From the Field
Farm to School Evaluators Discuss Farmer & Climate Benefits of State Program
New Environmental Brief Released

California leads the country in funding Farm to School (F2S) initiatives aimed at increasing local, organic and climate smart foods in school meals.
As part of an ongoing evaluation of the state’s Farm to School Incubator grant programs, Tim Bowles, Faculty Director at BFI, and Yvonne Socolar, a research scientist in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley, recently released a detailed brief on the first year of their research examining the environmental outcomes from the F2S program.
I recently sat down with Tim and Yvonne to discuss the findings of a detailed brief that was recently released following the evaluation team’s first progress report. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Steven Low: For the average person, could you describe the fundamental concept behind Farm to School?
Tim Bowles: Farm to School at its most fundamental sense, is building connections in our local and regional food system, and it’s about linking local and regional food producers with their school communities in ways which mostly fresh, whole foods are getting into the meals that students in local districts are eating. And so this is a great way to reconnect some of these relationships between institutional buyers of food, and local and regional food producers.
Yvonne Socolar: And I’ll just add that Farm to School often has a component of education and also sometimes of even bringing farms to schools, so there’ll be gardens and outdoor education, and then also education about the produce that’s being brought into schools as well. So it’s a way to integrate that more fully into classroom curricula.
Steven: What does the evaluation group intend to accomplish by the end of the project?
Tim: The evaluation team hopes to understand the impact of California’s Farm to School Grant Incubator program, which has already received about $100 million from the state. And these grants are going to school districts; to individual food producers, farmers, ranchers; to food hubs and other links in the Farm to School supply chain. What we’re focused on is if participating in this Farm to School grant program leads to potential environmental benefits, and in particular, climate benefits. The evaluation team is also trying to understand what economic benefits potentially exist for producers involved. What makes it work for school districts? Who are the key players along the Farm to School supply chain that lead to success for all of the folks involved?
Steven: What did your research reveal as some of the economic and climate benefits to producers of having large institutions as consistent buyers of food? What is the hope of connecting public schools with local growers?
Yvonne: It’s still too soon to tell. We’re in the process of gathering and looking at the data that we need to start answering those questions. The hope is that by giving small and mid-sized diversified farms and ranches access to stable markets, to being able to diversify who they’re selling to, that will create a stable funding stream that they can rely on. For a lot of the farmers that I’ve talked to—they certainly crave some kind of stability and consistency in what they’re able to sell, and just being able to plan ahead is something that can be difficult to do as a farmer.
One of the things that’s really exciting to me is that the application process for the grant is working well. So it seems clear that the farms that are getting grants are farms that are already using environmentally beneficial practices at higher rates than we typically would see statewide. So these are farms that are cover cropping more, they’re more likely to be organic, they’re more likely to use low or reduced tillage. And so it’s very promising to see that these are the farms that are actually able to get grants, and then know that these are operations whose longevity and resilience and stability are being encouraged and supported by receiving these grant funds.
For all those practices we will attach some estimate of carbon benefits from cover cropping or using crop rotation that is likely to either reduce emissions or sequester more carbon compared to the conventional alternative. We’re also seeing that the challenges that these farms are most likely to report experiencing in general are also often the ones that the grant is most likely to address. So these are farms that say labor is really hard. They say getting appropriate infrastructure is really challenging. Finding markets is really challenging. And those are also among the top things that farmers say the grant has been able to support them with. So that also is really promising.
Tim: Yeah, this is an important additional market for farmers who are already using climate friendly practices. By helping to support their financial viability, they’re able to find a values-based market niche that should help them continue doing what they’re doing, as opposed to other market sectors where they might have to compete more directly with more conventional farms who may be able to offer lower prices.
Steven: Thank you, both for sitting down with me. I really learned a lot this morning. I’m looking forward to seeing the next report.
Learn more about the Farm to School evaluation here. For the new Environmental Findings Brief, please click here. The F2S Program Evaluation Team will release its next progress report in the fall of 2025. If you would like to stay updated on this project and related BFI news, please subscribe to our monthly newsletter.
Photo courtesy of Jurupa Unified School District