Elsevier

Appetite

Volume 168, 1 January 2022, 105741
Appetite

Impact of introducing a farm to school program on the number of school lunches served

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2021.105741Get rights and content

Abstract

Farm to school (FTS) programs are becoming more prevalent throughout the United States. Yet, their impacts on students' behaviors are still not well understood. This study analyzes the impacts of introducing the local procurement aspect of a FTS program in a Florida school district on the number of National School Lunch Program (NSLP) meals served and the selection of salad meals prepared with FTS products using daily school-level point of sale (POS) data, product procurement records, NSLP menu data and linear panel regression analyses. The study district implemented the FTS program in 15 of its 22 elementary schools between mid-October of 2015 and mid-January of 2016. Weighted difference in differences regressions that account for the non-random assignment of the district's elementary schools into the FTS program and variation in the timing of implementation across schools indicate that the introduction of the FTS program did not affect the number of NSLP meals served or type of meals served at schools with FTS programs. We find some evidence that students selected more NSLP salad offerings on days when these meals were prepared with FTS products; however, these findings were no longer significant when school-level fixed effects were included in the model.

Introduction

Motivated by high rates of childhood overweight and obesity, the United States’ federal government passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) of 2010 which set new nutrition standards for school meals. The HHFKA required schools participating in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), the second largest food assistance program in the United States, to offer more healthy items such as whole-grain foods and fresh fruits and vegetables (USDA, 2012a). In line with the goal of offering more healthful foods in school cafeterias, the HHFKA also officially established the Farm to School (FTS) program under the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) (USDA, 2012b).

As a result, more school districts began offering FTS programs in an effort to support local food systems and encourage healthier eating. Farm to School programs connect schools with farms in their region, enable schools to serve healthy local foods, and increase economic opportunities for local food producers (Christensen et al., 2019). The most recent USDA FTS Census for the 2013/2014 school year indicated 42% of districts participated in FTS programs; hence, FTS programs were in more than 42,000 schools in over 5200 school districts, reaching more than 23.6 million children (USDA, 2016). Local procurement of products served in school cafeterias is a principal aspect of FTS programs, although many FTS programs also encompass integrated nutrition education and practical learning activities such as school gardens (Becot et al., 2017; Kloppenburg et al., 2008; Prescott et al., 2020; USDA, 2018). The USDA FTS Census for the 2013/2014 school year indicated that schools spent approximately $790 million on local foods served as part of school meals; this represented a 105% increase over expenditures in the 2011/2012 school year when the first FTS Census was conducted (USDA, 2016). Approximately 46% of school districts surveyed in the most recent Census expressed the desire to buy more local foods in the future (USDA, 2016).

School-based interventions similar to the FTS program are becoming more prevalent in other countries, just as local procurement is becoming increasingly important in promoting healthy eating and the establishment and maintenance of sustainable food systems. Finland, Italy, Canada, England, and Ghana are a few countries that have programs similar to U.S. FTS programs (Filippini et al., 2018; Foodtank, 2017). Like FTS programs in the U.S., these initiatives aim to consistently provide nutritious meals for school-aged children through sustainable procurement and nature-based learning environments while improving local economies and social systems and fostering sustainable environmental and agricultural practices (Botkins & Roe, 2018; Filippini et al., 2018; Sumberg & Sabates-Wheeler, 2011). In a study of Italian programs, Filippini et al. (2018) find that features of the local agricultural systems, market constraints, concerns for sustainability, and the managers of the food programs at the schools affected the extent to which local and organic products were offered in the study schools. Furthermore, the positive effect of local procurement programs on local economies is well documented. A recent study by Christensen et al. (2019) finds that FTS programs improve economic activities in local communities by expanding market access. FTS programs allow farmers to gain access to larger markets and grow their operations through increased demand for local produce (Becot et al., 2017).

However, the increase in the number of FTS programs in the United States comes at a time when average daily NSLP participation (average number of meals served) and the annual number of NSLP meals served are steadily declining (USDA, 2020). Within the past decade, the annual number of meals served has declined by more than 8%, from about 5.3 billion lunches served in the 2009/2010 school year, prior to the HHFKA, to about 4.9 billion lunches served during the 2018/2019 school year (USDA, 2020). The decline in participation is concerning to both policymakers and practitioners and is mostly attributed to a decrease in the number of paid meals served rather than a reduction in free and reduced-price meals (Ralston & Newman, 2015; USDA, 2020), which has implications for managing school nutrition programs on tight budgets. While media coverage of the implementation of the new nutritional requirements outlined in the HHFKA suggested that the decline in participation was due to students finding the healthier meals less desirable, price increases for paid meals that began in 2011 and slow recovery from the Great Recession are likely the key factors (Ralston & Newman, 2015). Since the decline in NSLP participation occurred simultaneously with the increase in FTS programs, research is necessary to determine the impact of FTS programs on the number of school lunches served.

However, irrespective of the popularity of FTS programs, there is a lack of empirical studies analyzing the effects of these programs on meal selection behaviors. While there is some anecdotal evidence, particularly in the U.S., of their success, such as school food service professionals noting reduced plate waste, improved acceptance of the healthier school meals, increased participation in school meal programs, and lower school meal program costs (USDA, 2015), few studies have investigated the effects of FTS programs on the number of NSLP meals served or the selection of meals prepared with locally sourced products. Joshi et al. (2008) reviewed 15 prior studies on the effects of U.S. FTS programs on student behaviors and attitudes and found 7 of them reported increases in NSLP participation attributed to FTS programs. However, only one of the studies reviewed by Joshi et al. (2008) was peer-reviewed; the majority of the reviewed studies were progress or evaluation reports to funding agencies. Furthermore, none of the reviewed studies were conducted after the implementation of the HHFKA. Similarly, Prescott et al. (2020) reviewed twenty-one studies on FTS or FTS-related programs. The authors conclude that FTS programs positively impact several student outcomes, such as food and nutrition-related knowledge and healthy food selection behavior. However, none of the studies reviewed by Prescott et al. (2020) investigated the effects of the FTS program on the number of meals served in schools. To our knowledge, no similar studies have been conducted outside the United States.

Also, to our knowledge, no prior peer-reviewed study has analyzed the impacts of offering meals prepared with foods procured through FTS programs on the selection of meals containing these locally sourced products. Yoder et al. (2015) is the only prior study that controls directly for the effects of locally sourced items. The authors categorize salad bar offerings into locally and conventionally sourced items and find that students frequently wasted locally sourced items. However, the authors caution that the results are preliminary as they were based on incomplete records regarding the source of the products.

Further, most of the available peer-reviewed studies on the effects of FTS programs on students' consumption behaviors have primarily focused on the program's ability to influence behavior changes pertaining to students' selection and consumption of fruits and vegetables using plate waste methodologies (Kropp et al., 2018; Yoder et al., 2014, 2015). While available plate waste studies benefit from using observed student-level selection and consumption data, these studies tend to draw inferences from relatively short periods of observation typically consisting of only a few days, which might explain their mixed findings. Furthermore, analyzing the effects of FTS programs on the number of NSLP meals served and the selection of meals containing locally sourced products using plate waste methodologies is problematic since only a sample of students' meals are analyzed. Given the mixed results of prior plate waste studies, declining participation in the NSLP following the implementation of the HHFKA, increasing prevalence of FTS-like programs across the globe, and increasing school expenditures on locally source items, empirical research that uses school-level data collected over a longer period is needed to provide a more comprehensive investigation of how serving locally sourced products affects students' meal selection behaviors and the number of meals served.

Thus, this study investigates the impacts of a new FTS program, specifically the local procurement aspect of the program, on the number of NSLP lunches served to students per school-day observation and meal selection behaviors using daily school-level point of sale data (POS), menu data and procurement data. In our study district, the FTS program was implemented in 15 of the district's 22 elementary schools between mid-October of 2015 and mid-January of 2016. We use data from the entire 2015/16 school year for all 22 elementary schools and panel regression analyses to investigate the effects of the program. During the study period, products procured through the FTS program were only used to prepare salad offerings; thus, we analyze salad and non-salad NSLP offerings separately. Based on our conceptual framework that accounts for students' preferences for credence attributes, we hypothesize that the use of locally sourced products in the preparation of NSLP salad meals positively affected both the number of NSLP meals served and the selection of meals containing those products (salads); in addition, we hypothesize that the introduction of the FTS program positively affected the daily number of meals served at schools participating in the FTS program and the number of salads severed.

Section snippets

Conceptual framework

The conceptual framework draws on the intuition of consumer decision-making under a random utility model (RUM), which explains the decision-making of an individual when choosing among a discrete sets of alternatives and assumes the individual selects the alternative that provides the highest utility. The utility derived from the various choices is a function of the physical and credence attributes of the alternatives and characteristics of the decisionmaker (Horowitz et al., 1994; Manski, 1977;

Study setting

The Alachua County Public Schools (ACPS) system in Florida is a suburban/rural district with 22 elementary schools. The ACPS first implemented the local procurement aspect of its FTS program in 15 Title 1 elementary schools between mid-October of 2015 and mid-January of 2016. While the program focused on low-income Title 1 elementary schools, not all Title 1 schools in the district participated in the FTS program. Three Title 1 elementary schools located in more rural areas of the district did

Results

On average, each of the 22 study schools offered both salad and non-salads NSLP offerings approximately 147 school days during the study period, totaling 3224 school-day observations across the 22 schools. As shown in Table 1, a total of 1,135,769 NSLP meals were served in the study schools during the study period. Of these meals, 904,174 (about 80%) were served on days when schools used only conventionally sourced products to prepare school meals. Study schools served NSLP salad meals prepared

Discussion

This study examines the effect of the local procurement aspect of a new FTS program on NSLP meal offerings in a Florida public school district. We find no evidence that the introduction of the FTS program in itself affects the number of meals served in schools participating in the program. But we do find some evidence that students select more salads on days when they are prepared using products procured through the FTS program. In addition, we find some evidence that on days when locally

Conclusion

Given the recently observed declining NSLP participation rates, the rapid expansion of FTS programs, and rapid increases in school expenditures on locally sourced food, it is prudent to assess the effectiveness of school-based initiatives such as the local procurement aspect of the FTS program in influencing students’ meal selection and participation in the NSLP.

Our findings indicate that simply implementing the local procurement aspect of a FTS program will not necessarily lead to a sustained

Ethical standards disclosure

This study was conducted using school-level data hence approval from the University of Florida's Institutional Review Board was not required.

Author contributions

No senior authorship is assigned. Avuwadah compiled and cleaned the data, conducted the statistical analysis and assisted with manuscript preparation. Kropp obtained the data, oversaw the data cleaning and statistical analysis processes, and prepared the manuscript.

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