Louisiana Farm to School Conference to Take Place on October 24th, 2017
8/09/2017
BATON ROUGE, La. –The LSU AgCenter will host a Farm to School conference on October 24th at Pennington Biomedical Research Center. "The statewide conference is a forum for attendees to be more familiar with the 3 aspects of farm to school (school gardening, education, and local food procurement) as well as have an opportunity to learn from successful programs in the state and provide a forum to network," says Carl Motsenbocker, LSU AgCenter professor and conference chair.
The first Louisiana Farm to School Conference was held in 2015 and this year’s conference builds upon the first with the heightened interest and expansion of statewide farm to school activities. The conference will have two main tracks with three sessions each throughout the day. The first track will be Connecting School Gardens With Curriculum with sessions on best practices for school gardens, connecting menus with the seasons, and education. The second track will be Producer and Child Nutrition Procurement with local purchasing (stories from the field), food safety and sourcing local and a buyers’ panel. The last 2 sessions of the day will be devoted to local, regional and national resources for farm to school and a networking session will close out the conference. "The Farm to School effort is expanding and is a benefit to children, our farmers and our local communities," said Angelina Harrison, National Farm to School Network Louisiana lead. "This conference comes at an opportune time for Louisiana as we continue our efforts statewide in connecting schools with Louisiana agriculture and raising awareness about farm to school."
The conference is for anyone interested in Louisiana students’ learning about local food and farms, growing food, and increased access to fresh local food in schools.
For more information about farm to school, read about the USDA Farm to School Programs. To register for the conference, visit the Louisiana Farm to School Conference 2017 registration page.