Farm to Kids
Farm to Kids initiatives connect kids with nutritious, locally-grown foods and support farmers in their communities.
Farm to Kids projects include at least one of these three core strategies:
Serving locally-grown foods in meals and snacks
Offering food and farming-related educational activities for children
Gardening and growing food with children
What kind of settings include Farm to Kids activities?
Farm to Kids is growing across a wide variety of settings, including early care settings such as family childcare, Head Start, and center-based childcares. Farm to Kids is also embedded across K-12 settings and looks a lot of different ways.
Farm to Kids is good for kids, good for farmers and good for communities.
Classmates taste testing farm to school salads in St. Paul.
Janssen Hang, executive director of the Hmong American Farmers Association, speaks with USDA members.
Members of the community joining the Land Stewardship Project and Clean Rivers Partners touring farms in MN.
Why is it so beneficial?
Children try delicious local foods during a key window of opportunity as they are developing taste preferences and eating habits. Studies show they eat more servings and more varieties of fresh fruits and vegetables per day, laying the groundwork for reducing obesity and diet-related disease and increasing lifelong health.
Participating farmers gain access to a new market to sell their items and benefit from being able to plan ahead and potentially make larger sales than they could at the farmer’s market.
Communities strengthen relationships, and local purchases keep money circulating to support local businesses and neighbors.
It’s a win-win-win.
Farm to Kids is growing in Minnesota!
Minnesota has a vibrant community of Farm to Kids stakeholders across the state. Sign up here for our quarterly newsletter where we will share resources, highlight funding opportunities and lift up innovative success stories—and join our Facebook group to ask questions, share your experiences, and find out about resources and upcoming events!