Would it be feasible to create a ‘school garden’ program where the students themselves take care of and maintain the produce that goes into their daily lunches? It’d be a really great hands-on activity and at the same time would be educational! Seeds are usually cheap, although I’m not really sure how much gardening tools cost. Plus imagine how rewarding it will be for them to take care of another living thing, watch it grow and then eat it for lunch! Nutritious, organic food, and a rewarding and useful hands on skill? It sounds like a win-win.
Many schools are trying to do this. The National School Lunch Program actually offers grants to schools who want to do this, and there are several other regional programs (public and private) who help schools do this as well.
It’s worth noting, though, that this isn’t a free undertaking, and many schools struggle to find the funding for gardens (especially when you consider that many of these schools are struggling to pay for basic things in their classrooms, like enough books to go around.) In addition to seeds, many places will also have to bring in soil or materials for raised beds, trowels and shovels, gloves, and some sort of plan for how to water the garden (which could range from pretty easy to complicated.) Some may also need things like tillers to break up existing soil. This is all assuming, of course, that the school has a space that will work for this sort of undertaking. Some don’t.
Gardens also require knowledgeable and dedicated faculty or staff, because a garden isn’t something that just happens if kids go out once a week and run up and down the rows and pick a few weeds. This will likely mean finding and training interested teachers who will be interested in this project year-round. Especially if you’re hoping to produce enough food to feed an entire school regularly.
Which brings me to the next point. Schools have to have facilities to prepare and cook vegetables. This may shock you, but many school cafeterias do not have full kitchens. So a lot of schools, in order to get their veggies from garden to table, have to purchase supplies (including, often, major industrial appliances) and have to find/renovate space to do this. You also have to have people who are able to build a menu (according to all the usual guidelines) and prepare the meals under budget. If you’re at a school where cafeteria staff were previously just reheating pre-packaged food, this may mean replacing or supplementing your existing staff.
I say this to put into perspective how large a task this is. This isn’t just a fun, easy project that is easy to put into place. For most schools, it requires a lot of planning, training, budgeting, gaining community support, obtaining grants, building, and sometimes even renovating school grounds and facilities. It’s a project I absolutely support and wish more schools would do. My parents kept a garden throughout my childhood (even when we lived in a trailer park, we still had tomatoes and peppers), and they’ve started to build a small farm which they plan to be their primary business after they retire in a couple of years. I think gardening is a tremendous learning tool, in addition to a source of delicious and healthy fruits and vegetables. But it’s not cheap, and it’s not always feasible for every school.
Access to healthy food—especially fresh fruits and vegetables—is a huge issue right now. It’s something we should really be focusing on improving in schools in particular, since for many kids, this is their primary source of nutrition. We can’t keep saying that a few tablespoons of tomato paste qualifies as a vegetable, when every single one of us knows that this hardly qualifies as part of a balanced diet. We need better funding, better support, and better regulation. Period.