Northeast Iowa Farm to School Program

The Northeast Iowa Food & Fitness Initiative (FFI) has brought people in Allamakee, Chickasaw, Clayton, Fayette, Howard and Winneshiek counties together to make our region a place where every day, all people have access to healthy, locally grown foods and abundant opportunities for physical activity in the places where we live, learn, work and play. The Northeast Iowa FFI partners with Luther College's Environmental Studies Department to house FoodCorps members. 

Through funding from a 2014 USDA Farm to School Program grant, the Northeast Iowa Food and Fitness Initiative and its partners will build on the momentum of five years of successful farm to school programs in a six‐county region. With this project, Food and Fitness Initiative aims to meet two goals: collaborate with farmers and a new food hub poised to scale‐up production and investment in aggregation infrastructure to meet school needs; and, work with four rural school districts with demonstrated readiness to expand their farm to school programming and to increase their local food purchases by 200%. A coordinator at the food hub will help partner districts determine and implement strategies that will increase the amount of regionally grown foods in the meals of over 4,000 rural students. We will work with each partnering district to develop a school wellness action plan, which includes a plan of work for farm to school.