The National Farm to School Network (NFSN) is looking for support for the School Food Forest Coalition to scale food forests across the United States. Food forests can provide school communities with self-sustaining, food-producing systems.
School gardening can improve health and well-being outcomes for students, according to research in Nutrients. But annual school gardens may “fall by the wayside” when “educators are pulled in a million different directions,” Tomas Delgado, Program Manager at NFSN tells Food Tank.
“A strong benefit of perennial school gardens [like food forests] is that they will grow back and produce food regardless of that sort of human involvement,” says Delgado. “There is a reduction of the labor.” Intentionally designed food forests integrate tiers of food-bearing trees, shrubs, root vegetables and other plants that mimic the structure and functionality of a forest.
For Delgado, the benefits of food forests are many: “If you’re wanting to look at food security, food forests have the potential of growing a lot of food within a small space…if you’re interested in climate change mitigation, introducing trees and other shrubs is a way to mitigate urban heat island effects and…vegetation immersion is data-driven to improve mental health.”
According to research in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development, food forests can also build community capacity, enhance biodiversity and regenerate soil.
Educators see these and other benefits play out at Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida, where food forests have been around for a decade. The Education Fund, a Florida nonprofit that runs the Food Forests for Schools initiative, was the first state in the nation to establish a food forest at a public school. Since then, they have implemented and maintained 30 food forests in Miami-Dade Public Schools and supported efforts in a total of 75 schools.
Debi La Belle, Senior Program Manager for Food Forests for Schools, describes food forests as “eco-learning labs” that “boost academic achievement, encourage nutritious choices, and engage students in meaningful ways beyond traditional classrooms.”
La Belle reports that educators in their schools have used food forests to teach nearly 6,000 lessons on science, math, and resiliency since 2020.
“Students engage directly with nature to learn about measurement, fractions, and other key math concepts, making them concrete,” Eddie Recinos, Program Director at Food Forests for Schools tells Food Tank.
For the 2023-2024 school year, the Education Fund reports that 71 percent of students surveyed improved their science achievement and 74 percent of students improved in math.
“Teachers tell us that while their students are taking tests, they can see the students repeating the motions of the hands-on math lessons they originally learned in the food forests,” says Recinos.
Then, there’s the food: the program has delivered 21,282 harvest bags of school-grown produce—including bananas, moringa leaves, Okinawa spinach, and Moujean tea — to students and their families, according to La Belle.
NFSN aims to scale the work of groups like the Education Fund nationwide. Delgado notes that this will require developing regional adaptations. “Growing anything, you need to think about where and what ecoregion you’re doing it in…we want to show folks within any region of the U.S. that this type of food production can happen.”
Delgado points to the Schenectady School District in New York, which has also integrated food forests into its programming. “They have done a great job at balancing the introduction of species that are native to upstate New York, while also introducing species that would appeal to the cultural diversity of youth in their school community,” he says.
While food forests may have lower maintenance requirements once established, Delgado notes that there is a higher start-up cost and a slower return on investment.
“Because we’re working with woody perennials, they take time to mature and then time to fruit. You won’t get food the first year, the second year, maybe the third year,” says Delgado. But he sees this as a lesson, too.
“We’re growing for resilience years from now. And that can open a lot of really cool educational opportunities…[including] lessons from lots of Indigenous communities to think beyond what we can do this year for us, but what we can do for a future generation.”
NFSN proposes an initial budget of US$265,000 to fund the School Food Forest Coalition over two years. The project will convene a group of stakeholder experts to perform research, develop best practices, and create resources to support NFSN members in their development of school food forests.
“It’s exciting to introduce this kind of work within the farm-to-school movement,” Delgado says. “We see this as a kind of a natural next step in creating…resilient school communities driven by equity, the stewardship of land, and the nurturing of kids and in their educational food journeys.”
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Photo courtesy of USDA Forest Service
