Delivering More: Scaling up Farm to School Projects

Posted by on May 24, 2010

Delivering More: Scaling up Farm to School Projects

How can farm to school programs reach more students and more schools? This new booklet looks at Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC)’s work with four farm to school programs seeking to answer this question.  Beginning in 2007, CFSC worked with City Harvest (NYC), Farm to Table (NM), Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (NC), and the Center for Food & Justice (CA) on strategic planning related to distribution capacity. This booklet profiles each program’s planning efforts, describes the related work of The Farm to School Distribution Learning Community, and explores the implications of the results.  The project was funded by grants from the UPS Foundation and the Compton Foundation.

Key lessons we found include:

* There is no “one size fits all” answer—every program needs to build strong relationships, listen to many perspectives, and understand local resources and obstacles.
* “Scaling up” distribution may not be as easy as it seems, and may actually conflict with other program goals.
* Strategic planning takes time and requires long-term follow-through, so progress will likely be incremental.

To read on, download the report at no cost [PDF; 1.1 M]

http://foodsecurity.org/pub/Delivering_More-Scaling_up_Farm_to_School.pdf

or order a print copy for $10 + shipping & handling.

http://www.foodsecurity.org/pubs.html/memberinfo.html