Farmers See Hope in Young Consumers Through North Country Farm to School Programs

By Tim Rowland | Contributing Writer

A classroom of elementary students can be seen as the next generation of parents, employees and business owners. But to a farmer, they can also be seen as the next generation of customers.

If today’s adults do not take advantage of an abundance of healthy, locally produced foods, perhaps it’s because they were never trained to do so. Cornell Cooperative Extension of Essex County’s Rooted in Learning program, therefore, focuses on acquainting children with farms at an early age.

From the farmers’ perspective, the program is about more than selling vegetables, meat or dairy products. It is about closing a gap that has grown increasingly wide between children and the food they eat.

“It is crucial for children to understand where their food comes from,” said Stephen Winkler of Lucki7 Livestock Company. “While it sounds elementary, the connection between food sourcing and the consumer is unfortunately growing further apart.”

Winkler, a young farmer in Jefferson County, raises livestock and has built a business around producing pasture-raised meats. His family has deep roots in farming, and he describes farming as both a demanding livelihood and a legacy he hopes to continue.

For him, supplying schools offers a particularly direct connection to the community. “It’s satisfying to know that our children are eating pure, raw ingredients grown close to home,” Winkler said. 

From an economic perspective, cultivating customers — now and in the future — makes good business sense. Kids may bug their parents to go to a farmers’ market and, in time, will have greater awareness of the availability and value of local foods. And from an emotional perspective, it’s enjoyable to be growing foods that children can get excited about.

“Knowing we are providing food to a local market is exciting,” Winkler said. “It gives me a spike on the energy meter and keeps me on my A-game.”

That sense of responsibility is echoed at North Country Creamery in Keeseville, where Ashlee Kleinhammer and Steven Googin operate a 115-acre, 100% grass-fed dairy. The farm’s Jersey and heritage-cross cows provide milk for its farmstead cheeses and cream-line yogurts, among other products.

For Kleinhammer, one of the most powerful parts of Farm to School is watching children make a connection between something familiar and the place it comes from.

“There’s something special about watching them make the connection between the cows, the milk, and the yogurt they’ve had at school,” she said. “It turns something familiar into something tangible.”

Kleinhammer has also hosted school field trips at the creamery, giving students the opportunity to see the animals and the production process firsthand. The excitement and questions from visiting children, she says, are energizing.

For a farmer, a side benefit is that it can be a break from the daily routine. “Farming can be very focused on logistics and production,” Kleinhammer said. “But Farm to School brings it back to people — especially the next generation.”

That may be one of the less obvious benefits of the program. Farming is necessarily concerned with weather, animals, harvests, markets, equipment and countless other practical matters. Farm-to-school work provides a reminder of why all that work matters.

At Juniper Hill Farm in Wadhams, Adam Hainer sees the same value in letting children experience the farm rather than simply hearing about it. Juniper Hill is a certified organic farm that grows a wide variety of produce on more than 100 acres and sells through farmers’ markets, wholesale customers and its community-supported agriculture program.

“I think the most important thing kids can learn about food is where it comes from and how it grows,” Hainer says. There is a “huge disconnect” between what shoppers see in a supermarket and the work required to produce it.

That disconnect can disappear remarkably quickly when children actually step onto a farm.

“When it’s ugly out and the kids walk into a greenhouse, they go, ‘Whoa!'” Hainer says.

The greenhouse may be warm and green when it is cold and gray outside, but the larger lesson is about seeing food production as something real and tangible — not something that simply happens somewhere before food appears at the grocery store or cafeteria.

Ellie Hoffman, Local Food Educator for Cornell Cooperative Extension of Essex County, sees that kind of exposure as cumulative. A single lesson may not turn a child into a lifelong local-food consumer, she says, but repeated encounters can begin to change the culture around food. A farm visit, a locally sourced school lunch or a pop-up farmers’ market at school can become part of a child’s understanding of where food comes from.

That is important not only because today’s students are tomorrow’s consumers, but because they are tomorrow’s community members.

Farmers face many practical challenges, and Hoffman notes that even when farmers receive support, participating in school programs can be a significant demand on people whose schedules are already dictated by the seasons.

But there are many ways to participate. A farmer doesn’t necessarily have to lead a field trip. Supplying food to a school, attending a pop-up farmers market or simply opening the farm to students can create a connection.

Kleinhammer hopes that eventually those connections will become ordinary rather than exceptional.

“Ideally, Farm to School becomes a normal part of how food systems work — not a special program,” she says. That will require infrastructure, support for farmers and making local food accessible to every student.

Winkler has an equally straightforward vision: food sourced from within a defined local radius should become a standard part of school menus.

“The children will be well-fed,” he says, “and the farmers will be well-compensated.”

For the farmers involved in the Rooted in Learning Farm to School program, that’s the larger incentive. A school lunch can be more than a meal. It can be a lesson about land, animals, work, community and the people who make it possible.

And someday, the children sitting in those cafeterias may be the customers, neighbors and community members who help keep those farms going.