Aiding farm to school implementation: An assessment of facilitation mechanisms

Abstract

We investigated two potential mechanisms facilitating local food procurement in schools, food hubs, and funded farm to school policies. Using all three waves of the USDA’s farm to school census, we assessed the factors that support school districts that have stated an intention of beginning a farm to school program. We find that neither food hubs nor funded policies have an impact on farm to school programming. Instead, it is large-scale farms that play a role in the farm to school supply chain. Coupled with the positive impact of school size and receipt of increased federal funding, this suggests that while both cost and transactional barriers impact school procurement, current policy solutions are insufficient. This study improves our understanding of the role of facilitation mechanisms on farm to school implementation in the United States.

Factors influencing farmers’ willingness to participate in Farm to School programmes – The case of Albania

“…Joshi et al (2008) argue that framing all supply dimensions -especially those of farmers -as accurately as possible provides the conditions under which programmes can function effectively. While many studies focus on the demand side, including the impact on pupils' nutrition, school involvement and local governance (Bonanno and Mendis, 2021;Wen and Connolly, 2022), only a few scholars have explored the supply issues (Conner et al, 2012, Joshi et al, 2008Izumi et al, 2010). Botkins and Roe (2018) found that both school characteristics and local farm production factors were associated with participation in F2S, yielding positive effects on both sides.…”