About Us
West Virginia Farm to School is supported on a statewide level by a partnership between:
West Virginia Department of Agriculture
West Virginia Department of Education
These agencies work together to create partnerships to advance farm to school efforts across the state. Early successes include joint sponsorship of trainings, workshops, and conferences to foster exchange of information for and between food service staff and farmers. Collaboration has also resulted in the creation of funding sources, the coordinated delivery of resources, the development of publications, fact sheets, videos and shared dissemenation of information through various media outlets.
Together, these partners explore the opportunities for a sustainable community-focused and education-based system for food production that can be expanded and implemented statewide. Our goals are to cultivate the future generations or West Virginia farmers, producers and consumers and improve the amount and quality of local foods supplied in our schools.
The WVDA works with producers all across the state to bring fresh, locally grown food products to schools by providing technical assistance and support to farmers and producers and facilitating communication with school food authorities.
The Farm-to-School initiative is an effort to connect schools (K – 12) with regional or local farms in order to serve healthy meals using locally produced foods. Incorporating locally grown, farm-fresh produce as part of a school nutrition program creates a relationship that positively impacts the farm, the community and, most importantly, students in our schools. These programs connect schools with local farms to serve healthy meals in school cafeterias, improve student nutrition (e.g. by increasing fruit and vegetable consumption), provide health and nutrition education opportunities and support local farmers
