Most Food Grown By Children in Chicago Public School Gardens Must Be Sold or Given Away
October 21st, 2010I’m pretty numb to much of the sludge that falls down this page… but this one is going to haunt me.
Via: Chicago Tribune:
It’s harvest time in Chicago Public School gardens full of chubby tomatoes, heavy squash and fragrant basil.
These urban oases, carefully tended by teachers, students and volunteers, range from several square feet to several acres of fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers, and some schools even grow plants year-round in school greenhouses.
But one thing the more than 40 gardens have in common is that none of the produce ever finds its way into CPS lunchrooms. Instead, because of rules set by the district and its meal provider, the food is sold or given away.
The policies are in place despite the high obesity rate among Illinois children and experts’ concerns that young people are eating few fresh vegetables. Meanwhile, a studies suggest children eat and accept vegetables much more readily when they have helped grow them.
But in a district that touts its use of some local produce in the lunchroom, the most local of all remains forbidden fruit.
Kathleen Merrigan, deputy secretary of agriculture at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, recently toured a CPS school garden at the Academy for Global Citizenship on the Southwest Side. There, two second-grade girls showed her the eggplant, squash and tomatoes they grew, along with the chickens they kept for eggs.
“Ideally, all of those products would make it from the garden to the lunchroom,” Merrigan said.
But rules created by CPS and its meals supplier, Chartwells-Thompson, prevent that from happening.
“In order to use food in the school food program, it would need to meet specific/certified growing practices,” CPS spokeswoman Monique Bond said.
These requirements would include eliminating all “pesticides and insecticide” applications and using only “commercially prepared organic compost and fertilizers,” said Bob Bloomer, regional vice president of Chartwells-Thompson.
Commercial vendors, though, don’t have to abide by these rules. They can sell the district produce treated with several pesticides and grown in nonorganic fertilizer.
But produce grown by the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences on its 25-acre farm wouldn’t make the grade because, for example, it treats its corn with a single pesticide.
Instead, the high school ends up selling most of the bounty — including pumpkins, tomatoes, squash, greenhouse basil, farm-raised tilapia, fresh eggs and blueberries. Other schools give away the produce or send it home with kids.
Related: The Most Disgusting School Lunches
Research Credit: Tatankasuta
It’s a brilliant idea. Teach the kids to grow food, and stuff them full of absolute crap. Thanks Kevin for posting your previous link, it really illustrates the idiocy of it.
In all reality, it’s business that’s stopping it (as mentioned in the article). If the school starts using their own production to feed the kids, it would hurt their contract. Imagine if just one day a week the school produced food was used instead of the canned and chemically treated crap that’s being distributed, that would take away 20% of their income. Fattening of America’s youth is not a social concern to them, it’s a business model.
Instead of making an attempt to give the kids pride in their work, and recognition by other students (Hey, you made this? Cool), we’re intentionally pushing obese but well deserved kids through school that will die young and leave well preserved corpses. At least it’ll give future archeologists something to ponder. Imagine the chemical analysis of a modern person by someone 1000 years from now (assuming there’s anyone left to do it). Besides the toxins in the local environment (take a deep breath in LA, and you’ll shorten your life expectancy by 10 years), and the preservatives they pump into our corpses so we leave a nice body for the funeral (and the following 100+ years), they’re well treated with the corporate poisoned store bought food and city treated tap water. They’ll probably be saying “I’m surprised they lived this long, they did everything wrong.” Too bad I won’t be around to hear it.
Time to eat a deep fried twinkie, and wash it down with a corn syrup and chemical laden soft drink.
Perfect example as to why “rules are made to be broken”.
Just get two schools to trade or sell the food they produce to each other. And then turn around and let the whole class give the finger to the government for such stupid f***ing legislation. “Eat your chemical soup, children, before the Company decide to send you for selective bodypart rendition to meet he growing need among the wealthy for fresh organs.”