. In his words, being a Food Service Director is “an amazing career because it’s super challenging and it’s super complex...there is so much stuff to comprehend. When you are a chef in a restaurant, it’s super easy. The chefs who work for me now (in the schools) are really intelligent, they have great character, they are patient, they are smart… because they have to be! You have to be at a different level to handle all this, to manage all these different groups of people, to understand, to even be able to comprehend all this information. It’s super complicated.”

Harley Sterling, School Nutrition Director for the Windham Northeast Supervisory Union, speaks at the SNA annual meeting.

Chef Dan has found that building relationships with the students is a key component to doing the job well. “Where we have found the most success by far is just talking to the kids, just sitting down. It’s all about the relationship, and it might have nothing to do with the food, but if they know that you have something to do with the food and they like you, that’s usually a good starting point.”

When you listen to the students, sometimes they say things that are hard to hear. “It’s a hard thing when you are taking orders from a 4 year old. And they are basically telling you this isn’t very good, and they’re right.”

Chef Dan has ambitious ideas for transforming school meals in our country, saying that, school meals “just need to be better. The kids deserve way better. Things can always be better.” He visited Burlington High School's cafeteria and was very impressed with the role that Vermont Food Service Directors are taking by improving the quality of the food in the meal program and sourcing as much local product as possible.

Bravo, Vermont!