Four local school districts are piloting Feed Our Future’s Local Menu Takeover, serving locally sourced meals in select schools this week as a coordinated effort to celebrate Farm to School Month.
Farm to School Month raises awareness about connections happening all over the country among children, local food, and farms. The districts participating in the Local Menu Takeover are Campbell County Schools, Cincinnati Public Schools, Milford Exempted Village Schools, and West Clermont Local School District.
Schools were able to select from seven meal concepts (two breakfasts, three entrees, and two desserts) featuring ingredients like eggs and produce sourced from farms in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.
The Greater Cincinnati Regional Food Policy Council sub-awarded funds from their USDA Farm to School Implementation grant to participating districts. The recipients in this pilot will serve as Greater Cincinnati Region Feed Our Future benchmark schools and mentor other districts, continuing collaboration to inspire innovation around the Farm to School program in the future.
Feed Our Future launched ‘Local Menu Takeover’ in Northeast Ohio during the 2020-2021 school year, creating pre-planned, all-local menus concepts where the meal ingredients served to children were grown, raised, or processed in Ohio. The program proved that procuring local foods can be done in a replicable way, even in unpredictable conditions. School foodservice programs were provided turn-key solutions necessary to create the menu and market the concept to their staff, students, families, and communities.
The Greater Cincinnati Regional Food Policy Council is an initiative of Green Umbrella that strives to create cross-sector collaboration of organizations and individuals, community influencers, and decision makers to drive impact in creating healthy, equitable, sustainable food systems for all in the Greater Cincinnati region.
Feed Our Future: Local Foods for Growing Minds is an initiative of the Cuyahoga County Board of Health. Driven by its vision that all children deserve access to fresh, healthy, and (when available) local foods no matter where they go to school, it works across sectors to create opportunities in the food system to improve diet quality and nutrition security for school-aged children.
