Despite being surrounded by farmland, school districts in western Kansas struggle to source local food options to feed kids. But farm tours given by the state’s Child Nutrition and Wellness program can establish new pathways to keep kids healthy.
GARDEN CITY, Kansas — Deep into western Kansas, there’s an abundance of corn and cattle. But there aren’t as many juicy tomatoes, crisp apples or fresh squash.
That has left residents in vast pockets of the state without access to nutritious foods. For these communities, finding produce may be inconvenient at best, despite being surrounded by farms.
And schools are no exception in the search for healthy food. That’s why staff from the Kansas Department of Education are trying to find solutions by connecting school districts to local farms to benefit both parties.
As part of that effort, a busload of school district nutrition directors recently drove out to western Kansas farms so that schools could have more options to access local food.
But Eryn Davis, the state’s Farm to Plate program coordinator, said in this part of Kansas, finding food for humans rather than livestock is a challenge.
“From my research, it was limited on what I could find in western Kansas, both in Garden City, and even north in Colby,” Davis said.
Feeding kids locally
Even though rural Kansas has direct access to agriculture, most farms in Kansas grow commodity crops such as soybeans, wheat and corn. That limits the access rural Kansans could have to other healthy foods.
The 2008 farm bill encouraged institutions operating child nutrition programs to purchase unprocessed locally grown and locally raised agricultural products.
This in theory would benefit the health of rural children and boost the ag economy of local farmers, lawmakers said.
As a result, the Farm to School program was established in Kansas to provide grants, materials and connections to local producers and gardening education for schools.
Davis said locally sourced food not only provides more nutrient-dense options, but it also has economic benefits.
“It’s supporting the economy of our Kansas communities that we have here, keeping our dollars. Repurchasing from Kansas producers is a big push for local foods,” Davis said.
Most school district leaders on the tour said they rely on trucking in their food from eastern Kansas, although they each had the same locally sourced foods in common: beef, dairy and tortillas.
But the need for vegetables and fruit in southwest Kansas remains.
Connecting farms and schools
The first stop on the tour was connecting districts from Dodge City, Garden City and Sublette to a poultry farm outside of Lakin.
As soon as everyone made their way off the bus, the chickens timidly surrounded the group of outsiders.
The Diamond W Farm and Ranch is a family operation specializing in egg production, owned by Samantha Williams with her husband and three sons.
“I started with 15 chicks, and I said, ‘It’s just as much work (with) 15 chicks as 100 chicks,’ so I got 100, then 200, and now we have anywhere from 300 to 500 chickens laying eggs at a given time,” Williams said.
The Williams family are one of the largest egg producers in southwest Kansas, and they deliver to nearby towns.
Williams initially got her egg license to provide eggs to the day care her boys attended. The operation grew so they could provide eggs to feed more children in the surrounding towns.
“I love getting up and seeing the chickens’ fluffy butts every morning; it’s like my form of therapy,” Williams said.
After seeing what the Williams family could offer school districts, everyone filed back onto the bus and started brainstorming ways they would like to use local eggs.
The bus then traveled back to Garden City to the only produce farm in town, Prairie Wind Produce.
Steven Michel runs the produce farm with his wife. One thing about Michel – he’s passionate about produce.
“Me and the wife had a seniors meal the other day. It had two cherry tomatoes; they were mushy and had no flavor. People come try our tomatoes and they’re back three days later,” Michel said.
Standing in a greenhouse forest of tomatoes, school district leaders in Garden City said they hadn’t known about this produce farm in their own town. They passed around fruits and vegetables, marveling at each one.
Limitations to local foods
The Michels are the exception rather than the rule in western Kansas. Michel serves as the vice president for the Kansas Specialty Crop Growers Association.
“We are the only ones that grow more than two or three vegetables in at least a 60-mile radius – it’s just us,” Michel said.
That’s part of the limitation to a Farm to School program like the one in Kansas. For some school districts, there just is not a lot of local produce to source.
Michel said some of this is a lack of growers and education. Western Kansas no longer has horticulture expertise from Kansas State University, which Michel believes has discouraged the growth of gardens.
Most of the produce consumed by Kansans – 95% – is grown outside of the state. Schools are the only place for some kids to get nutritious meals from local sources. Those living in the breadbasket have significantly higher rates of diabetes, colon cancer and heart disease, according to the University of Kansas Medical Center.
Experts say for the Farm to School program to be successful in a place like western Kansas, there will need to be more produce growers.
But specialty crops aren’t covered as well by crop insurance that guarantees against drought or hail storms, which have become staples of western Kansas’ climate.
Plus, growing produce is labor intensive, Michel said. And rural Kansas has made its claim to fame being able to grow more with fewer workers thanks to technology advancements and large-scale grain.
But Davis, the coordinator of the Farm to Plate program, is optimistic that these farm tours help make the connections both farmers and school districts need. By giving producers a wholesale market, and schoolchildren fresh produce grown down the road, she thinks that this is a program that can chip away at both problems.
“It’s a good way to bring nutritious local foods to the community, and that partnership with the producer is important, too, to support their business,” Davis said.
Calen Moore covers western Kansas for High Plains Public Radio and the Kansas News Service. You can email him at [email protected].
The Kansas News Service, ksnewsservice.org.
