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Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar. As Melissa said, this is Matt Benson with
the USDA Farm to School Program, and we are very excited to have a great webinar lined
up today as part of our focus and series on Cooperative Extension and its participation
in Farm to School. We thought that with the release of the 2015 Farm to School grant program
Request for Applications, this would be the ideal time to kind of highlight how Extension
professionals are working with and involved with different grant projects across the country.
And today we have two great presenters from Wisconsin and Nevada. Let's see here. Just
to kind of get started, take care of a couple housekeeping things. You can download a copy
of today's PowerPoint presentation. At the top of the screen, at the top right-hand corner,
you'll see a couple of document symbols, and that's where you can just click that and download
a copy of the PowerPoint. You can ask questions a couple different ways. You can ask questions
online at any time using the Q&A tab at the top of the screen. You can just type that
in and we'll monitor that. You can also ask a question by pressing star one on your telephone,
and that will allow the operator to open your line and ask the question verbally. So we'll
wait and hold all questions until after the two presentations just to allow them to get
through their material, but I would just encourage folks to, if you have a question, so you don't
forget it, write it down and we'll definitely get back to that right after the two presentations.
So I hopefully just wanted to make a brief mention that everyone who registered for today's
webinar will receive an email from me asking you to complete a short evaluation of today's
call, so look for that email and we appreciate any feedback you might be able to provide.
It's just going to take two minutes, that survey you'll get, so look for that. Just
to kind of provide a brief introduction before we get started with the presentations, USDA
Farm to School Program began in 2010 as a result of passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free
Kids Act. And it directed USDA to create a Farm to School program. And as part of that
program it gave USDA and asked us to create a national grant program to award $5 million
to competitive grant projects. And this is the third year that that grant program is
up and running. It also directed USDA to provide training and technical assistance to help
schools increase the use of local foods in school meal programs and directed us to conduct
some research and evaluation about the growth of Farm to School and document best practices.
Just recently USDA hired seven new full time regional Farm to School coordinators across
the country, and we are very excited to have these folks join our team. And each regional
lead in Farm to School is located in the FNS Regional Office. You'll see here on the map
the blue stars represent where those offices are. And contact information for all of those
folks is available online on the Farm to School Program website. At the left-hand side you'll
just want to see the USDA Farm to School staff tab, and you can find the regional lead person
in your area. So, for today's webinar we have two wonderful presenters. We are joined by
Jason Fischbach with the University of Wisconsin Extension, and Seth Urbanowitz with the University
of Nevada Cooperative Extension. Jason is the Ag agent for Ashland and Bayfield Counties,
and Seth is the Extension educator in White Pine County, just outside of Reno. I know
we have a lot of folks, too, joining that are with Cooperative Extension. I had the
pleasure to work for Virginia Cooperative Extension for almost five years prior to coming
to USDA. And just for anyone who may be a little less familiar with what Cooperative
Extension is or may be looking for additional partners for your grant application that you're
working on, just to provide a little context, Cooperative Extension is a nationwide educational
network that supports rural and urban development through a number of different initiatives
related to agriculture, family and community development, youth development, healthy food
eating and nutrition. Each state has a Cooperative Extension System, otherwise known as Extension
System, that's run through the land grant university, or land grant universities depending
on where you are. And then each state has local and regional Extension offices across
the state. At the national level, Extension is run through the USDA National Institute
of Food and Agriculture, or NIFA. And really regardless of what Extension is doing in your
state or in your region, Extension educators are in communities really to address emerging
and priority needs. So depending on what the actual program focus of each person is, that's
kinds of beside the point. The point is that they're there to help address issues or help
solve problems for local communities. So we would encourage you to reach out to your Extension
office if they can perhaps help you. There's a link there to a map that provides contact
information for each state Extension System, and then each local and regional office within
each state system. So that's kind of an overview of what Extension is in case people may be
less familiar with it. I'm just going to turn it over -- before we get started with the
presentations, we thought that we would just provide a brief summary of the USDA Farm to
School Grant Program this year, and I'm going to turn that over to my colleague Matt Russell,
who is the Grant Program Manager for USDA. Matt. Thank you, Matt. I appreciate it. Again,
my name is Matt Russell, and I'm the Grant Manager for the USDA Farm to School Grant
Program. And I'm really excited to be here to share information about the program with
our Cooperative Extension partners who have, over the last two years, played a significant
role in a number of projects and who, I'm sure, will play a significant role in a number
of projects moving forward. So a quick overview of this year's Request for Application, or
RSA, is that it includes four funding tracks. The first one is Planning grants, and Planning
grants are for school districts that are just getting started with their Farm to School
efforts. Planning grantees go through a year-long strategic planning process that is facilitated
by our colleagues here at the Farm to School Program, so there are a number of training
modules that the Planning grantees will use to develop ultimately an implementation plan
to -- so, again, it's a year-long strategic planning process. Different modules include
building your Farm to School team, procurement options, food safety, school gardens, so a
variety of the main topics that contribute to a lot of Farm to School Programs. There's
Implementation grants which are also for school districts, and those are for schools that
have Farm to School experience and have demonstrated success in Farm to School activities and want
to expand and build on their past operations. We also have Support Service grants. Support
Service grants are for other eligible entities including nonprofits, Indian tribal organizations,
agricultural producers, local and state agencies, and all this -- you don't have to get bogged
down in details. All of this information is available in the Request for Application,
which Matt links to here. And then last is the Conference and Events grants. And those
are open -- and I should mention that for all three -- and we'll talk more about it
-- but for all three that Cooperative Extension can partner on one, two and three, so Planning
grants, Implementation grants, Support Service grants. And we have a number of Cooperative
Extension partners, like I mentioned earlier, on past projects. The Conference and Events
grants is new this year, and it's awarding up to approximately $500,000.00, and Cooperative
Extension can apply for Conference and Events grants. And the funds are intended to be used
for conferences, trainings, networking events, at the state level or the regional level,
multi-state level or at the national level, to promote learning, networking, and education
around Farm to School related activities. There might be a networking meeting for vendors
in the state so that they can learn about Farm to School opportunities, and this would
be a conference (inaudible) that could support that. There may be a statewide training on
Farm to School and how Cooperative Extension plays a role in that in building capacity
and networking around those Farm to School activities. Another example of how those funds
could be used. So there is slightly more flexibility in the Conference and Events track than who
can apply. So, again, I encourage you to take a look at the Request for Application. The
Letters of Intent for the Conference and Event grant track are due right around the corner
in just a few weeks, on April 2nd, and those are simply emailed into the address that you
see here. And, again, this information is in the Request for Application. It's a slightly
abbreviated application process compared to the full applications that are submitting
for the Planning, Implementation and Support Service grants. So if you're interested in
that, please check out the Request for Application, and don't hesitate to call us or send us an
email if you have any questions about it. The application period for schools or organizations
you may partner with for the first three types of grants, Planning, Implementation and Support
Service, are due at the end of April on April 30th. And those are submitted through grants.gov.
So, again, there's two different application deadlines for Conference and Events. That's
April 2nd and for the other grant tracks it is April 30th. Matt has listed here our website.
That's the best place to go for information. You can find out more specific details about
the different types of grants and all the contact information and the instructions on
how to submit proposals. So with that I'm going to turn the microphone over to Matt
and look forward to sticking around and answering questions at the end of this session after
we hear more about how Cooperative Extension has partnered to date on the grant program.
So we're going to get into our two presentations. Our first presenter is Jason Fischbach with
the University of Wisconsin Extension. And Jason, as I said, is the Ag agent for Ashland
and Bayfield Counties in northern Wisconsin. He has a B.A. from Carleton College and a
Master's from the University of Minnesota, where he studied agronomy and plant genetics.
His work in Farm to School is primarily focused on helping producers connect to schools and
supply chain development. After work he and his wife operate a small diversified farm
with production of fruits, vegetables, and pastured poultry. Jason is currently collaborating
on a Support Services grant funded in 2014 titled Meeting the Challenge of Winter, Using
High Tunnels to Expand Farm to School in Northern Wisconsin. And this is, I believe, a one-year
project that Jason is working on, and he has also involved several of his colleagues at
the local and regional level with Extension to support the project. So with that I'm going
to turn it over to Jason. Great. Thank you, Matt. Happy to be here and share our experiences
with Farm to School to date. Just wanted to first set the stage, kind of give you some
background information about where we are and why we're doing what we're doing, and
then go into more details about the project that we were lucky enough to get funded, and
go from there. So we are located far northern Wisconsin, right along the shores of Lake
Superior, up here at the far northern tip. And to zoom in a little bit, we'll see -- so
our project is involved with five school districts, and you can see the red dots on the map. I
wanted to say a couple things about this region. It's Bayfield County, this side, is about
70% national forest. And Ashland County isn't far behind. And so our agricultural lands
are fairly limited. But our diversity of agricultural production is really quite astounding. We've
got dairy and beef production, cash crops, vegetables, and this is all Lake Superior,
and it creates a fantastic microclimate for fruit production, particularly in the Bayfield
region. So although our farms are fairly small, for example our largest apple producer is
about 40 acres, our diversity of production is quite astounding. So this, as we'll discuss
later, creates some challenges and opportunities for our project. To give you some sense of
the population size, Ashland County has about 16,000 total, Bayfield County about 15,000.
And this is the total student population for each of the five school districts. Not the
graduating class, the total school population K through 12. So our schools are really very
small, and, in fact, all but the Bayfield South Shore and Drummond districts, everybody
is in one school, which is really a great opportunity because we can do a lot of creative
things with the full school population. Just going to go through some pictures. This is
the Washburn School garden. It's really our flagship garden in the region. It sort of
sets the standard for all of the other school districts. That is one advantage of having
multiple school districts involved is they're comparing and contrasting, right. Parents
of one district take a look at what's happening in the other districts, so kind of have a
little pressure on each district to do some good things. So this, at one point -- I think
it still is -- is the largest school garden in the state of Wisconsin, and it's been around
for at least five years. And it's driven primarily by the superintendent of the school district
and the staff are very much dedicated and fully behind the school garden. And they're
real active. Here's some smiling kids out with one of their teachers learning about,
it looks like, peas. Drummond School garden is just a couple of years old and they've
focused on raised beds. The Bayfield School garden, if you look off in the distance, this
is Lake Superior, so they've got a million-dollar view from their school garden. And it's about
five years old. And they've been real active. Again, this is one of the smaller districts
with K through 12 in one school, so they've got elementary kids all the way up to high
school kids working in this garden. This is the Ashland School garden its first year.
I apologize I didn't get a picture here from the last couple of years, but it's now fenced
in with a shed and most of this is in raised bed production, so it's almost as big as the
Washburn School garden. This has a larger student population, and they're really just
getting started. This is the South Shore School garden, again one of the smaller districts.
And they've got more incorporation of fruit trees. We just see one side of the garden.
But a very similar model where the staff are actively engaged with students and using it
in classroom curriculum. So why Farm to School in our particular region? And I don't think
these reasons are any different than elsewhere, but from an Extension standpoint, the reason
we're involved is because our traditional model of listening to our community. Listening
to parents, listening to school administrators, listening to staff. They've come to us asking
for assistance. And these are primarily the reasons why. Parents in particular want to
see improvement in the quality of food that's served in the school lunches. Right now with
the exception of the Washburn School District, our lunch program is pretty standard. Chicken
patty on bun, chicken nuggets, that kind of thing. Most applicable, though, are the parents
concerned about the quality of the school snack, and actually that's one of the easier
approaches to Farm to School is not so much the school lunch program, but the school snack
program, both provided by the school. Or, in our districts, the parents themselves sign
up on a rotating schedule to provide a snack for the kids in their particular home room.
And the quality of those snacks, they see it more as a treat, so they get a lot of cookies
and cupcakes and packaged goods, and things that maybe parents don't want their kids eating
so much of. So that's where we've had the most success in terms of changing some eating
habits is in the school snack program. We've got a real strong agricultural heritage. You
don't move to northern Wisconsin, Ashland, Bayfield County, if you really love being
around people. This is a lot of folks that have homesteads and kind of live in the woods,
and so they very much want their kids interactively involved in teaching their kids life skills,
particularly around gardening and food production. The staff in particular are always looking
for opportunities for experiential learning and the school gardens provide that opportunity.
And them, this is sort of the more difficult one for us to solve, as it is probably everywhere,
is trying to use the school expenditures, so the money they spend on food, can we get
them to spend it on food produced within their own community and hopefully recycle those
dollars a little longer before they leave the region. So those are the reasons why we're
involved in Farm to School. Our role to date has been a couple of ways. The first is to
help the school districts and the producers understand kind of what they're talking about
in terms of the quantity of food that the schools actually purchase, and specifically
what foodstuffs they purchase, and then what the local production is and trying to find
the items that match the closest and sort of the least hassle to get into the school
districts. So that work has more or less been done already in our region. And then essentially
our role is to build Farm to School systems that last after all the initial hype, right?
So we know that Farm to School is an exciting topic. A lot of people are excited about it,
and because of that it's easy to overlook just what the impact might be. So having the
kids out harvesting five pounds of lettuce for the school cafeteria sounds great and
it gets a lot of press that first year, but really if you're looking at impact, it's next
to nothing. So we're trying to make sure that the school districts and the producers and
parents try to look at a bigger picture and say, okay, what do you want in your school
district and what can we do to help make sure that lasts. And another example is food service
coordinators, the first year, probably, are just fine buying from ten different producers
individually and getting all range of packaging, quality of product. But pretty soon that gets
tiring. And so if that's the only way that school food is sourced, it's just not going
to last. So we're trying to make sure that these systems are in place long after the
initial excitement goes away. So more specifically, in terms of our county offices here have four
extension personnel, one in agriculture, one in 4H and youth development, one in family
living, and one in community resource development. So we've worked together here on our Farm
to School programming, and my role has been procurement and production, helping the producers
and the eaters. Our youth development agents are working on developing in-school curriculum
to support the teachers. And then also some after school agripreneurism. I'll go into
more detail about this. And then our family living educators are working on the nutrition
side. So just quickly here on the Quantified Purchasing Production, right, so the first
step is to determine the school districts currently buy. And what we've found is that
what they currently buy, at least to our region, is so far from what the producers can actually
supply, that it's informational but ultimately the value of this process of quantifying this
purchasing is actually an opportunity to talk to the food services in the districts about
what they could buy. And I'll give you a great example of that here on this next slide. So
our initial survey work was done back in 2007, and like I mentioned, our region can grow
really nice apples. And so we wanted to understand what the school districts were buying with
respect to apples. And you can see they buy a fair amount of fresh apples on the open
market. They buy a fair amount of applesauce on the open market. They get a fair amount
of commodity applesauce. And then you add it all together in equivalent fresh apple
form, it's a fair amount of apples that are consumed. And one of the questions is, well,
why are you guys serving so much applesauce when we've got fresh apples available through
a large part of the year with some of our controlled atmosphere storage. And really
it boiled down to the quality of the apples. They were serving Granny Smith and Red Delicious
off the trucks, and, as you all know, those aren't the best tasting apples, especially
in comparison to fresh apples right out of Bayfield with the whole different range of
varieties that are available. So, been able to talk to them about, yeah, we know what
you buy now, but it's not a one-to-one exchange with respect to Farm to School. It's going
to involve some changing of the menus. And we're starting with the ones that are easiest
to change, and for us it's been apples. So on the production and procurement side, which
has been primarily my role, this is the problem that we all face, right, is that schools want
the convenience and pricing of a distributor, but they don't buy enough, in our cases because
the school districts are relatively small, or they don't pay enough to support a local
food hub. In other words, if they don't already have a local distributor providing local products,
the school districts alone aren't enough to build that distributor. So our solution has
been to build a food hub using other markets first, and then we have the economies of scale
in place and the systems, then it makes it easier for the school districts to buy product
with, of course, some changes like I talked about with the apples. So along those lines,
one of the roles that I've played with Extension, and primarily it has originated from some
of the Farm to School work, was facilitation and actually doing most of the grunt work
to pull this together. The Bayfield Regional Food Producers Cooperative, which is a 22-member
cooperative selling a whole range of meats, fruits, vegetables, value-added products,
that they're sourcing from their members within Ashland-Bayfield County. Now the markets to
get this going is one, a Community Supported Agriculture, a CSA. Two, the Duluth-Superior
market. Northland College, which is a liberal arts college here in our community, is a huge
supporter of local foods, and they have the buying power to pay prices that producers
in our region have to charge. So they're actually really a strong market and pulling this along.
We also have some wholesale markets that are developing, and because of these strong markets,
it's allowing the cooperative, then, to meet the terms of the school districts, and they're
closer together and so now they're starting to source more into the school districts.
Long term this is going to be far more sustainable than individual farmers because now the school
district personnel can do what they've always done and just call up their distributor and
place their order and they've got access to 22 member farms. So the way we've structured
this is a standing purchase order. This is basically a written agreement up front that
the producers and school districts can plan around, you know, how many pounds of carrots
are you going to supply, on what days of the week, from what time period. Essentially it's
a written contract. And then primarily what's being used for the school districts right
now is an Opportunity Buy program where the school districts get a list of what's available
from the producers. They place their order, and we're seeing the most traction through
the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Snack Food Program, which they've received some USDA dollars to
help supplement their purchasing powder. So moving on, a lot of the rest of the work of
our Farm to School is reintegrating agriculture into schools. And we like the idea of school
gardens, and parents and teachers and everybody else, the reason why we have these school
gardens is it's a living laboratory for teachers and students. It also provides hands-on opportunities
to teach about food, but also nutrition. And, and I'll go into a little bit more detail
here, we also see agriculture as an economic opportunity for students, and not only students
but their parents as well, with emerging, growing markets for locally-supplied product,
somebody has to grow it locally, and why not students? And we'll show you a model of how
that can be done. So this is our primary challenge. Three feet of snow from November through March.
And depending on the year, for example last year this is what our school gardens looked
like in May. So we have a very short growing season, and so, particularly when winter drags
on forever, the schools really only have a few weeks on either side of the season to
be involved in their school garden. So that's been our big challenge with Farm to School,
and so that's why we submitted the proposal that we did. And it's essentially three parts,
the project that we're implementing right now. One is that each school district is going
to get a 22-foot by 48-foot high tunnel, and that's, basically, an unheated greenhouse
that extends the season significantly and allows them to do more classroom science curriculum.
Then we'll be using those high tunnels in the summer as part of an agripreneurial program
for some of the older kids that have received some training about use of the high tunnel
and gardening in general can actually do some commercial vegetable production for sale back
to the school districts, or offsite through farmer's markets in the region. And then the
third part is a community initiative to help folks eat healthy local-sourced foods. And
I've broken these up by our program area within the Extension. Each of us kind of helps coordinate
the three primary objectives. So this is why we're excited about these high tunnels. This
is a high tunnel in our region last year, on May 10, 2013. You can see out the window
the snow has melted, but in other parts of the counties closer to Lake Superior they
still had a foot of snow on the ground. So this is without any added heat. You've got
beets on this side. You've got kale, peppers. You've got leeks growing. And on this bed
over here, I assume you can see the red dots, the spinach has already been harvested. So
this creates far more opportunities for Farm to School than we've ever been able to do
before. So these high tunnels will go in this spring and early summer, and we're excited
to help the school districts use them. So here is an example of extending the season,
again, with just a floating row cover and a high tunnel greenhouse. This is spinach
that they'll get one more picking off, and this is toward early December, so it really,
again, extends the season. What we envision is that in the spring we'll have some spring
greens and other crops grown in the high tunnels by the schools. Then the same on the fall
season, when they're back in session. And the challenge with all school gardens, and
the high tunnels is no exception, is who manages these things in the summer, and our goal is
to have these agripreneurs, the students themselves, either have the whole thing or divvy it up
into sections and each student gets a little piece, and so we see them transplanting in
hot house crops, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, that kind of thing. So kind of three seasons
out of one high tunnel. And we're basing this on the experiences of our fruit and vegetable
producers that have been using these high tunnels for a number of years in our region.
Then finally the agripreneur program, we hope that some of these students come out of the
program with enough skills and education that they can do something like this as a summer
job. So we envision high school freshmen or sophomores working with their family or off
site with some other collaborators, that they put up their own high tunnel. And we've got
some stipends to assist them where they're actually pumping out some produce. And ideally
they can make more money doing this as a summer job with half the work than they are flipping
burgers at a store somewhere in town. So this is what ultimately we'd like to see come out
of this project. Then finally one last slide. I apologize it's not the greatest picture,
but I wanted to give you a visual. This is our third objective. What we're working under
the assumption is that most families have a fairly limited menu and they tend to cycle
through maybe five to ten meals generally. So our thinking is if we can design meals
that are easy to make, that are healthy, that taste good, and that can be sourced locally,
if we can get those meals into these set menu rotations, and then we have restaurants, and
school districts, and everybody else on board to help produce these meals, that we might
be able to achieve our nutrition objectives and our local sourcing kind of all in one
project. So this has just started. Let me give you an example here. We call this the
Penokee Mountain Soup and Sandwich. It's nothing more than a BLT, but here's a carrot sourced
locally, the tomato, bacon, bread made with locally-milled whole wheat flour, spinach,
and a cup of soup which is potato leek soup. All of these things can be sourced in our
region from July through December, and if you buy tomatoes the rest of the year, everything
else can go much longer than that. So this is the kind of meal that we think would be
great. Now this one, you know, bacon isn't going to be allowed in our food service cafeterias,
but this might be one that the parents are serving at home. So that's it. Just wanted
to give you a snapshot of the kinds of projects that we're working on and hopefully give you
some examples of how Extension is involved in one particular project. Guess I'll pass
it on to Matt? Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Jason. Awesome to see the work you all are doing
in northern Wisconsin, and that's a beautiful view of the lake there that the folks have
in the school garden. That's a great picture. It's exciting to see how kind of your integrating
Farm to School work through kind of using a systems approach and throughout Extension
program areas. So that's really cool of how you're kind of addressing Farm to School through
each of Extension's focus areas. I know we have at least one question online, and we'll
address that shortly after our second presentation today. Our next presenter, as I said, is Seth
Urbanowitz with the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. Seth is the Extension educator
for the University of Nevada Reno in White Pine County. He has a Master's of Science
in Plant Science from South Dakota State University, and a Bachelor's of Science in Agricultural
and Extension Education from the University of Tennessee. He has a history of working
with farmers and ranchers to help meet their many diverse production needs. And so with
that I'm going to turn it over to Seth. Thanks, Matt. So we took a little bit of a different
approach. We collaborated with -- or I collaborated with -- the Nevada Department of Agriculture
to offer risk mitigation education set in the context of produce safety, which is kind
of an important topic and more on people's minds as of lately. So food service directors
at school districts and other maybe more risk-averse institutions like hospitals and things like
that might be a little leery about procuring local or organic produce from local producers,
so these trainings tried to help quell some of those fears, I guess. Okay, so as I noted,
I collaborated with Nevada Department of Agriculture to address some outreach concerns, and the
Nevada Department of Agriculture actually houses a good agricultural practices USDA
certified inspector that certifies un-farm food safety throughout Nevada and parts of
California. So we sought to educate on the (inaudible) food safety and un-farm practices
that mitigate the risk associated with contaminated produce. So like I noted it was important
to food service directors and other risk-averse institutions who might be seeking to source
locally produced horticultural products. And it was important to try to get that buy in
by farmers and adoption of food safety audits .I was lucky in that the Nevada Department
of Agriculture had written in an Extension component and I had just recently moved to
Nevada. So the NDA contacted myself and wanted to know if I would collaborate with them on
food safety education. So I put together a comprehensive curriculum, and I saw some trainings
at U.D. Davis's post-harvest center that does a lot with post-harvest handling and food
safety. So we collaborated by advertising the training to farmers. We also tried to
bring in health professionals, other Extension folks and agricultural professionals, and
then school district folks, including teachers. So this is more of a statewide program. I
actually live in, so as Jason mentioned, I live in White Pine County, which is actually
not adjacent to Reno but is actually the most remote -- I live in Ely, which is the most
remote city in the lower 48. So we offered training throughout the state, and these were
based on good agricultural practices. And I also authored a number of publications that
address those issues as well. So tailored to Nevada. Emphasis on small and medium farms
and direct market to growing. I also brought in the local USDA Gaps auditor, who works
for the Nevada Department of Agriculture as well to go over what's expected in a Gap audit.
And I also brought in local health district folks to speak on some of their requirements,
so meeting local health district requirements. Some of the outputs were one three-day training
and then two two-day trainings in the larger urban areas in Nevada. So Nevada is the most
urbanized state. It has a ratio of about 90 to 10 urban to rule, as far as population
goes. I think the national average is 80-20. And most produce farms are near urban areas.
Most of our outlying communities and cow, calf and hay production, so most of the produce
farms are going to be near those urban areas where there's more of a market. Another one
of the outputs was the Reno Small Farm Conference. Presented there the High Desert Farm Initiative,
which is a collaboration on campus between the College of Business and the College of
Agriculture. And they have numerous hoop houses and high tunnels, and they market primarily
locally to UNR Dining, and they're trying to market to U.S. Foods, which is a larger
distributor. So they needed to be Gap certified to market to UNR Dining. And they attended
the trainings, and I reviewed their food safety plan, and they ended up being certified, which
is a good thing. So many health professionals, farmers, ag teachers and ag professionals
were trained in these three trainings. There were about a hundred participants over three
trainings, so we had pretty good attendance. They basically increased their knowledge of
food safety and how risk can be mitigated on farm. I included things like product liability
insurance and, you know, a little bit of microbiology and things like that. We had good discussions
during the trainings because we had help garment folks and the USDA Gap auditor and myself,
farmers, so we really had a good discussion on a lot of the topics. So I also worked with
the Nevada Department of Agriculture to publish a school garden food safety kind of checklist.
So there's a lot of the health district folks were concerned about all the interest in school
gardens and disease transfer and things like that, so we kind of took a preventative approach
and developed -- or actually Justin -- developed a checklist to kind of guide teachers and
students on some good practices. And I'm currently writing a food safety curriculum. That will
be focused on Nevada and available to producers and food service directors, so kind of farm-to
fork understanding of what food safety is and what some of the preventative measures
that can be implemented to reduce that risk. Yeah, so like I said, it was well attended.
We had 70 to 100 participants. It was local (inaudible) advertised. I brought in expertise
from the NDA, Extension and health professionals, as well as farmers, which made for great discussions.
So some of the challenges I saw were the appropriate communication of food safety message. One
of the trainings I had, so I had trainings in Reno and Las Vegas, and the training I
had in Las Vegas, I had a lot of health district folks who were kind of unaware of how farming
is practiced, and it took a little bit of understanding on their part to kind of get
that they're not -- you know, farms can't be upheld to the same standards as a restaurant.
So the challenges of who you invite and then where that discussion could lead during the
question-and-answer period, I think a lot of discussion was -- time was spent on just
kind of, you know, educating them on farming practices, which good be a good thing I guess.
Also, the title of the program could have been improved. A lot of people saw Food Safety
and they thought of, you know, everything under the sun. Pesticide residues, which,
you now, is obviously a concern but not really for Gaps and things like that. Also people
were thinking of, you know, allergies to like glutens and peanuts. So there's some misunderstanding,
so being more -- if you're having food safety trainings, maybe crafting a better title would
be a good thing. And then the last point I already mentioned. Great. That's it. Thanks,
Seth. It's great how -- it's interesting to hear how you kind of are working throughout
the network in Nevada to bring different stakeholder groups together around an issue such as food
safety, and helping producers become Gap certified to work with institutional or sell to institutional
markets. Before we open it up for questions, I just wanted to mention that there's two
upcoming webinars today, actually, from the USDA Farm to School Program. One is directly
after this conference call or this webinar, and that is with Matt Russell and Laura Brown
talking about the Support Service grant track. That's at 1:00 Eastern. And then there's another
one at 2:00 Eastern, with Christina Cannell (sp) talking about procurement and how local
and regional farmers can sell to schools, particularly schools helping schools write
bids to target local and regional foods. Later tomorrow Matt and Laura will be doing another
webinar particularly specifically focused on the grant track for Conferences and Events.
That's tomorrow, again, at 1:00 Eastern. And then Christina has another upcoming webinar
on Thursday, March 27th, talking about how school districts can work with distributors
to source local and regional. I just wanted to mention those webinars. Again, the information
for each of those is online at the USDA Farm to School Program website. You can either
go on other the Grant Program tab or the Webinar's tab to get more information. I also just wanted
to mention again that folks joining will be receiving an email from me that just is a
link to an evaluation to provide some feedback about this webinar. So with that I think -- here's
the contact information for both Seth and Jason. And with that I think we're going to
open it up to questions. I know we have a couple questions online that we'll get to.
Before we do, to use Matt Russell's time wisely, I'm wondering if anyone has any questions
particularly focused on the Grant RFA. The Grant program, this year's Request for Applications.
If there's any questions about that, let's first address those before we get into the
questions for Jason and Seth. Any questions about the RFA? Is Melissa there? Yes. How
would people ask a question using the phone again? Thank you. At this time we'll begin
the question-and answer session. To ask a question, please press star one on your touch
tone phone. Please unmute your phone, and record your first and last name clearly when
prompted. To withdraw your question, please press star two. Once again, if you want to
ask a question, please press star one and record your first and last name. Thanks. So
any questions about the RFA while we have Matt Russell on the line? He's going to hop
off so he can prepare for his webinar about the Support Service grant track at 1:00 Eastern.
So anything for Matt? (Inaudible) I do want to point out that one of the questions -- Our
first question comes from Lindsay Lambert of Baton Rouge School system. Your line is
now open. Hi. Thank you all so much. Such valuable information today, Seth and James.
I have two questions for both of you. Seth, you're up first. A question about your food
safety garden checklist. How were those checklists distributed and were there any mini-trainings
in conjunction with those checklists, and how are they being used for the food safety
school garden issues? And then another question. When will that curriculum for school food
service directors and producers be available? The checklist is online. And actually -- I
forget her name, but there's somebody working NDA with Farm to School stuff, so she has
contact with a lot of the food service directors and superintendents and things like that.
And then Ashley also brought it up in our trainings and we had a lot of people working
in school gardens, things like that, so that attendance, so I guess that just online and
word of mouth and then at our trainings, I guess, primarily. And how about for the curriculum?
When -- is that available? Or when will it be? No, that will be done -- that will be
published by September. By September. And they can email you or maybe give you a call
to help direct them to where the checklist is online? Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Feel free
to email me with any questions, and I'll be happy to get you the information. Okay. Thanks
for that question, Lindsay. And I had two questions for Jason if that's okay, Matt.
Yeah. Go ahead. Question, Jason. Were you all actually using any of the school garden
produce in the cafeteria? And if so, how did you all sort of go about food safety issues
involved with that? And then another question, are there examples of Cooperative Extension-run
food hubs that you're aware of? So first the school gardens. So this was coordinated at
each individual garden level with the food service director and then typically there's
a lead staff member. So they've all had their own procedures, and I think it would be good
to have them start to standardize. And basically the harvesting is done by the staff rather
than the kids to try to mitigate some of the food safety concerns. But none of them have
a formal written plan. It's basically just an agreement with what the food service director
is comfortable with and what the staff is able to do. On the Extension-fun food hubs,
I don't know of any. So with respect to this food hub, I've provided a lot of direct assistance
to the organization itself through the Cooperative, but they run everything, the board of directors
and their hired staff. Our role at Extension has been as advisors and helping them find
information, helping to facilitate their meetings and organizational development, so kind of
traditional roles of Extension. Other than that, maybe there are other Extension-run,
but I'm not aware of any. Thank you all so much. Thanks, Lindsay. I know probably Matt
Russell, the Grant Program Officer, has to probably run to his other webinar, so if you
have questions, particularly about the RFA, I would encourage you to contact Matt Russell,
and his contact information is going to be (inaudible) from the school program website,
and you can also just email our general inbox, which the email is available online as well.
Are there other questions on the call? I think you can ask those using the star one to open
up your line? To ask a question, please press star one and record your first and last name
clearly when prompted. To withdraw your question, please press star two. Once again, if you
would like to ask a question, please press star one and record your first and last name
clearly. Matt Benson. We did get -- I'm going to go here in a minute, but we did get a couple
of questions over the Q&A tab that I think I can help answer, and they were directed
towards Jason just about, since, you know, Jason works for Cooperative Extension, and
Cooperative Extension is not eligible for the grant, who did he work with. And -- Yeah.
You know, you can answer that. But, you know, it's the cooperative, Bayfield Cooperative,
that you work with. Yeah, correct, the Cooperative applies for and receives administering the
grant. We're all helping. We have a project committee that's members from each school
district, and then our Extension staff, and then the Cooperative. But the Cooperative
actually has the chance. And in the case with Seth, the grant was awarded -- Jason's grant
was in 2014, and you can read a summary online. We have short summaries on the website. And
Seth is working at the Nevada Department of Agriculture with the recipient of that grant.
Yeah. And so with that note, everybody, I've got to run. I really appreciate the opportunity
to talk with you all, and I think it's great, and I can't say enough great things about
how important Cooperative Extension has played in so many of the projects. It's just a great
partner. And so don't hesitate to call me or get my contact information from Matt, or
just send questions in through our website if you have any other questions about the
grant program. And on that note I'm going to sign off, everybody. Thanks, Matt. Bye
everybody. Are there other questions from folks? You can either do that using the telephone
star one or you can use the Q&A tab at the top of the screen. We'll give it another couple
-- another minute or so. Again, with the Planning grants, the Implementation grants, and the
Support Service grants, Extension can be a partnering organization, a collaborator, and
have done so, as Matt Russell said, on many different projects. And in the case of Jason's
project and in Seth's work with the Nevada Department of Agriculture, that's the case.
And then the new track, Extension can be an applicant for the Conferences and Events track,
which is due to the Letter of Intent, I believe on April 2nd. Any other questions? To ask
a question, please press star one on your touch tone phone. Please unmute your phone
and record your first and last name clearly when prompted. To withdraw your question,
please press star two. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press
star one and record your first and last name clearly. There is one more online, and I don't
know if we fully answered it. This is from Jane in Connecticut, and it asks, for Jason,
how did he build the food hub/actual cooperative with the farmers? I'm not sure if you can
talk on anything about your role in that or how that cooperative got started? Yeah, so
it's about four years old and it's been a whole lot of blood, sweat and we actually
had some tears last year. Really it's nothing more than it started out as a focus group
that I convened with a handful of farmers that had talked about wanting to do this kind
of thing and just went from there. So the focus group conversation said, yes, let's
do this. Then I helped them envision what exactly they meant by that, and then they
started to pull together bylaws and policy statements and elected their board. This is
sort of one thing after the other. I do think, you this is a good point I was going to bring
up, is that in a lot of ways Farm to School is asking more of Extension, perhaps, than
we have provided in the past, so I think one of the roles we all struggle with is providing
research-based information from very much a third party perspective, and then sort of
hand you the information and you guys make the most of it versus Farm to School, there's
a lot of room to actually get in the trenches and get involved and actually take some initiative
to make these kinds of projects happen. It's challenging and requires a lot of time, but
it's something where you can have an impact. In today's political climate, I think at least
in my region, our county administrators and others are appreciative of the initiative
that's going behind some of these projects. It's got to be guided by the community and
stakeholders that are making decisions, but trying to provide a lot of direct assistance
when necessary to really jumpstart these kinds of projects is invaluable and I think it's
having an impact. Yeah, I couldn't agree more, Jason. Thanks for - . So I'm not -- I don't
think the operator or moderator has gotten any other questions online. I don't see any
other in the queue. Feel free to reach out to me, for those still on the call. If you
have any questions, you can email me at the email there on the screen or give me a call.
We'll be sure to get back to you as soon as possible. And I just want to thank both Seth
and Jason for being able and willing to share their experiences as an Extension professional
partnering with the USDA Farm to School grant program. I want to thank them for sharing
their stories about what's happening in their respective states and areas. This was not
part of the grant requirement, so we appreciate that. And then we'll have a recording -- a
recording of this webinar will be available online shortly at the Webinars tab under the
USDA website, and so you can get a recording of that. It will be turned into a YouTube
video. But with that, if there's no other questions, thanks everyone for joining us,
and I hope the material presented was informative, and I'm hoping that you're busy working on
a proposal that will support your Farm to School initiatives in your area. So with that,
I hope everyone has a good day, and we'll talk to you soon.