CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The state Board of Education was eating healthy and local during Wednesday’s BOE meeting in Charleston.
The menu for lunch was Shitake mushroom and sweet onion soup, multi-grain bread and a Cobb salad. Eighty percent of the ingredients came from right here in West Virginia. It’s all to promote October as national Farm to School month.
With Farm to School, schools and students around the state have bought into the program which supports school gardens, student farmers and culinary programs like the one at the Carver Center where students learn how to prepare a meal using locally sourced food.
The program has several benefits. One of the big ones is replacing unhealthy meals with fresh fruit, vegetables and grains in schools.
“Kids don’t always get nutritionally balanced meals at home. That’s one really good factor,” explained Chef Dale Hawkins with Farm to School.
He stressed most kids are scraping their plates clean.
“There was a national newspaper piece that came out three or four weeks ago that said kids aren’t responding to it. I think that’s more on a national level,” said Hawkins. “In West Virginia, it’s been highly successful.”
And that’s not the only benefit. Hawkins explained that over the past decade, locally sourced food has become more and more available.
“Ten years ago you couldn’t get the product and now people are coming to us with the product saying, ‘I have this. Will you buy it?’ It just makes me proud to be able to see that we’ve come that far,” said Hawkins.
The average age of a West Virginia farmer is 59. Hawkins hopes the program encourages some students to consider food production as a career.