Louisiana Farm to School Initiatives in Louisiana

Maria Bampasidou, wmckinzie

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Farm to School (F2S) programs are initiatives participated in by schools with the intent to promote healthy lifestyle choices among students and introduce agricultural lessons. The three main components of F2S programs are local food procurement, school gardens and educational activities. This report presents the findings from the F2S Census conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The report provides information regarding schools’ interest and implementation of F2S activities in 2013 (2011-2012 school year) and 2015 (2013-2014 school year).

Louisiana’s public school system is comprised of 64 districts representing parishes and four districts representing cities. At the conclusion of the 2011-2012 and 2013-2014 school years, the Louisiana public school system was comprised of 1,339 schools that served 662,451 students and 1,305 schools that served 665,174 students, respectively. The number of students in each race category appear below.

White Black Hispanic Asian Two Races Native American Pacific Islander
FEB 2012


328,912 (50%) 282,169 (43%) 27,443 (4%) 9,927 (2%) 8,188 (1%) 5,385 (1%) 427 (0%)
FEB 2014 325,105 (49%) 279,461 (42%) 33,347 (5%) 10,284 (2%) 11,318 (2%) 5,092 (1%) 567 (0%)

As of 2015, there were 13 public school districts in Louisiana that indicated F2S participation, with 152 documented programs. This is a 145% increase from the 2011-2012 school year, where only 62 programs were documented.

F2S La Mapspng

F2S programs are primarily targeted towards elementary aged children. However, school districts that conducted F2S activities reached students across a wide range of ages.


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School districts throughout Louisiana have implemented various F2S activities, with the intent of strengthening children's relationships with agriculture. The most commonly implemented activities include local food procurement, school gardens, tasting demonstrations and farm field trips.

For more information, including tables, see PDF.

8/8/2022 8:20:36 PM
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