Cultivating Opportunity: an Overview of USDA's FY 2015-16 Farm to School Grantee Achievements

USDA is committed to incorporating local and regional foods throughout its nutrition assistance programs, providing high-quality, nutritious foods to program participants and increasing economic opportunities for U.S. food producers. To achieve this goal, USDA encourages program participation across all types of agricultural producers and all types of program operators.

The Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant Program is one way schools, state agencies, tribal organizations, producers, and nonprofit organizations are working together to incorporate local and regional foods into the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP). This report explores the history and benefits of farm to school programs across the country and dives deeper into the strategies and outcomes of USDA’s Farm to School Grant Program.

This report details trends and best practices from fiscal year (FY) 2015 and 2016 farm to school grantees. In FY 2015, the Farm to School Grant Program introduced standardized baseline and final reporting measures for grantees to more effectively document project outcomes and overall impacts of the grant program. These standardized measures were directly aligned with the USDA Farm to School Census to facilitate direct comparison between the grantee cohorts and other stakeholders working on farm to school initiatives across the nation in order to investigate the impacts of the grant program on the growth of the farm to school movement nationwide. FNS used that information to identify the strategies contained in this report.

The report is divided into three key strategies for farm to school success. Each section contains an overview of the strategy, spotlights of grantees that leveraged the strategy to increase their success, and key partner roles in implementing the strategy.