Farm to School with The Food Mill
Our Kids Deserve a Healthy Future.
Part of The Food Mill’s mission is to provide access to fresh food and offer education on how to prepare it. One of our four pillars is to educate through resources on good nutrition habits, growing your own food, and how to cook nourishing food. Through our strong school partnerships, our farm to school programming is the how behind our why.
Empowering Students through Nutrition & Growing Education: Our FoodCorps Partnership
Foodcorps partners with schools, nonprofit organizations, and communities to nourish kids’ health, education, and sense of belonging. Foodcorps is an AmeriCorps group that works alongside educators and school nutrition leaders to provide kids with nourishing meals, food education, and culturally affirming experiences with food that celebrates and nurtures the whole child.
We value our relationship with Foodcorps, as their model takes the workload off the principal, teachers and administration and utilizes supervisor organizations like us to do the heavy lifting to make farm to school programming successful and sustainable for the long term. Our organizational goals also align as Foodcorps and The Food Mill would like to see every elementary age child have access to food education and nourishing food by 2030!
On average 84% of students receive either free or reduced-price lunches in Foodcorps schools, relative to 77% nationwide. Muscogee County is over 80% and higher than the state’s average of 62%. This is a drastic increase from just 37% in 2015 according to the Piedmont Community Health Needs Assessment, indicating an increase in poverty and food instability in our city.
Farm to School Impact
It has been proven that Farm to school programming has a positive impact on students' eating habits when the Foodcorp curriculum is implemented. After just ten hours of hands-on nutrition and farming lessons students show a 54% increase in their preference of choosing fresh fruits and vegetables than they did prior to being involved in the program. In fact, kids involved in the farm to school programs are also eating 3x times more fruits and vegetables than kids who are not. According to the American Heart Association, what a child eats from birth up until age 13 directly impacts their chances of developing heart disease later in life. Even if habits change to healthier ones as an adult the risk of heart disease can increase significantly if a child has poor eating habits early in life.
In 2023 alone, our farm to school programming with Foodcorps service members have already taught growing and nutrition education to 1,368 students, presented 138 class lessons, 163 hours teaching class, 222 hours in the school garden, and 106 hours in the cafeteria this school year.
- Dimon Elementary School
- Fox Elementary School
- Brewer Elementary School
- Key Elementary School
- Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School
- Dorothy Height Elementary School
- South Columbus Elementary School
- Reese Road Leadership Academy
Each of our partner schools has two service members, as well as its own garden. Foodcorps service members create lesson plans around the garden and also create taste testings for the students using the garden vegetables to create interest and exposure around farming and healthy food.
