 Welcome everyone. We're really glad that you joined us today. My name is Julie Garden Robinson and I'm your host for the Field of Fork webinar. This is brought to you by North Dakota State University Extension. This is the seventh year we've done the series and we have them all archived on the website. So you have probably 80 of these sorts of webinars available for watching any time. The next slide shows our final webinar for the series and we sure hope that you join us again. Next week Karen Blake-Slee from Kansas State University is going to talk with us about preserving food safely because someday we hope that spring and summer will arrive in North Dakota. It's a very snowy day in parts of the state today. The next slide shows the webinar controls and we've had over a thousand people attend the series this year and we invite you to post your comments in the chat. So if you have questions for our two presenters you can post them in the chat and we will or I will pose them to our presenters at the end of the session. So instead of posting your state you're from we are certainly welcome to do that. Today we are going to post our favorite vegetable to grow in the chat and they will have a poll so you can let us know your state. So what is your favorite vegetable to grow or fruit? All right while you're busy doing that the next slide provides an acknowledgement. I have a special request as usual. This program is sponsored in part with grant funding from the USDA's agricultural marketing service and I will ask all of you to complete a short online survey that will be emailed right after today's webinar and as a thank you I will provide prizes to many lucky winners of the random drawings. I'm going to wait till the end of the series to do all the random drawings. So in the next couple of weeks you could be a lucky recipient of something really neat but be sure to put your complete address in the follow-up form and don't forget to add your city state and zip code. And now I'm ready to welcome our speakers. I'm very pleased to introduce both of them. Our first speaker today is Anna Barr. She is a registered dietitian and the farm to school nutrition field specialist at South Dakota State University Extension. Anna combines her experiences of growing up in a farm or on a farm in Iowa and studying nutrition and horticulture at SDSU to improve local food systems and help youth get excited about nutritious foods to farm to school. And our second speaker is Landa Nawadake. In a unique joint appointment between Kansas State University and the University of Missouri, Landa serves as state extension food safety specialist for both of those states, Kansas and Missouri. She works with county and district extension agents and other stakeholders in both states to develop programming and resources in food safety, focusing on consumers, produce growers, and also farmers market vendor issues. Landa grew up on a farm in east central South Dakota, so they're both from South Dakota in some way and I welcome them. Thank you, Julie. And Landa and I did, as Julie mentioned, put together a couple poll questions. See where we located mostly North Dakota. Looks like really small South Dakota. Kansas, Minnesota. Okay. And then some others. Awesome. I see a lot of responses at the top of question number two. So not much experience or knowledge for farm to school. So we're happy that this is a getting started with farm to school webinar. So it looks like we're in the right category there. But some of you have had some really neat experience. A producer is told to schools, help organize farm to school efforts, have it had kids and farm to school programs. That is, that is wonderful. So as Julie said, I'm Anna Barn, the farm to school nutrition field specialist for SDSU extension. And my portion today will be talking about getting started with farm to school and providing kind of an overview of really what those activities are that that categorize as farm to school and show some different ways that you may be able to get involved or see farm to school take place in your community. So first of all, what is farm to school farm to school changes the food purchasing and education practices of education settings in order to connect communities with fresh healthy food from local producers. That's the definition from the national farm to school network. And it has three core elements. So education, local procurement in school gardens. Oftentimes when we think about farm to school, the first thing that comes to mind is local food procurement. And that absolutely is a big part of farm to school. And that would be any way that the local foods get into school meals or early childcare settings. But it's not the only part of farm to school, right? So we also have education. And that's that's pretty much any way that kids are hands on with the nutrition with agriculture. And they're learning about the local foods in their own environment. And then school gardens. So school gardens is a unique one because it provides opportunities to incorporate education in the garden space that also provides opportunities to maybe sell the school garden produce or donate it to the school kitchen. So it could kind of cross over with education and procurement. But one thing to keep in mind with farm to school is that it can incorporate any of these core components, but it doesn't need to do all of them. So even just doing one of these three core elements of farm to school would make a school say that they're participating in farm to school. When we think about local procurement, so of course, that's not the only element of farm to school, but it's such a big one that local gets to be defined by the by the farm to school program. So when we think about the United States, or if we think about our own states, even if there's probably hubs where quite a bit of local food production is happening other parts of the state where it's not so much, we've got rural settings, urban settings. And so the variety of different distances that schools would need to travel or define their radius in order to find local foods is quite different across most of these areas. So that's kind of the reason there's not a set standard definition of what local means when thinking about farm to school. But there are different examples of what schools have used. So two examples from South Dakota, Aberdeen has used the example of produced within 100 miles of their school district. Another example from Washington Springs, they say that it's any any food product that's produced in South Dakota. And again, that definition might work better for a state or a city that is in the middle of the state versus one that's on the border. And this graphic represents kind of those different ways to define farm to school. So this is giving peer in the middle of South Dakota as an example. And we see on the far left, it's kind of defined as a region, a really large radius around the area that incorporates a multi state area could define it as just this state. Or you could go more localized and say anything within maybe like a 30 mile radius, which might be something along the right side, or within the county. So there's lots of ways to define local and that really comes down to how far out does the school need to go in order to find local produce and what's reasonable for them to choose as a local definition. Okay, so there are a lot of different examples of farm to school activities. And so my goal is to try to expand your idea of what farm to school is so that you may be able to see that nearly anyone can engage in farm to school and that there are many different opportunities to qualify as a farm to school participating in school. So I'm going to run through each slide that kind of looks like this will have activities that were outlined by USDA in their annual or sorry, it's every few years, they'll do a farm to school census questionnaire that goes out to schools and kind of lists all of these different activities that they've seen happen for farm to school. So this list of activities is pretty inclusive. I think they are constantly adding to that as different programs show different ways to do farm to school, but it gives a really good idea. So this slide starts out with all of the federal nutrition programs. So thinking of farm to school, we think about lunch usually. But nope, not to forget that there's the school breakfast program, there's the fresh fruit and vegetable program, the child and adult care food program and oftentimes that's not happening at a school, it's happening at it may be a daycare center or even an adult daycare center that would be the child and adult care food program. So sometimes you don't think about those adults and we're talking about farm to school, but the childcare center is absolutely. And then it summer meals too. So there's lots of different federal nutrition programs that you could plug into for farm to school. And a farm to school program doesn't have to involve only federal nutrition programs that could go at sites that maybe don't operate those. But it gives kind of an idea of we're really looking at all of the meals throughout the day and snacks. So talking about a little bit how farm to school spans the day farm to school also spans the tray. So one meal and this is a lunch example, but we'll always include a milk and a meat or a meat alternative, a grain of fruit of vegetable. And so thinking about local foods produced in the area, those could plug into all of those different kind of portions of the tray. So the can pineapple here probably isn't a great example of a local food. But say if there are berries that are fresh in the fall or melons that are fresh, those absolutely could go in as a fruit component to a meal. Fruits are always included in breakfast as federal nutrition programs require. So again, more opportunities throughout the day. Vegetables, lots of fresh ones in this fall, thinking even preserved vegetables could go in through the winter time in the spring or those root crops like potatoes or winter squashes or carrots that last a little longer can can sometimes be a vegetable component throughout the seasons. But in our northern areas, a lot of times what we have a lot of success with is the meat and the meat alternative portion of the tray. So big beef to school programs getting started across South Dakota and North Dakota, I know. And that can really really be a steady area for farm to school in our climates that maybe don't have as much opportunity to grow fresh fruits and vegetables throughout the school year without maybe a greenhouse. And then thinking about milk also milk is typically a local food product just by the nature of the distribution of it. So milk could be local without even trying. It's kind of a neat thing to maybe look into. And then of course grains, not a great example in this photo, we've got the croutons, but thinking maybe of local rolls or something that is purchased from a local bakery could be all included as different elements of a farm to school meal. And only one would need to be incorporated at a time, right? We don't have to go all out. We can just include a little bit here and there and and start out that way. Alright, the next one, we've got examples of activities would be serving local foods as a snack in the classroom or it could be as an oligarch item during a break period or during lunch for fundraisers or maybe at the concession stands during sporting events. Other examples would be serving local foods to or providing farm to school activities as part of after school programs, serving products from school gardens or farms and any school meals and working with local producers to develop specific food products using local foods. So I'll give some examples from South Dakota. And this photo, we have a community garden that is located just across the street from a school in Martin South Dakota. If you look on the right picture, you can kind of see the school there. And so the community garden manager would have an afterschool program where kids could walk across the street, engage in different activities along the garden, they could help water it, help weed it, help plant it, help harvest it and then taste the vegetables as well. And there's usually a snack component that she would provide in this program, trying to use local foods if they're ready and fresh in the garden or bringing some in if if they weren't available at that time just to try to increase exposure to other local foods as well in this program and then provide an activity. So on the right side, they beautified their garden space by painting floral pictures onto old records and hanging those along the fence of the community garden. This example also hosted a community event during the first week of September. They had over 160 kids that were kindergarten through fifth grade and 20 different adults visit the garden as a field trip that was organized by the grade school in Martin. And at that time, they got to try fresh tomatoes with salt and pepper from the garden. So cool ways to engage the students and even the community in some afterschool type programming or community events. And that other example there was working with a local producer to develop specific products. This is an example on the right. We have Susan. She is a food service director in the southeast corner of South Dakota. She works for lunchtime solutions and as a food service director, she will attend a local farmer's market and get to know the producers and has since developing those relationships through visiting the market started contracts with many of those producers and will sell into the school lunch program, their local products. She also every year will host an annual crunch off with she participates in a national program I'll talk about in a second. But finding those local sources of apples that she's able to distribute to all of her students. She's got a bigger district. It's I think it's maybe around 3000 total students, which is pretty large for South Dakota, and is able to provide all apples to every single student in one day just by sourcing through her local connections that she made through a farmer's market and visiting there. Some other examples of farm to school activities, holding taste tests and cooking demonstration of local or garden grown foods promoting local foods at school, using cafeteria food coaches to promote the consumption of local foods, inviting farmers to visit the cafeteria or classroom, and providing training to food service staff on farm to school or school gardens. I know in some states we don't have this in South Dakota, but they have developed some logo and promotional branding around this is a local food product or we're provided for participating in farm to school or they might have a harvest of the month program where they've displayed visually in those meals, settings, what foods are local. So I don't have examples of that from South Dakota, but have heard of that being successful across other parts of the country. We do have an example of is a producer visiting a school. And so this this producer is in the Brandon South Dakota area near Sioux Falls, and she and her family operate a fruit and vegetable farm. And once a year, she will attend the school to teach students about growing from planting a seed in a milk carton that they reuse from the cafeteria. And since that milk carton is biodegradable, then the students can kind of walk through the process of learning about sustainability, planting a seed, watching it grow, interacting with a farmer and then also being able to take that product home and teach their parents about it. It's been a good connection for this producer then to also have that exposure of her business and her farm that can that can travel to those years of those parents that get interested in maybe touring it with their kids or ordering from her. What's also stemmed from this relationship is that she is now operating some contracts with the food service structure and getting produce into the school. So sometimes starting with one element of farm to school can lead to others as she started with in class education. It's stemmed into a local procurement deal as well. A few other examples of activities we have celebrate National Farm to School Month, which is in October every year, conducting educational edible gardens as part of a curriculum. So any school that has a garden, if that's integrated into the curriculum somehow oftentimes we'll see this naturally being done at the high school level with maybe a botany class or a horticulture or an FFA class. But absolutely we could have this happening at younger ages as well. One school in South Dakota Wagner, South Dakota, they have the high school science teacher and her students will create aquaponics units and then put them into kindergarten or early early learners classrooms. And so the high schoolers get the opportunity of kind of creating an indoor garden space and learning about the science behind aquaponics. And then the early learners get the unit in their classroom to then feed the fish or learn about kind of growing that fruit or vegetable. Probably usually it's lettuce that gets grown in aquaponics units. And they both kind of get to interact in a edible school garden that is maybe something small scale that can be inside of a classroom. So there are definitely opportunities if the school doesn't have a greenhouse or a high tunnel, something for all year growing. There can be little spaces of gardens in the classroom as well. Other activities would be student field trips to farms. So we talked about producers coming into the farm for a visit. The opposite would also be farm to school and taking students to the farm. Integrating farm to school into pre-K curriculum, right? So it's not just K through 12, we go pre-K also. And then hosting farm to school related community and family events such as a parent lunch day, a corn-checking contest. Doesn't that sound fun? A farmer's market at the school. We've got a few schools in South Dakota that have done that. A red cloud Indian school is the main one that operates the farmer's market with their youth. So lots of opportunities there to engage. These are some photos from a crunch-off event in South Dakota. I forget the exact school. But they used October Farm to School month and this crunch-off event to, as an opportunity to learn about on the top right photo there, you see the seasons of an apple tree. So one of their classes kind of demonstrated what an apple tree looks like throughout the year. And on the bottom right corner, those kind of colorful pages that are stacked on top of each other are an apple core that another class used to show all of the different components, the seeds, the skin, the flesh of an apple and learning its different parts. So on one day, on October, this crunch-off event, they purchased local apples and had at the lunchtime. Everyone bide into it at the same time and take a photo and post that to the state. And so this crunch-off event really is a local event, but it's a state-by-state competition. So look into it if your state provides it. I know South Dakota will be participating in this next year too, but you kind of register through your state and then the states will submit that data to our national region. And then the state with the most registered crunches takes home the crunch crown. So a fun way to get involved in Farm to School and a friendly competition that even schools could consider competing against each other in doing as well. That could be a fun way to take that event and make it fit for your community or make it a little more competitive in your area. But that's one example of a way to celebrate Farm to School Month in a pretty simple event. Thinking about more educational edible gardens as part of curriculum, this is at the Youth and Family Services in Rapid City. So they host Head Start in the different after-school programs or day programs for youth and will include their robust garden program as ways to teach about math and science and arts and counting the different petals on a flower or how many seeds go into a space or how much space do we need in between these to plant a garden and learning about math and ways and science and nutrition and so really there's lots of opportunities to use plants and local foods as part of STEAM or STEM education at all levels. A few other examples here of just getting kids outside and planting gardens, whether that be, you know, we can do it during the school year, we can try the indoor stuff, we can focus our Farm to School gardening efforts and the see the times in spring and fall when they can be outdoors. A lot of times we'll see maybe some after-school programs or summer programs take care of that over the summer or really just trying to get kids outside and their hands in the dirt to see some of the benefits of just that fresh air and physical activity that gardening can provide. And like I said, those field trips to a farm. So this is an example out in western South Dakota where students got to visit more of a commodity producer, but I believe he also did ranching and out there a lot of beef to school is taking place. So with that, what are the benefits? Why Farm to School? These are some of the stats that have been compiled over the years. So I can't guarantee that each of these these items would happen for every Farm to School program, but it has been known to happen and there is data behind why Farm to School. So students will see an average increase of point nine nine to one point three servings of fruits and vegetable vegetables per day when when out of school that participates in Farm to School, which then can minimize risk of diet related diseases from a more healthy diet. Knowledge about gardening, about agriculture, about healthy foods, local foods and seasonality increases because of that exposure and educational opportunity. They have a greater willingness to try new and healthy foods and they choose healthier foods at school and at home. So the benefits of participating in in Farm to School at school do show to extend to home as well. And for producers, we see an average income increase of five percent. Again, don't want to say that's guaranteed, but it has been been shown to happen. And it's at a greater market diversity. So a lot of schools that that I work within South Dakota. If you think about it, the school is technically the largest restaurant in town, right? They serve the most number of people every single day. So if a farmer is looking for outlets for food sales, then a school is often a hyper local location and it's reaching in a lot of a lot of clients, a lot of students in their meal program. And the benefits to schools, we've seen average increase of 9% in meal participation in some national studies, blower school meal program costs. Again, don't want to guarantee these things, but have seen that they have been true. Increased offerings of fruits and vegetables, greater school wellness policy adherence that could be a neat angle to maybe get farm to school on the minds of of certain school administrators, improved food service staff morale and knowledge about local foods. Educators have positive diet and lifestyle changes and a greater intent to integrate farm to school to the classroom. So when teachers are teaching it, they start to live it out as well. And then greater opportunities for hands on active and experiential learning. So I want to touch base shortly here on just kind of the last couple years with schools and seeing so much of the supply chains being disrupted and kind of point to that other benefit of using local foods is that when supply chains might be questionable, the local producers may be there as an opportunity to step in and having those contracts and relationships already in place is a tactic for some schools to kind of mitigate those supply chain issues when they do arise. So it can be a bit overwhelming to a lot of food service directors in the last couple years have been a little bit like this. But but there are definite opportunities and funding sources coming out to help get local foods into schools. Some positives of the COVID-19 supply chain opportunities are that USDA and state agencies are suggesting local purchases to food service directors. This is more on the minds of food service directors to be looking locally. There have been waivers and flexibilities that make local purchases easier. Those are starting to go away for the 2022 2023 school year and a little bit back to normal. But there's still from talking to kind of the state agency here in South Dakota and some food service directors, a lot of food service, a lot of schools are seeing increased funding for farm to school and they still have some of that. So that gives them a little bit of a buffer as they go into the next year where these the rules around nutritional quality and for the schools are kind of being a little bit more strict again, but definitely not eliminating the possibilities of farm to school as as many schools still have money that is directed towards local purchases. And then there are the negatives though currently as far as schools go for if they have an opportunity to offer local foods, most of them are showing that they're short staffed. And so even if you have funds to purchase local foods, if those foods are less processed than the foods that they typically get off a truck, then they're going to have to spend more time preparing them in order to serve them in the meal. And and if they don't have the people to do it, then even if they have the extra funds to purchase local foods, they might not have a way to prepare it in order to get a lot of the trace, which could be a barrier to to purchasing local. And and food service structures themselves oftentimes when their short staff are working on the meal service lines are in the prep areas, so might not have as much time for new projects. Really quick here, the USDA Farm to School Census is a neat example of you can kind of find out what in your area is happening as far as farm to school. So I think Scott's going to drop the link to this website, but I'll show you quick here. If you go to the USDA Farm to School Census website, it gives an overview of the different stats at a national level. But if you scroll down, let's see. Well, explore the results. Scroll past the national data and then I'm going to enter my zip code. And it comes up with a few different schools. So let's do the T area school districts. You could search for your own zip code, pull this up and then start to look at the different data and see what your school has done. And maybe then that could inspire what opportunities there might be for local foods to expand or kind of piggyback off of some of the activities they already do. So I'll just let you know that that's here and give it as that resource to maybe poke around later. And the last two kind of big resources to share would be the USDA has the Office of Community Food Systems out of the Food and Nutrition Service branch and they provide fact sheets along Farm to School that are applicable to all federal nutrition programs and have great information to look at on their website as well as the National Farm to School Network is more of a nonprofit counterpart to the USDA and they've got tons of resources on their website as for Farm to School as well. So two great ones to check out. And with that, my contact information is here, but I will turn it over to Landa to get into the food safety practices regarding Farm to School. Great, thank you so much, Anna. So, Anna, I have to tell you while you were presenting, I'm like emailing my colleagues in Kansas saying we got to hire somebody like Anna. That was great. I really enjoyed your presentation. And, you know, there's so many good things about Farm to School and I just love presenting after somebody like Anna because, you know, she's really done a great job of just highlighting all the great things about Farm to School. And so, yeah, and it's super. And I'm, as mentioned at the beginning, I'm from South Dakota, so I love hearing about what's happening in South Dakota, just hearing about all the great stuff. So, so, yes, I'm going to talk about. So I'm not, how do I say? I will, I'll just say this. It's on my mind. My brother up in South Dakota, he'll sometimes introduce me as like, oh, a lot is the person that tells us what not to do. That's not what I've been tending for this at all. But I just really want to make sure that, you know, we that we think about safety as well, you know. So, boy, I'm a huge proponent of Farm to School and we just want to make sure that it's as safe as possible. So you can advance the slide to the next one here. So this is what I'm going to be talking about today, just briefly, like Anna said, there's a lot of different aspects of Farm to School. So we'll talk about, you know, the buying local foods part as well as school gardens. And then we'll talk a little bit about school salad bars, which again, Anna kind of talks about. And then just I'll share briefly some resources that are available. Hopefully you're all like me and after Anna presented, you're super energized about Farm to School and want to get started. So, so I'll have some resources that are available to help you do it safely as well. So this is my, so this is my big interest in Farm to School. So you can you can guess those are my kids. So I grew up on a farm in the South Dakota and essentially around Brookings and my so my kids are, you know, I feel like, you know, they're only one generation removed from the farm and a lot of my kids as friends, I mean, they're probably, you know, maybe four or five generations removed from the farm. And, and, you know, so many of those kids don't understand where their food is coming from. And even my kids, it's like sometimes, you know, the things they'll say to me, I think, oh, my goodness, like, I really want you to learn more about where our food comes from. So, so when we go home to grandma's house, you know, we were out in the barn helping do chores and helping feed the cattle and so on. But, you know, I want them to to learn about Farm to School all the time. And and these are kind of older pictures, just FYI. But Anna, you can go ahead and advance to the next slide here. I'm going to actually put in the chat just again on a side. I'm super excited. The school that my kids go to our food or school food service director is great. And she's very into Farm to School. So this that article that I just put in there was a TV, little short TV clip that was on TV just a few days ago in Kansas City about the school that my kids go to and the school Farm to School program at my at their school, which again, really makes me excited. So, so, you know, thinking about how we can get more local foods into our school. Cafeteria is, you know, to me is personally and professionally really important to me and just making sure that it's, you know, done as safely as possible. You know, when you look at USDA's Farm to School information, they really do encourage, you know, so it's not discouraged. It's encouraged. They really encourage the use of school garden produce and, you know, things like shell eggs, you know, locally produced eggs in school lunchrooms. So, you know, so it is something that's definitely, you know, a great thing. So the regulations vary. But, you know, so I'll just kind of talk about some general, general principles, because, you know, every state situation will be a little bit different. But but the big thing is that a school food service authority, you know, they have to ensure that they're procuring food from, you know, a reputable supplier and one that uses food safe practices. And, you know, and sometimes how those things are enforced is a little bit different to from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But but, you know, there's no and, you know, terms like reputable supplier and food safe practices, those are kind of hard to define, I think, exactly. So it's somewhat up. It's somewhat objective, I guess. Or, yeah, objective, what the requirements are, sorry, subjective, but kind of, you know, kind of depends a little bit on how it's how it's interpreted. So farms, you know, if you're if you're a local school buying from a farm, you know, it's not a requirement that the farm has product liability insurance, but it's certainly a good idea. You know, and that's something farms can talk to their their normal insurance provider and, you know, make sure that they tell them, you know, we are also selling products to local school, you know, just to make sure that the farmer has insurance side of things covered and that the school has that covered as well. OK, I'll talk about produce here in a minute. So so that was the federal level. So at the federal level, you know, it is it's definitely allowed to be purchasing local foods, you know, to serve in your classroom or to serve in your lunchroom, sorry. So state laws do vary. So again, I know we have a number of different states on the call. So you'll have to check, you know, in each state exactly what the state laws are. You know, and I know in Kansas, in fact, I saw my friend Barb DePu is on from Kansas and I don't know if any of our colleagues from Missouri are on. But but, you know, in Kansas, it's very much encouraged to have local foods in school. So so there's no state law against it by any means. Local jurisdictions might be stricter, you know. So it just depends. You just have to check again with your local food safety regulatory authority to see what their what their requirements are. So every school might have their own policies as well. And so sometimes this is a matter of, you know, whoever whatever group it might be, you know, if it's if you work in extension or if you work in, you know, whatever group you're working with, you know, just working with the local school and talking to them about their policies and talking to them about their, you know, their their willingness to to purchase local foods. And, you know, so sometimes the school might kind of have a blanket statement of all produce has to be gap certified or whatever it might be. And and, you know, might just need to talk to them about, you know, really what are how are we going to ensure that our food is safe, but also help promote having more local food in the schools, you know, how to balance that out. So and I'm covering up. So liability coverage for farmers. So that's just to say, you know, again, schools might say might require that the farmer has a product liability insurance if they're purchasing from them. And again, the farmer can then visit with their local their their regular insurance provider to see, you know, how much additional charge that would be. Sometimes it's not that much additional charge on your on your insurance premiums to do that. So OK, go ahead to the next slide. All right. So I'm going to now I'm going to talk specifically about produce, the regulations for produce. So this is so, as Anna mentioned, you know, different states will have different levels of local produce available during the school year, you know, because September or August through May, you know, there's not always a lot of local produce. But you know, in some cases there are you can always buy apples and things like that. But so the then, of course, there's summer feeding programs like she talked about, too. But anyway, the local so the produce regulations specifically for produce there's a Food Safety Modernization Act. That's what FSMA stands for. There are produce safety rules within that. So farms that are that have annual produce sales of, you know, basically less than twenty five thousand dollars are exempt from needing to meet the requirements of FISMA. And then produce that's really consumer like potatoes would also be exempt. And then there's also some local kind of like local foods exemption for sales that are, you know, in the same state. And there's kind of some other caveats to that, too. But so there's there's definitely some exemptions from this needing to meet FISMA requirements and needing to meet FISMA requirements, you know, is not that difficult. So produce growers can meet those requirements. But but, you know, if they're selling less than twenty five thousand dollars and they don't have to FISMA, there's no extra auditing costs or things like that. So it's just that the farmers need to meet the, you know, the safety practices and then and get inspected. So hopefully your local extension in each of your states can can help you with that. I know Julie helps with produce safety trainings in North Dakota, for example. And, you know, a lot of our extension colleagues around the around the the region definitely do a lot of produce safety trainings to help produce growers to meet the requirements. So so that shouldn't be an issue. You can go to the next slide. So, you know, if you're a school considering buying local produce or if you're, you know, working with the school that's considering buying more local local foods, I'll say, not just local produce. But for local produce, you know, you could require that the growers be gap certified, you know, from my perspective, that shouldn't be a requirement, but it but it's something that every school could determine they want to do. So and I won't go into a lot of details about gap certification, but it's it's basically an audit that is done. And then the farmer has to pay for that audit. So it's an extra expense for the farmer. So maybe, you know, you could also just require if you're again, a local school could require that produce growers attend some trainings and have some sort of certification, maybe not gap certification, but have some sort of way for you to know that, OK, this food is going to be safe, that we're going to be serving to our kids. So other things that you can do as that schools can do, and this would be for any sort of food, not just produce, but, you know, just some current vendors, you might, you know, kind of those broad line distributors might already be purchasing local foods. So like Anna talked about milk, for example. So, you know, you can you can check with your regular distributors and just, you know, ask for that you preferentially would like to buy locally as well. That's another option that you could look at. So one thing that is always important, again, just to think about traceability purposes is to know, just to keep records, the school would keep records of where they're getting their food from, you know, to know where it came from and then, you know, where it's been distributed to, if it went to this elementary school or that elementary school, that it's, you know, you're keeping track of that, you know, having just having records is always an important thing to make sure that we're tracing if there are any issues that come up. Purchasing from something like a local FFA chapter is also, you know, a great practice. You know, sometimes like FFA chapters might have a greenhouse or something like that, or they might have some sort of food production that they're doing. So then you could also just make sure that you're keeping that information from them. That's written there above just that purchase date, the name of vendor, your costs, you know, how much you're, how much you're purchasing from them just to know that, just to know that your bases are covered of, you know, OK, on Tuesday, we served, you know, strawberries that were from the local FFA chapter. And, you know, hopefully there'll be no problems with it. But if there ever were, then you would know, you know, where that produce came from that day and be able to trace back any issues and be able to help prevent that from happening in the future. So OK, so you can advance to the next slide. So again, thinking of other things that schools can do to reduce their risks if they do want to purchase locally. This is kind of more on the produce side. But again, this would apply to other products as well. There are some on farm checklists and guides available. I'll show those here in a minute. There's a number of different sources available for those sort of checklists. Different extension services, again, across the U.S. have those. USDA, Iowa State has a good one I'll show in a minute. So schools can also do their own auditing. I know like my kids is local school, they do go out to the local produce farmer that they buy produce from. And, you know, and she visits him and makes, you know, just kind of looks around and sees what, you know, sees what sort of production practices he's using and so on. So so that's also a good practice. OK, you can go to the next slide, please. So here's this checklist that I mentioned from Iowa State. And I think at the end of my presentation, I'll have a link to this where you can find it on their website. And then maybe Scott could put it in the chat for us. But but I'll have that here in a minute. But so this checklist is just a great way to kind of, you know, if you were helping a school to go to visit a local farm and think about the things that they to be looking for to make sure that that, you know, produce is going to be as safe as possible. Here's some good things to look at and to kind of think through. You know, how we can reduce that risk as much as possible. So OK, go to the next slide. So again, I kind of mentioned this already, but just visiting the farm, observing their practices, and this would be produce or any other product that you might be buying from a local farmer, you know, just developing that strong relationship. Again, like Anna talked about, is really helpful. And then, you know, just inspecting incoming product, just like you would with any incoming product, you know, when schools are receiving their products, they want to make sure that they are safe and that they've been handled properly, that the transportation of those products is also safe. You know, I grew up on a farm and I know that farmers carry all sorts of things in the back of their pickups. And so, you know, we want to make sure that the pickup wasn't just used to haul sheep. And then they use it to haul watermelons the next day. They did it clean out the back of the pickup, you know. So you just want to make sure that that things are being done in a safe manner, you know, through the whole process as much as possible. OK, you can go to the next slide. So OK, yeah, here I talk about transportation. So so this is the example that I just talked about with transportation in the back of the pickup there. But, you know, again, just thinking about the time it takes for transportation of the product, whether it's eggs or whether it's beef or whether it's produce, you know, that the school is getting from the from the producer that it's all, you know, being done in a reasonable short amount of time so that the products aren't getting above into that temperature danger zone of 40 to 140 degrees for more than two hours is the key. We want to make sure that things are kept as cold as possible. And then just thinking again about, you know, purchasing and deliveries, you know, just just inspecting the local the products that are coming in again. And like Anna talked about, you know, if you are buying whole carrots instead of buying already shredded carrots or whatever, you know, then then there's the school is going to have to have an extra step of just making sure that they are washing the produce. And and if again, if they are going to be chopping it or cutting it, peeling it and that it is refrigerated within two hours of that happening. OK, you can go to the next slide. So then just like Anna talked about, school gardens is another great way for kids to learn about how food is grown and and where food comes from and that it doesn't just come from the store. So just basic things to think about. We have I have a publication there on the bottom that goes into, you know, it's like four pages. It's it's relatively short, but it goes into a lot more detail about. Thank you, Scott. It goes into a lot more detail of of, you know, what you should be looking for in a school garden. But but these are the basic things, you know, the water source, composting or using soil amendments, you know, manure safely. And then, you know, working with the school grounds crew, keeping animals out of the garden. That's not easy, of course. But, you know, doing the best that you can to keep keep animals out as much as possible, because it reduces the yield and it also obviously can compromise food safety. And then thinking about when you're harvesting, you know, doing that in a safe manner as possible. And then, again, like I mentioned before, storing that garden produce, you know, if there's school garden is producing lettuce or whatever it might be that it's stored, you know, separately from the lettuce that you might be getting from another farmer or from your main line distributor so that you do know, you know, if there ever was a problem, you would know which which problem the product was from. I will say I just I remember very well. One of the first times I knew that our my kids of school had a good farm to school program was I happened to hear from the school of the school that they didn't like I think my daughter with my oldest was a kindergartener. And that was back in whatever year that was that there was a big lettuce recall around Thanksgiving from California, maybe 2019 or 28. 18, I don't remember. But anyway, our kids of school was still serving lettuce. And I remember thinking like, oh, interesting. And she said, yeah, we're buying locally. So we're not affected by that big recall. So they actually had, you know, lettuce available at the school. So so anyway, sometimes, you know, again, like in a talk about having that local source can protect you from if there's recalls of a national source and can protect you from that supply chain bottlenecks of using a national source as well. OK, next slide. So school salad bars, again, this is kind of the, you know, the same same principle is just using the produce, you know, on the plate, but just in a little bit different way. You know, it's it's this this website gives more information about salad bars, which is a great way to get more local produce into your into the menu. Again, with any salad bar, you want to make sure that it's kept below 40 41, make sure that there's tongs that the kids aren't grabbing things with their hands and just keeping it clean. But this is a great way to provide that local produce. And like Anna mentioned, like a harvest of the month type of program and, you know, labeling that produce of kids. No, this is from a local farm, you know, is a great way for kids to learn more about where their food comes from. OK, next slide. OK, so here's towards the end here. Just some resources that are available. So this is some great websites of from USDA. And then there's one from Iowa State that I showed earlier. So you can take a look at those resources and find just find some some good resources if you are, you know, if your local school is. Oh, thank you. I'll check on the site too. Sorry about that. So you can see, you know, how what what things schools can look at to make sure that they're getting the safest product and possible. OK, you can go to the next slide. All right, great. So yeah, and you can go to the next. So this is just pictures of my kids and thinking about the garden and our backyard and how much they learn from the garden is a great experience for them to learn more. So here's my contact information with some some of our other resources that we have available too. So and with that, we're really happy to take questions if anybody has has any questions for for Anna or myself. Well, thank you, Anna and Landa. That's a lot of great information. Please type any questions you have in the chat. Julie, I see Claire up at the top had asked Anna about the statistics. Oh, it says, can you share those, especially the school one? I don't know. Maybe Anna just or maybe Claire is wondering about having the slides or I'm not sure. I just was did see that one come up. Oh, OK. I can share. Maybe I can find it now, too. I can maybe stop sharing my screen. And a lot of those came from the National Farmer School Network and they have a nice PDF. It's I think it's three or four pages that walks through a lot of those stats and shows the original source for that data. So I'll try to find that right now and put it in the chat. And just so everyone knows they did provide their their PowerPoint as a PDF. So that will be on the field to fork resources. So you will all have access if you want to see more clearly. And I'll take a closer look and study. I did pop in the chat, the survey that I mentioned earlier. So, you know, you can do that any time now or when you get the link, which usually comes out the day after. And that is connected to a random drawing survey. So you would have chances to win prizes as well as a little thank you. So Jennifer is raising her hand chat. Scott, could you give her permission to talk? Yep, just did. Hello. So I would really like to do this in my schools. And sadly, I have been kind of half listening and half preparing for a thing that I have to leave for like almost now. So I was just wanting contact info and just to say that you guys have really inspired me. I'm super excited about this. I think this is something I can make happen in my area. I need to like baby step be kind of like weighted into the pool. And I love that idea of the crunch thing in October. I think that might be like a kind of a, you know, what they call zero gravity entry or whatever, zero clearance entry, like toe in the water thing. So I appreciate those different examples. And I think I'm going to need to watch this again and reach out to you guys when I have questions. And I really appreciate, Landa, you mean on here as well, because I can hear all of the things in the background of like, we can't do that. That's not something we've ever done before. This is different. And anytime something is different, there's always, you know, liability. We're going to get sued. There's some bad, terrible, awful thing can happen. So I'm glad that you've covered some of that and that are available to answer that when it comes up. Well, very good. As I said, you'll be able to see all the PowerPoint slides. And I think both of our speakers had their contact information at the end of their talks or the beginning. I don't remember which. Yeah. And if anyone from a different state, I can try to help connect you with who your lead is for your state to that might have more of that specific information if you reach out and I can maybe direct you other places too. Oh, that would be awesome. Yeah, I'm here in Missouri. OK, yeah. Yeah. So Ronda has a question and it's to Anna. Can a non-farmer donate excess vegetables to schools? And Landa, you can follow up. If a school will take excess vegetables, what documentation of growing procedures should be submitted with the vegetables since a backyard gardener wouldn't do gap? I think I might let Landa tackle the all of the liability and everything that's embedded in this type of question. Yeah, sure. I'm happy to chat about it. So so when I was talking about like being gap certified, that was just something I was saying. That's just a suggestion. I mean, like I would not. It's really up to each school what their requirements are. And it's really, you know, and unfortunately, it's kind of state by state dependent on exactly what your rules are locally. But generally speaking, you know, there's I think it's fine for schools to accept excess vegetables. I mean, it's, you know, if I was so if I was a school food service manager or if my kids are going to a school, you know, I would want the school food service manager to, you know, to think through like, OK, what risks are there involved? Like, you know, I probably wouldn't I would probably discourage schools from taking like lettuce from a local garden or from a local gardener or maybe even strawberries. Those are higher risk foods, but, you know, things like maybe apples or something like that, you know, those are, you know, those are grown higher above the ground, you know, their lower risk. You know, I think that would be OK. It's definitely I see it's three o'clock, so I'll stop rambling. But, you know, it's definitely really up to the local level exactly what they want to do. So there's really, you know, so there's really no one size fits all rule like, yes, a local gardener can or yes or no, a local gardener cannot donate excess vegetables to the school. It's really a matter of you talking to the local school to see what they say. And again, I would say that, you know, it's OK, but just to make sure that, you know, I mean, encourage the gardener to use safe practices, encourage them to attend some extension trainings, you know, we have lots of stuff available online, you know, just to make sure people are doing as safely as possible. Very good. Well, I'm going to draw us to a close because we do try to stay within an hour. You will have contact information for both of our speakers. And I certainly thank them for sharing their expertise today. And I'm inspired to. So thank thank you to both of you for this. I hope that many of you will join us for our last session. And if you missed any of the previous ones, please go and check out that archive. There's a link right above that's got put in, I believe. So check check out all of that other information. We have a lot of handouts and a lot of other resources. So thanks again and thanks to everyone for being here.