Regency Acres Public School in Aurora ready to serve their first locally-sourced salad bar lunch
Twenty-one schools across Ontario, with many in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, have received Farm to School grants from the Whole Kids Foundation to implement locally-sourced salad bar programs in their cafeterias, with support from Farm to Cafeteria Canada and Sustain Ontario’s Edible Education Network.
The exciting announcement was made in Ottawa at the beginning of October, launching Canada’s 3rd Annual National Farm to School Month.
Regency Acres Public School in York Region was one of the enthusiastic recipients, after applying for a farm to school grant last year. The Aurora school hosted their first locally-sourced salad bar lunch this week, with nutritious food provided by Round the Bend Farm, Homestead Orchards, Bloomington Farms and Serendipity Stables.
“Our goal is to get healthy local food into the minds and onto the plates of students,” Heather Deckert with Regency Acres P.S. tells us. “Our mission is to inspire kids to eat local and fresh food from our local gardens and farms. Nutritionally, this is the right path to be on!”
The simple idea of connecting schools to farms and children to their food is what has inspired the wave of farm-to-school activity avidly crossing the country. Farm to Cafeteria Canada explains that farm to school offers great potential to address two major challenges in our society: concerns about the diet and health of our school children, and concerns about the capability of regional and institutional food systems to provide for basic nutritional needs.
As influential institutions, schools indeed have tremendous capacity to nourish local food systems, not only by engaging young people in food education, but also by supporting local food and farmers through their food offerings.
These admirable organizations — and their F2S campaigns and grants — are working to cover it all.
“There is a food revolution afoot in Canadian schools. Parents, teachers, students, and food service workers are clamouring for a fresh local crunch in school lunch and local farmers and fishers are eager to deliver. We are excited about opportunity to continue to seed, feed, and watch this movement grow,” shared Joanne Bays, National Manager of Farm to Cafeteria Canada.
Led by Farm to Cafeteria Canada, this October’s Farm to School month theme was #ThinkandEatLocalatSchool, with the campaign encouraging schools to connect students to local food producers (e.g. a farm visit), to engage students in growing, cooking or preserving local foods at school, and/or to increase the amount of local food served and eaten in school cafeterias.
To learn more about how schools are supporting food education in combination with local food systems, visit Farm to Cafeteria Canada’s website for plenty of news and resources. Their Canada School Food Map shows the abundance of projects across the country that are connecting Canada’s students to good food, and their latest newsletter highlights many inspiring Farm to School stories from across the country.