Local Foods H.E.L.P Ferguson-Florissant Schools’ Students

Beginning this year, Ferguson-Florissant School District students will be enjoying more locally grown produce for lunch. FFSD is the latest school district to work with St. Louis University’s Nutrition and Dietetics Department to implement the Healthy Eating With Local Produce (HELP) program.

HELP, a Farm to School program dedicated to bringing fresh local foods into schools while supporting local agriculture, is the result of a Missouri Foundation for Health grant written by Dr. Mildred Mattfeldt-Beman, Chair of SLU’s Nutrition and Dietetics Department. The first round of HELP centered on the Maplewood-Richmond Heights School District with a goal to provide local produce, nutrition education and culinary training to students. The program engages paid high school students as culinary workers to process local foods that can be used in school cafeterias throughout the school year. HELP entails working closely with school food service staff to create delicious healthy foods for students while educating them about the benefits of a more healthful diet and the importance of supporting a local food system.

Following the hugely successful MRH pilot in 2009-2012, SLU sought to expand HELP into St. Louis Public Schools. However, implementation of the program saw some snags. The remainder of a new three-year grant cycle will be completed with students in the Ferguson-Florissant School District. The HELP-FFSD partnership came about due to the initiative of Kelly Bristow, manager of Ferg-Flor’s Food Services. Bristow previously worked with EarthDance to bring the farm’s produce to students for taste-tests of locally grown peppers and sweet potatoes. Says Bristow, “It was so much fun to see the students excited about trying vegetables. We knew we wanted to expand the program beyond taste tests to include more students at all grade levels so they could experience new local foods as well. The question came down to, ‘How can we offer locally grown foods to students across the whole district?’”

Kelly approached her Alma Mater, SLU, to access resources on how other school districts in the St. Louis Area were adding local produce safely to their menus. Dr. Millie then approached the school district with a proposal to complete the HELP-SLPS grant with Ferguson-Florissant.

“Providing children with healthy food at school is a monumental challenge and well worth the effort” says Mildred Mattfeldt-Beman, Ph.D. “One of our goals is to connect children with their food system – eating locally grown fruits and vegetables. HELP will get more produce from the farm to the school, which benefits the local economy while providing food at its peak of flavor. We’re fighting childhood obesity as we increase business for local farmers.”

For Kelly Bristow, HELP is “an exciting opportunity; the HELP grant will allow us to equip high school culinary students with the skills to become valuable members of the future workforce.” The HELP program will purchase processing equipment for McCluer North and McCluer South Berkeley schools. Equipment will include commercial grade immersion blenders, a cryovac system for safe food packaging, and commercial grade food slicers. The grant will also help to support first year wages for the students and kitchen managers, SerSafe certification for all students employed through the program, and raw product (sweet potatoes and tomatoes). These initial costs are the largest in getting a program like this off of the ground.

The grant funds through HELP are intended to jump start a sustainable system. Explains Bristow, “The students are creating a business that produces two items that will be used by the school district’s lunch program. After the final product is made, the school district will purchase the marinara and sweet potato coins to be used for their school lunch program. The revenue made from selling the food items to the school lunch program will allow for more purchasing of raw local product while paying students’ wages for more production. The program is essentially creating a food system within our own district.”

We at EarthDance are so glad to see the kick-off of this exciting program for our neighbors and friends in the Ferguson-Florissant School District. We know that local vegetables are tastier, and that when students have a hand in preparing their own meals, they enjoy them more. We look forward to future expansion of the program in FFSD. Coming soon to a cafeteria near you: arugula pesto pizza? Freshly harvested spinach salad? Future foodies, dreams do come true!