As the Farm to School movement continues to gain momentum, professionals in education, agriculture, and public health are seeking innovative ways to integrate this holistic approach into their practices. In North Carolina, our local, regional, and statewide food system has strengths across various sectors. Local agencies and community organizations now have decades of experience partnering together to maximize opportunities for local farmers and local food businesses. Partnering together, these food system practitioners have clearly begun to see that a systems approach is vital to supporting all sectors and stakeholders, vital to addressing the deep roots of inequity that negatively impacts our communities of color and particularly our children. The central need is in how to facilitate integrated efforts–both across farm to school components and also with multi-sector stakeholders–given that research shows that integration of farm to school programming brings the longest and most significant health and learning impacts on children. Our approach has been to develop the North Carolina Farm to School Training Initiative, a rich space of collaboratively created online content that informs and educates across the farm to school program areas. Through a combination of interactive modules, case studies, and expert-led discussions, our first course, School Gardening, provided participants with the knowledge and skills needed to navigate the complexities of Farm to School programming. The results from surveying pilot participants suggest numerous impacts, both on an individual and community level. Preliminary results found participants increased their knowledge and gained a deeper understanding of farm-to-school initiatives, including building community engagement through school garden teams, integrating gardening into curriculum, and the horticulture knowledge to successfully grow a garden. Participants improved their practical skills such as gardening techniques and the application of educational programming in the garden. Part of the course included interactive discussion boards and a qualitative review showed a number of themes emerged including that the course participants strongly benefitted by connecting with a group of like-minded educators and community organizers by fostering collaboration and support for farm-to-school efforts. Community engagement was another emergent theme with participants and they named that they would like to become more involved in their local food systems, finding connections with community partners like growers and Extension for access to resources and materials. These results suggest that fostering a community of practice that transcends geographic boundaries and provides localized and engaging content has significant potential to support great professional engagement in farm to school.
