What the Family Studies?

Food Literacy That Sticks

• OFSHEEA • Season 4 • Episode 6

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A school food program doesn’t have to start with a big budget, a greenhouse, or a perfect plan. We’re joined by Carolyn Webb from Farm to Cafeteria Canada to talk about the small, practical moves that make food literacy come alive in Canadian schools, especially in Family Studies and foods classrooms where students are ready to learn by doing.

We unpack Farm to Cafeteria Canada’s four pillars (grow, connect, fund, inform) and what they look like on the ground: windowsill growing, sprouts, hydroponics, milk-crate gardens students can take home for summer, and simple ways to build momentum when space, time, and climate feel like brick walls. Carolyn also shares what makes school garden programs and farm to school initiatives sustainable over time: shared leadership, clear roles, and community partners who actually want to be part of the learning.

We also dig into grant opportunities that can turn a “someday” idea into a real school food program, including Farm to School Canada grants, starter funding like Dig In, and Indigenous Foodways support that centres Indigenous food sovereignty, land-based learning, and reciprocity with elders and knowledge keepers. Along the way, we talk student engagement, culturally relevant menus, and how local sustainable food purchasing can ripple beyond the cafeteria.

If you’re ready to start small and build something meaningful, listen now, share this with a colleague, and subscribe, rate, and review the podcast so more educators can find these ideas. What’s one food literacy project you want to try next?

Here are some of the links and resources Carolyn shared in the episode.  

  

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Welcome And Why Food Literacy

SPEAKER_01

Welcome back to What the Family Studies, the podcast where we explore the ideas, people, and practices shaping family studies education across Canada. I'm your host, Catherine Murphy, and today we're diving into one of my absolutely favorite topics: food literacy, school gardens, and what meaningful community-connected food education can look like in our classrooms. Joining us is Carolyn Webb from Farm to Cafeteria Canada, an organization dedicated to getting more healthy, local, and sustainable foods onto the plates of students, while empowering students to grow, cook, learn, and connect with their broader communities. Carolyn is a longtime leader in school food programming, and her work focuses on supporting educators, schools, and communities as they bring farm to school experiences to life. Carolyn brings a wealth of practical and inspiring insight. In today's episode, we'll talk about how Family Studies teachers can engage students more deeply in food literacy, how schools can build meaningful relationships with local growers, Indigenous partners, and why this work matters. Let's get into it. Carolyn, really nice to meet you. Thank you for joining us tonight.

SPEAKER_02

Thanks so much, Kathy. It's really great to be here today.

SPEAKER_01

So, Carolyn, to start us off, can you maybe introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about yourself, share a bit about your role at Farm to Cafeteria Canada?

Four Pillars Of Farm To School

SPEAKER_02

Thanks so much. Yeah, so as you say, my name is Carolyn Webb, and I've been working in the school food space for around 13 years now. I started with um working in Ontario with Sustain Ontario to build an edible education network and so really bring people together relating to school food programs. And um in that work, I have um been able to expand, build um connections, and then um started working with Farm to Cafeteria Canada as an Ontario partner, and then really kind of joined the national team in a more fulsome way. And so I think that what all this work really excites me about is I'm really keen to build networks, share resources, bring people together, support the capacity of um folks doing great work. And I kind of laugh and like, I don't actually do the work. I'm not in a garden, I'm not in a cooking program, um, but all my efforts are really to bring those people together to kind of share their visions and ideas and excitement. And so what I do specifically at Farm to Cafeteria Canada is I've worked to establish grant programs, and I'll touch more on those in a little bit, um, support knowledge sharing opportunities like webinars and other supportive toolkits and all that. A few years ago, I worked to develop an evaluation framework for Farm to School in Canada, and that engaged about 140 people to kind of inform what indicators are really important for us to measure together, and then uh what, you know, how might we measure some of those so that we can really tell our stories of success together and have some common metrics to work with. And I've also been working more lately with our Indigenous Foodways work. Uh, one piece of that is to establish and grow an Indigenous school food circle where we bring people together to share their stories of how this work looks in their community and what's working and what barriers exist. And also just really trying to support resources, training opportunities, and other programs to grow this work, to decolonize school food systems. And then kind of one of the last pieces that I've been working on lately is to help organize our national school food forum that's happening in June, uh, June 2nd to 4th in Montreal. And uh, we're really excited about it. So I'll put the link to that in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01

That sounds really interesting. That sounds like something that we'd probably want to know a little bit more about too as we go. So that would be fantastic. So Farm to Cafeteria Canada uses four pillars. They are grow, connect, fund, and inform. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. Can you uh can you walk us through these pillars, explain how they shape the way schools build meaningful food-to-table learning experiences for students?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, for sure. So we have developed a story of change for Farm to Cafeteria Canada, and that's on our website and our purpose. And it's actually it feels kind of complicated, but really it's about us providing capacity-building supports so that school communities can do amazing activities to, as you said in the introduction, have um students engage in food hands-on food literacy activities, um, learn about their local food systems and procure more local sustainably sourced foods, as well as building a broader community through this farm to school work. And so ourselves, the work that we do to quote unquote grow capacity and support that capacity is we grow. So we share tools, resources, inspiring stories. And we have so many lovely stories online that folks have shared from their own communities, whether they've received a grant of ours or want to share information in other ways. And those we love for the inspiration and the ideas that they bring. We've also built a resource center with many different clips of different educators talking about their stories or toolkits or just links to other stories of people relating to the local food procurement, of how you priced a salad bar, of how you get your students engaged, how you might evaluate your work. And so one of the recent webinars that we held was on fundraising with hydroponics. And I'll also put a link to that in our show notes. But there's all these um topics that come up, and because we're a grantor, we also get to hear a lot of those stories and those needs, and then can help respond to those. One of the other pillars is through connection, and again, that's all these pillars tie together, but that's webinars and partnerships, like the Indigenous School Food Circle that I shared, the forum, and other events that are really meant to build networks and bring people together. We fund, and so now we're up to five different grant streams, and I can speak about more those more a little bit later. And then inform and so to really provide supportive policies, creative ideas in this space. For instance, one of the issues we're really trying to promote right now is that purchasing more uh local through institutional purchasing and especially our schools at this time can really transform our food systems. And we've seen this in many other countries, but think around like my back of the napkin calculation says that around 7% of meals are eaten in schools. And if those schools could really shift to more local sustainable purchasing, it would make a dramatic impact on our broader food systems. And so uh we just try to share these ideas and help make sure that the broader community can take them up and act on them. And so with these um ideas that are shared, funding, relationships, um, the idea is that then schools can have more inspiration, confidence, and uh resources to move their programs and their visions forward.

Simple School Garden Starting Points

SPEAKER_01

I would absolutely uh fully support some of those changes happening at my school and in our school cafeteria too, particularly with the local sustainable food cinema happening. Um it it's amazing. It it is a change that definitely needs to come to, I think, a lot of schools. Um I know for myself personally, uh as a family studies teacher, I have wanted to introduce school gardening. I have been limited about doing that. I I have been well, we'll say maybe full out stopped in some some spaces and some places. Limited space, limited time, limited climate, you know, we're away for the summer, people are concerned about what's going to happen to the garden over the summer. People are always concerned about um what happens if someone takes your food, things like that. So but I want to know from you what are some of the approachable entry-level models that have worked well in Canadian schools? Maybe something that I could implement when I've, you know, when I'm hitting these boundaries or these barriers, what is something that I could actually implement?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, for sure. And it's such an area of interest and possibility, and also one that, as you say, comes across so many barriers because as you said, the growing season is not very well aligned with the school season or school calendar. I guess one of the things we often suggest is start small. Like sometimes we see the examples of the schools that have put in the full system greenhouse or a huge like growing container or some other major garden. And it's like, how did they build up there? But so many of those projects started small, and many others are just making a great success with uh starting small because you don't really need to have a huge production piece to have students learning and um and that. And so some really, you know, might put up a mushroom log or pots in a windowsill, or start with some seedlings and just uh start seeding pea sprouts, or you can do chickpeas or a wide range of other just seedlings there. The idea is if you can build momentum, um, show some small successes, and then you can expand. And it's important to also build a bigger team. So if you are doing uh like a small garden, you know, among the staff, there might be some folks who do have some either a little bit of knowledge or a little bit of time and can help do a little bit of weeding or maybe a little bit of watering or have some knowledge, then we also suggest kind of tapping into what resources do you have in the community? And so some assets that folks have tapped into, especially for the summer months, are are there some master gardeners around? Is there a childcare center or a senior center down the road or somewhere where folks would really love to uh come help? And the nice thing is that those can build connections between different community groups and really build some amazing relationships. What are your assets? Do you only have, again, that space in the classrooms or do you have some space outside that you might work with? Do you have space for a greenhouse that you want to build up to because you've already been starting small and have built up a lot of those ideas? And so I think, yeah, the trend is kind of start small with something manageable, build relationships and get others on board, and then keep building as you can. And there's also a lot of creative ideas. Um, as we, you know, I shared earlier, there's the whole concept around fundraising with hydroponic systems because they are easy-ish growth systems where they're set up, they have a consistent lighting, and students get really excited by these growth systems inside. At the same time, they do take consistent money and uh that for the inputs. And so there are ways that either products can be sold to local businesses or other fundraising ways. And so there's those creative ideas. I've seen one school that had a milk crate garden where everybody, uh all the students planted in milk crates and then they took them away for the summer back to their homes and they could access the food and uh and eat it and water it and take care of those plants. And then in September, October, there was a bring back the garden ceremony where everybody brought the milk crates back. And so every community is different, and what is gonna work is gonna look different for them. But yeah, I've seen some really creative ideas, programs that can make it work really well. But again, I think a lot of it is start small, find the partnerships, and uh grow as you can.

SPEAKER_01

You've actually given me some inspiration because I do have a beautiful window in my classroom. And why couldn't I start on there? I've never even thought about doing that. Why couldn't I start on there with just something small and see where that takes me? Thank you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I will say just two other um tips is get students involved in decision making because they will be very passionate if they can help and inform it, and also grow like plant quick growing or appropriate foods. And so radishes aren't a favorite food, but they also don't take very long to grow. Um, and again, sprouting can be quite easy. And instead of, you know, some of the plants that might need a lot of watering over the summer, like there are some lettuce or other things that you can definitely make work in an easier way.

Grants That Fund School Food Ideas

SPEAKER_01

So yeah. That's wonderful. That's a great plan. Thank you. You're welcome. Um, can we talk about some of the grants that you offer then? So teachers who might want to apply, we have lots of family studies teachers who I think would be really, really interested in doing this. How can they position themselves to become key leaders, bringing these initiatives into their schools and being successful in applying for these grants?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, for sure. So we have um had five grant streams um that we've offered over the years. Um most of them are still running. And I'll say though the only one that we don't offer regularly is for school food infrastructure grants. That was a federal government fund provided as a part of the National School Food Program money to support community infrastructure. And that was a one-time only thing that we were able to fund over a million dollars in infrastructure grants for communities. But the four grant streams that we have on a regular basis, um, the first one is our$10,000 farm to school Canada grants. And those were kind of our initial grant offering for schools that had done a fair bit of this startup and building and were ready to expand. And so this is with funding from Whole Kids, so a part of Whole Foods, and that they're charitable wing. And um, the funding is to develop or enhance a meal service that engages students in hands-on food literacy activities, buying local. And really, what we saw in this case and has been one of the really exciting opportunities is for uh, in a lot of cases, hospitality, family studies teachers who uh really were looking at the the lack of school food or healthy school food options in the school and decided to um either set up a salad bar program or build your own taco offering or something. And it doesn't have to be every day, but maybe a couple of times a month or once a week, or in some cases they could do it every day. But uh those grants were really have been, um and actually that one is available right now until May 8th, I believe. And the idea is yeah, to support schools again with$10,000 over two years to develop or enhance a meal service so that students are engaged and more local food can be purchased, and there are a lot of really great creative ideas there. Our dig-in grants came along with the support of the Shad Family Foundation, and those ones have been offered the past few years of anywhere in the range of one to three thousand dollars, and those have really supported schools that are at a bit more of a starting place in their work and just want a little bit of seed money to try something out or um start to get students engaged or kind of get a foothold in this work. That might be buying a hydroponic system or uh developing or buying some other infrastructure or going on some farm tours. And so it's really a way, yeah, to get started in this work. We um a couple of years ago partnered, uh developed a partnership between Farmboys Sustain Ontario and Farm de Cafeteria Canada to offer the Nourish to Flourish grant stream. And so Farmboys been doing fundraising in their stores to raise money for this grant stream. And this past year offered, I think it was$165,000 in grants to 45 schools in Ontario specifically, with that grant stream. And that's ranging from$1,000 to$10,000. And that's really to support uh kind of growing a meal service and uh and that with hands-on food literacy activities and as much local, fresh, sustainable food as possible. Um, and then our Indigenous Foodways uh grant stream, which also just opened and is offered until May 8th. And that one we developed, we've had one grant grant round, and that's to really support Indigenous foods and foodways in schools. And so that's for what we term indigenous school communities, and that might be in a community or uh with many Indigenous students, and really focusing in on Indigenous foodways and supporting more elders and knowledge keepers to either come in and share their knowledge or for students to uh be out in the community, on the land, and uh potentially sourcing more elk, caribou, moose, so berries, and others uh other local traditional foods, um, and supporting uh I would really say the decolonization of their school food systems. And so again, we're offering the Farm to School of Canada grants in the range of$10,000, and then the Indigenous Food Ways grants between five and twenty thousand dollars for those right now, if folks want to apply. And for success, sometimes it's really just looking at kind of the passion and the impact that those programs will make. Other times we really screen for, you know, programs that uh look like they'd make an impact and then do a drop for them because uh it's really tough to really hardcore select. So a lot depends on the grant stream. But really a lot of what we look for is impact it will make on the community, the team that's gathered, and we know that people can't do it alone. And so if only one educator or parent applies and you know, nobody else is on board, we'd be less likely to fund that than if the administrator and the school health nurse or uh dietitian and uh, you know, the parent council and a number of educators are on board, we tend to see more success with those. And so, yeah, more partnerships, um, more impact, and that will have a higher likelihood of funding.

Getting Teens To Care About Food

SPEAKER_01

And I suppose those partnerships that go back to your pillar of connect, correct? With you know, those four pillars that you have to go with. Yeah, that it's relationships. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Okay, so what are some of the the effective ways that teachers can get students authentically engaged in food literacy? I I've been teaching foods classes for a number of years, and and especially at the secondary level, you know, I find that sometimes you you get kids who are really passionate, but sometimes you get kids who are a little apathetic about our food systems. So, you know, what kind of advice would you have? What approaches, activities really help students care about where their food comes from?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think one of the advantages of my work is I just see so many of the exciting stories and can see the passion that folks bring. So I would say from what I've seen, the more I engage the better. So one of my colleagues at Food Share used to say, like, if you can have your student grow their food, they are much more likely to try it and eat it. And if they uh are knowing that they're going to eat their food, they're much more likely to put the work in to grow it. And so it's just that engagement and ownership that can really be supportive. So there's a whole range of um ways that educators can support kind of that knowing where food comes from and tuning into food. I mean, one of the big exciting things is food is already in the school. Like food is an inherent part of our lives and our our day, every every single day. There are a lot of opportunities to look at, okay, where is food already in the school? And then look at opportunities to be able to have students engaged in that. And so it could be prepping for a lunch service, or um it could be making snacks and then bringing them around to the school using a snack cart, or prepping for a community meal once a month. I've seen some great foods programs catering for local clients. So organizations are running events and the school caters for that, and that can bring in income to source the foods and uh can help make sure it's a healthy program. There's a lot of great engagement opportunities to bring students to a farmer's market to meet their local farmers and see where food comes from, to go to a farm tour or a grocery store. And you know, you kind of talk about shopping the perimeter and the fresh foods and looking for flyers and the deals to make sure that you can do appropriate budgeting and menu planning, then just the tips about making sure that it's culturally relevant, and so having opportunities for students to share their food stories and uh and making sure that it can be done in a way without any prejudice or criticism and uh just kind of exploring those differences of like, oh, you know, okay, this might be your cultural food, but like having students either inform some of the menus or be able to talk about their history or interview family to explore menus or recipes or preferred foods. Um, there's a lot of different ways there. One of the other exciting things too is acknowledging that that students are food experts. They have been eating for a lot of their life, and so um, they can all share experiences about their preference, and there are a lot of really interesting tie-ins relating to media and um advertising, as well as uh just different things that shape preferences. We do know that giving students choices and so being able to set up menus for what they prepare, grow, eat are very important, and even stringing those together of okay, we want to eat this ultimately, what should we be planting? And then what might we do in terms of tastings or sharing with others is really exciting to talk about the kind of that whole food cycle. There are also a lot of different ways to bring growing and cooking into the school in different ways, like there's classroom and making those food literacy ties and curriculum connections, but also with a club or in an after-school program that there could be tie-ins, or um, some schools have even done employment programs where it takes a fair bit of fundraising, but where they have set up school um garden beds and employed students over the summer to grow food almost like a farm. Um, so those are some of the really big, big scale programs, but you can also scale down for sure. And uh, I will share some more ideas in the show notes um from a tip sheet that I prepared a number of years ago. But uh yeah, those are just some of the ideas that I've seen that have been really exciting.

Building Respectful Community Relationships

SPEAKER_01

I think those are those are great. You've given um some really great ideas. There's some great inspiration, I think, too. And I think you're correct when you say, you know, teenagers in particular, they are food experts. They they love to eat. And uh and I think if they can grow their own food, that's great too. I do, I notice too that they, you know, they love their the tick. Talk recipes. I find in my foods classes sometimes, you know, if that's where they're getting their inspiration from, and if it's why not? We go for it, right? Yeah. So you've talked a lot about indigenous food sovereignty, and it's really, really important. Um, community-led food programs as well. How can schools and teachers and staff build respectful local relationships? And whether whether that's with Indigenous partners or farmers or community food organizations, what advice would you give to teachers who want to strengthen these connections and make these connections in meaningful ways?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, thanks for that. Um, I'll say just broadly in general, one of the biggest tips is to build relationships. And I know it takes time, but it can also be so those relationships are so precious. So it could involve I know I've chatted with educators who have gone to the farmers market on the weekend or brought their students to talk and meet farmers. And really one of the challenges and opportunities is to really listen and figure out their interests and their food cycles and how there might be a connection between the school and the farm, let's say. Um and that might include like what are the challenges of delivering, or are there some ways to make that work? What are the cycles in terms of uh production of food and pre-ordering and all that? And so some of that, there can be very different understandings or needs, but if folks can get on the same page about kind of how to establish that relationship and make it work, uh I know that some farmers and growers really love engaging with schools, not necessarily uh to make good money, but to um really be able to with the next generation and educate them about their work and bring them to the farm and show them around and make sure that the next generation just knows where their food comes from. So, yeah, it's so many relationships to be had. As I said, senior centers or childcare programs or master gardeners or other chefs in the community, or I'm just trying to think of some of the other ones. I keep being pretty impressed with the connections that are made with the local feeder schools or parent councils who can provide funding or support watering over the summer. Yeah, just so many other ones. In terms of indigenous relationships, yeah, if there are school communities wanting to develop those relationships, I mean, again, it's so much about relationships. And so find a local friendship center or visit a community or put the word out there and uh show interest, um, do mutual learning, be open-minded to different ways of doing things. But a lot is about kind of starting with that relationship, building, understanding that there are different traditions and ways of knowing, either inviting um elders or knowledge keepers into the school or going somewhere where students can learn about local harvesting. And in that case, often we do want to uh remind people that reciprocity is such a fundamental part of Indigenous worldviews, and that um in many cases, if folks are sharing their traditional knowledge, which is often sacred and so important that some gift back is important. And in many cases, that is uh money honoraria. Um and so just keep and that is one of those things that can be in conversation to just ask about what appropriate customs are. But yeah, a lot really just starts in conversation, in uh building relationships and going out to local events and uh and raising the possibility for those future relationship building opportunities.

Resources, Forum, And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_01

Carolyn, that has been wonderful. I think you, you know, again, I think I've used the word inspiration. You've given me inspiration, you've made me realize that uh it it can be done, right? Even though we do run into some of these roadblocks, it can for sure be done. So I really appreciate that. Thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_02

You're so welcome. Thank you for asking this question. And I am so passionate about this as well. It's very fun to uh connect with others who are really keen on their space. And I agree, the inspiration is so constant. I'm always blown away with the work that school communities are doing and just the the ways that students are being engaged and that these programs are growing. So thanks so much for the opportunity to come and speak about it.

SPEAKER_01

Well, that brings us to the end of today's episode of What the Family Studies. So a huge thank you to Karen Webb from Farm to Cafeteria Canada for sharing so many actionable ideas, resources, and inspiring examples of what school food programs can look like when they're rooted in community culture and student engagement. If you're interested in exploring the grants, toolkits, and classroom resources Carolyn mentioned, be sure to visit Farm to Cafeteria Canada.ca, and of course, we're going to link everything in the show notes too. And if you're a family studies educator thinking about starting a school garden, building local food connections, or strengthening food literacy in your classroom, I hope today gave you a place to begin. As always, thanks for listening. Don't forget to follow the podcast so you never miss an episode. Next month our guest is Darekelman from Fashion Takes Action. And until next time, keep learning, keep experimenting, and keep doing the amazing work you do in Family Studies classrooms every day.

SPEAKER_00

What the Family Studies is brought to you by the Ontario Family Studies Home Economics Educators Association. Special thanks to our producer, Michelin Gallant, editor Charlie Rogers, and our host, Catherine Murphy.

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