OAK HILL, W.Va. (WVVA) – As a part of ‘Farm to College Month,’ WVVA Information is taking a better take a look at a number of the work native farmers are doing to deliver wholesome meals to the classroom.
In Fayette County, the place children eat domestically sourced meals each Wednesday, representatives from the Division of Training and Division of Agriculture stopped by to see a few of their work at New River Main College in Oak Hill.
The chickens have been offered by Rainbow Farm in Summers County and Pine Mountain Farm in Monroe County.
“They are saying that native {dollars} flow into within the native economic system much more. Additionally, you may get recent stuff that was simply on the farm,” defined Fayette County’s Director of Baby Vitamin Andrew Pence in the course of the go to.
In response to Bekki Leigh with the W.Va. Dept. of Training, those self same meals are sometimes more healthy. “It’s not coming the space and should not have the preservatives that many meals have.”
In Fayette County, leaders take this system a step additional. In addition they usher in native growers for pop-up farmer’s markets, the place the youngsters can decide their very own produce and interact the scholars in their very own gardening.
“There’s a element of native satisfaction,” mentioned Pence, “when farmers are feeding faculties that their children go to, when a child who grows up on a West Virginia orchard bites into an apple his father raised…that’s fairly cool.”
In response to Feeding America, a couple of in 5 West Virginia kids live in a family that’s meals insecure. Meaning not less than twenty % of the state’s kids could also be lacking out on meals.
In response to Leigh, the West Virginia Dept. of Training and native faculties work exhausting to fill within the hole. “We’ve got the chance to feed college students a number of instances a day so we attempt to make them as wholesome as doable.”
In Fayette County, Pense mentioned the Farm to College program is about greater than shopping for native produce, it’s about investing in kids and the communities that look after them.
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