S. Hrg. 111–245 

BENEFITS OF FARM–TO–SCHOOL PROJECTS: 

HEALTHY EATING AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 

FOR SCHOOL CHILDREN 

FIELD HEARING 

øBEFORE THE¿ 

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, 

NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MAY 15, 2009 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry 

( 

BENEFITS OF FARM–TO–SCHOOL PROJECTS: HEALTHY EATING AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 

FOR SCHOOL CHILDREN 

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

54–569 PDF 2010

S. HRG. 111–245 

BENEFITS OF FARM–TO–SCHOOL PROJECTS: 

HEALTHY EATING AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 

FOR SCHOOL CHILDREN 

FIELD HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, 

NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MAY 15, 2009 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.agriculture.senate.gov 

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY 

TOM HARKIN, Iowa, Chairman 

PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont 

KENT CONRAD, North Dakota 

MAX BAUCUS, Montana 

BLANCHE L. LINCOLN, Arkansas 

DEBBIE A. STABENOW, Michigan 

E. BENJAMIN NELSON, Nebraska 

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio 

ROBERT P. CASEY, Jr., Pennsylvania 

AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota 

KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, New York 

MICHAEL BENNET, Colorado 

SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia 

RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana 

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi 

MITCH MCCONNELL, Kentucky 

PAT ROBERTS, Kansas 

MIKE JOHANNS, Nebraska 

CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa 

JOHN THUNE, South Dakota 

MARK HALVERSON, Majority Staff Director 

JESSICA L. WILLIAMS, Chief Clerk 

MARTHA SCOTT POINDEXTER, Minority Staff Director 

VERNIE HUBERT, Minority Chief Counsel 

(II) 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

FIELD HEARING(S): 

Benefits of Farm–To–School Projects: Healthy Eating and Physical Activity 

For School Children ............................................................................................. 1 

Friday, May 15, 2009 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY SENATORS 

Harkin, Hon. Tom, U.S. Senator from the State of Iowa, Chairman, Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry ................................................. 3 

Chambliss, Hon. Saxby, U.S. Senator from the State of Georgia ........................ 1 

Panel I 

Dietz, William H., Director, Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ............................................. 7 

Holmes, Glyen, New North Florida Cooperative Association, Inc. ...................... 11 

Long, Cindy, Director, Child Nutrition Programs Division, Food and Nutrition 

Service, United States Department of Agriculture ........................................... 9 

Satcher, David, Director, Center of Excellence on Health Disparities, 

Poussaint–Satcher–Cosby Chair in Mental Health, Morehouse School of 

Medicine ................................................................................................................ 5 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Chambliss, Hon. Saxby ........................................................................................... 36 

Dietz, William H. ..................................................................................................... 39 

Holmes, Glyen .......................................................................................................... 52 

Long, Cindy .............................................................................................................. 57 

Satcher, David .......................................................................................................... 67 

DOCUMENT(S) SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

Community Food Security Coalition, written statement .............................. 78 

School Nutrition Association, written statement ........................................... 80 

School Food Focus, written statement ............................................................ 83 

Georgia Organics, written statement (with attachments) ............................ 85 

‘‘Nourishing the Nation One Tray at a Time’’, National Farm School 

Network ......................................................................................................... 191 

‘‘The Learning Connection’’, Action for Healthy Kids ................................... 206 

‘‘Progress or Promises?’’, Action for Healthy Kids ......................................... 242 

(1) 

BENEFITS OF FARM–TO–SCHOOL PROJECTS: 

HEALTHY EATING AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 

FOR SCHOOL CHILDREN 

Friday, May 15, 2009 

U.S. SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION AND FORESTRY, 

Atlanta, GA 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 1 p.m., in Auditorium 

A, Global Communication Center, Roybal Campus, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Hon. Tom Harkin, chairman of the 

Committee, presiding. Present: Senators Harkin and Chambliss. 

Chairman HARKIN. Good afternoon and welcome everyone to the 

U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry for 

a hearing on nutrition. In cases like this, I always like to turn it 

over to the home state senator to sort of kick things off and run 

things and in this case, I am turning it over to my good friend 

Saxby Chambliss, former chairman of the Agriculture Committee. 

As I said earlier, we have passed the gavel back and forth a couple 

of times and so I will kind of turn it over to Senator Chambliss at 

this time for opening statements and sort of conducting the hearing. 

STATEMENT OF HON. SAXBY CHAMBLISS, U.S. SENATOR FROM 

THE STATE OF GEORGIA 

Senator CHAMBLISS. Well thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, 

and I really appreciate you coming to Georgia. We on the Ag Committee are a very bipartisan group. Agriculture is an American 

issue and we have always had a great working relationship, and 

Tom, I appreciate from a personal standpoint you giving up a Friday, and a special Friday for him because he has a daughter who 

is graduating from law school today and he has to get back late 

this afternoon to make sure that they give her that certificate that 

he has been paying for. Chairman Harkin. That’s right. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator CHAMBLISS. But seriously, Tom, you have been a great 

friend to agriculture and you have been a great friend to me. I 

went to Iowa during our Farm Bill debate and discussion to host 

a hearing out there and I really appreciate you taking time to come 

to Georgia today to let me show off Georgia agriculture and Georgia people to you, as well as other folks who are here today. 

I want to say a special welcome to a number of students that I 

see out there. We are very pleased that you would take the time 

to come and listen, to see how your Federal Government operates. 

2 

I think it is very important for young folks to have a real understanding about what the Federal Government is, how the Federal 

Government operates on a day-to-day basis, outside of reading 

about it in a textbook. 

So I commend your teachers for suggesting you come today, because I know you would not be here. You would rather be in school 

taking a test or something this afternoon. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator CHAMBLISS. But we appreciate you being here. I want to 

thank too the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 

hosting today’s hearing. The staff here has been just absolutely terrific in assisting the Committee with all the logistics and planning 

leading up to today’s event. 

I also wish to welcome the witnesses who are here and thank 

them for their time and expertise and the discussion about health 

and wellness and the important role that agricultural products 

have in healthy lifestyles, and we will take a little more time in 

a minute to introduce them more formally. 

Over the years, there has been growing interest in connecting 

local farmers and their products directly with school food service 

providers. The Food Conservation and Energy Act of 2008, or last 

year’s Farm Bill, included a provision which provides schools relief 

from Federal procurement requirements when purchasing agricultural products directly from local farmers. 

There are many innovative approaches in the Farm-to-School effort and I look forward to hearing testimony that will highlight 

local successes and the tools available at the United States Department of Agriculture to connect farmers and schools across the country. Schools play an important role in shaping nutrition and physical activity habits of our young children. 

School cafeterias, gymnasiums and playgrounds are important 

venues to teach children about healthy eating, as well as exercise. 

The more we learn about nutrition, the clearer the connection between calories in and calories out becomes. I look forward to hearing Dr. Satcher’s testimony about the efforts of Action for Healthy 

Kids. His dedication to raising awareness about solutions to childhood obesity is to be commended. 

The statistics about childhood obesity are very troubling. The 

obesity rate among children six to 11 years has doubled over the 

last 20 years. The obesity rate among children age two to 5 years 

also doubled to over 12 percent over the last two decades. More and 

more children are entering kindergarten overweight or obese. 

As much as schools play an important role in attempts to reverse 

this trend, nothing can surpass the role of parents and caregivers 

in the home. Dr. Dietz’s work here at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has played an extraordinary role in helping all 

Americans understand the significance of this problem. 

The Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry relies on input from experts on the front lines of administering these 

programs and working directly with children. In prior hearings in 

Washington, D.C., we have heard testimony from school food service directors, anti-hunger advocates, a school nurse, researchers, 

nutrition groups, food companies and parent organizations. 

3 

For me personally, I hear firsthand from the school teachers in 

my family about the importance of good nutrition and the National 

School Breakfast and Lunch Programs. These programs benefit the 

lives of millions of children in the United States every single day. 

According to the Georgia Department of Education, over 1,177,000 

lunches and 499,000 breakfasts are served each day in Georgia 

schools. 

As Congress moves forward in the reauthorization process, my 

goal is to ensure that all eligible children can easily access these 

important nutrition programs. The fact that there are opportunities 

to benefit farmers by connecting them and their healthy products 

directly with schools is kind of the icing on the cake. 

So Mr. Chairman, again thank you for coming to Georgia. 

Thanks for your leadership on this issue and I look forward to continuing to work for you and look forward to the testimony from the 

witnesses here today. 

STATEMENT OF HON. TOM HARKIN, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE 

STATE OF IOWA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTE ON AGRICULTURE, 

NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY 

Chairman HARKIN. Thank you very much, Senator Chambliss. I 

could not help but just—I do not know why it did not occur to me 

before now, but I remember when I was in the military, when I 

was in the Navy a couple years ago, we always had a plan of the 

day that would come out. 

And on the plan of the day, Dr. Satcher, was the uniform of the 

day. And you probably do not realize this, but we have that in the 

Senate. It came out that the uniform of the day for senators were 

dark blue suits, white shirts and blue ties. 

[Laughter.] 

Chairman HARKIN. I just noticed that we have the same ties on. 

That’s a joke for all you young people out there. 

[Laughter.] 

Chairman HARKIN. You probably seriously thought I meant that, 

right? No, that was not serious. First of all, let me thank you, Senator Chambliss, for your friendship and the great working relationship we have had over all these years on the Agriculture Committee. 

Thank you for hosting this hearing today in your home state and 

for all your work in putting together this great panel of witnesses. 

We are also grateful to the staff of the Centers for Disease Control 

and Prevention who have generously handled the logistics of the 

hearing and hosted us here today. This is a fourth in a series of 

hearings held by this Committee to prepare for the reauthorization 

of the Child Nutrition legislation. 

We held our first hearing back in December and we have been 

adding to the foundation for this new legislation since. In earlier 

hearings, the Committee heard testimony about the negative effects of poor nutrition on children’s development, their education 

and their health, particularly on the increase in conditions such as 

Type II diabetes, overweight or obesity, heart disease. 

We learned more about ways in which Federal child nutrition 

programs are succeeding and ways in which they need to be 

strengthened. We have also heard testimony about effective ways 

4 

to alter what is called the food and nutrition environment in 

schools to make healthier eating an easier choice for our kids. 

We will hear several of these points reiterated today and I know 

we will hear some valuable new ideas and perspectives. I read all 

the testimonies of the witnesses coming down last evening and flying down here this morning. 

One key point that comes through clearly is that the health and 

nutrition of our nation’s children is closely connected to the overall 

cost and status of healthcare in the United States and its impact 

on our economy. For example, healthy nutrition and physical activity are directly related to better learning, preventing illness, reducing healthcare costs and of course, building and maintaining a 

strong economy. 

In other words, improving the nutrition and health of our children pays dividends in many ways and many times over. One of 

these dividends which we have only recently given proper attention 

to is that doing the right thing for our kids by providing healthy, 

local fresh fruits and vegetables and high protein meats is also 

good for farmers and local communities. 

It is really a two-for, if not more. Kids get the nutrition they 

need and deserve. It helps rural communities, which continue to 

struggle, particularly during some tough economic times. Undoubtedly, a multitude of reasons support our enacting a strong forwardlooking new child nutrition bill this year. 

So in the coming weeks, I look forward to working with our Committee, particularly with Senator Chambliss, as we begin to actually craft the legislation to secure the added funding proposed by 

President Obama and which is so critical to improving Federal 

child nutrition programs and to see what we can do to expand the 

fresh fruit and high quality proteins for our kids in school. 

I thank our witnesses for being here today to help us in this effort to get this done and now I will yield to Senator Chambliss for 

introductions. 

Senator CHAMBLISS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and before we 

get started, I have a statement from the Georgia School Nutrition 

Association that I would ask unanimous consent to be added to the 

record. 

[The prepared statement of the Georgia School Nutrition Association can be found on page 80 in the appendix.] 

Senator CHAMBLISS. We will start, Dr. Satcher, on your side here 

and we will go this way both in introduction and then in testimony. 

Dr. David Satcher is the current director of Center of Excellence 

on Health Disparities. 

He is the Poussaint-Satcher–Cosby Chair in Mental Health at 

Morehouse School of Medicine here in Atlanta. Dr. Satcher was the 

16th Surgeon General of the United States of America, where he 

served his country well. Dr. Satcher is a dear friend and someone 

who, as a Morehouse graduate, and now is back at the Morehouse 

School of Medicine, I have the privilege of working with on a regular basis and we are extremely proud of him and proud that he 

is here today. 

I want to say too that he began an initiative. He is the founder 

of Action for Healthy Kids. I know he will talk a little bit about 

that because it is an extremely interesting and valuable program 

5 

and very effective program that he works on there. Then Dr. William Dietz is the director, Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity 

and Obesity here at the Center for Disease Control. 

Dr. Dietz is recognized as a leading government expert on the 

child obesity issue and we are very pleased that you could be here 

today. Ms. Cindy Long is the director of the Child Nutrition Programs, the Food and Nutrition Service at the U.S. Department of 

Agriculture. 

She is the person that is directly responsible for the administration of many of the programs that we are going to be talking about 

today, as well as in the legislation that we worked on. So Ms. Long, 

thanks very much for you being here. Mr. Glyen Holmes is going 

to provide some very interesting testimony. 

Mr. Holmes is with the New North Florida Cooperative Association in Marianna, Florida. His organization has been responsible 

for working throughout several different southeastern states in providing fresh fruits and vegetables from farmers and farmers markets in the school systems. We are particularly pleased that you 

are here and we look forward to hearing from you, both from your 

testimony as well as a discussion about this issue. 

Dr. Satcher, we will start with you and come right down the row 

there with your opening statements. Thank you again for being 

here. 

STATEMENT OF DAVID SATCHER, DIRECTOR, CENTER OF EXCELLENCE ON HEALTH DISPARITIES, POUSSAINT–SATCHER– 

COSBY CHAIR IN MENTAL HEALTH, MOREHOUSE SCHOOL 

OF MEDICINE 

Dr. SATCHER. Thank you very much, Senator Chambliss and 

Chairman Harkin and members of the Committee who are represented here. I have submitted full testimony to the Committee 

and I appreciate the opportunity to summarize these thoughts with 

you today. 

I am David Satcher and I currently serve as director of the 

Satcher Health Leadership Institute at the Morehouse School of 

Medicine here. From 1993 to 1998, I was director of the Centers 

for Disease Control and Prevention and from 1998 to 2002, I served 

as Surgeon General and assistant secretary for health. 

I must say that I grew up about 90 miles from here on a farm 

outside of Anniston, Alabama and I still consider myself to be a 

pretty good gardener. While in office, I had the opportunity to release the Surgeon General’s call to action to prevent and reduce 

overweight and obesity. This report was the first to note that obesity was an epidemic in our country and a leading cause of preventable death and it outlined strategies to address obesity and its related problems. 

After leaving the Office of Surgeon General in 2002, along with 

Mrs. Laura Bush, I called a national summit aimed at putting action behind the recommendations laid out in the Surgeon General’s 

report, especially as they related to children and the school environment. The result of that summit was the formation of Action for 

Health Kids, of which I was the founding chair, and today I remain 

an active member of the board of directors. 

6 

My testimony today is on behalf of Action for Healthy Kids. Action for Health Kids is a national grassroots, non-profit organization that addresses the epidemic of childhood obesity and undernourishment by focusing on changes within schools. We now have 

teams working in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. We 

have more than 11,500 volunteers with the support of more than 

65 national partner organizations and governmental agents representing—agencies representing education, nutrition, physical fitness and others who care about our youth. 

Our vision at Action for Healthy Kids is that all children will develop the lifetime habits necessary to promote health and learning. 

Obesity and undernourishment among our youth is not a cosmetic 

problem. It is a health issue and it disproportionately affects lowincome and minority children. 

As an example, here in Georgia, almost 42 percent of African 

American children are overweight or obese compared with 26 percent of white, non–Hispanic children, and 26 percent is high. About 

half, 47 percent, of Georgia children receiving public health insurance are overweight or obese, double the rate among privately insured children. 

This places Georgia at number 48 in the state rankings on insurance disparities. These disparities are even more significant when 

you consider the well-documented increased risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and certain cancers faced by individuals who 

are obese. With children spending 1,000 hours per year in schools, 

schools can serve as the great equalizers across economic, racial 

and social differences. 

Ideally, they provide a level playing field while children are 

learning lifelong habits that will help them to be healthy. Schools 

also are a critical conduit to parents, families and communities, all 

of whom play important roles in helping children learn good nutrition and how to be physically active. So how can we most effectively address the problems of overweight, undernourished and 

physically inactive children? 

Congress took a very important step during the 2004 Child Nutrition Reauthorization by requiring that all schools with federally 

funded school milk programs have a school wellness policy. While 

we now believe that nearly all schools, certainly more than 90 percent, have wellness policies on the books, it is imperative that we 

now take the next important step, making sure that these policies 

are implemented, monitored and continuously improved to benefit 

our children. 

I would like to summarize several specific recommendations that 

we at Action for Healthy Kids believe should be taken into consideration. First, we believe that we must provide incentives for 

schools that make incremental changes toward creating an environment that promotes healthy eating and increased physical activity 

among students. There are several examples, but to be brief, I will 

point out that Action for Healthy Kids has experienced significant 

success with mini grants up of $2,000 or less targeted at increasing 

school breakfast participation. 

For example, in Ohio, we increased participation by 15 percent 

in a year’s time and our goal for a new grant program is that we 

will reach 41 schools in 17 states and increase participation by 25 

7 

percent. With every opportunity we must put children, nutrition 

and fitness in broader contexts of the challenges our nation faces 

in addressing healthcare in our system. And as you pointed out, 

obesity and its consequences are responsible for major costs in our 

healthcare system, including the chronic diseases responsible for 

over 75 percent of Medicare costs., this is a very important challenge. 

Finally, we must do a better job of developing policies that recognize the relationship among nutrition, physical activity and readiness to learn. In the report that we have submitted, I have included The Learning Connection, which we released in 2003. For 

example, increased participation in a school breakfast program is 

associated with better academic test scores, better attendance, better class participation, better discipline. 

It also has been correlated with reduction in absenteeism and 

tardiness. Similarly, schools that have incorporated nutrition, physical education and physical activity goals into continuous school improvement plans experience significant academic improvement. 

Just as nutrition and physical activity should be viewed in the context of health of our nation, they also should be viewed as an integral part of an effective education system. 

In closing, the responsibility for these kinds of changes fall on all 

of us, so we must work together. We must support parents and 

communities. Anything that we can do to bring about better coordination, whether between Federal and state policymakers, between 

nutritionists and educators, or among parents, administrators and 

students themselves, we have positive results in the long term. 

Thank you for this opportunity to comment on this very important 

subject at this very important hearing. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Satcher can be found on page 67 

in the appendix.] 

Senator CHAMBLISS. Thank you, Dr. Satcher. Dr. Dietz? 

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM H. DIETZ, DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF 

NUTRITION, PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND OBESITTY, CENTERS 

FOR DIDEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

Dr. DIETZ. Chairman Harkin, Senator Chambliss, welcome to the 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and thanks for the opportunity to provide you with this testimony. I am Bill Dietz, the 

director of the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity 

located in CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention 

and Health Promotion. 

Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge Dr. Satcher as well 

because I believe that his Surgeon General’s call to action was the 

first formal Federal response to this epidemic and the first attempt 

to mobilize stakeholders and I think it did its job in terms of focusing attention on this problem. So thank you, Dr. Satcher. My statement emphasizes the importance of multi-component strategies and 

particularly the need to address nutrition standards in foods for 

children in schools and childcare settings. 

I will spend a few minutes outlining our strategies to improve 

healthy eating, active living and healthy weight. It is clear that we 

have to move beyond the description of this problem to the implementation of solutions for this problem. So I will just spend a moVerDate Nov 24 2008 01:10 Mar 24, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\54569.TXT SAG2 PsN: SAG2
8 

ment or two on prevalence, focus on its complications and more 

specifically on its costs, the target behaviors that I think are warranted that we should address with a variety of strategies, and 

then close with some comments on the opportunities before us. 

So it is true that 16 percent of two to 19–year-olds currently are 

obese, using the NHANES survey. But what is equally important 

is that we are now at a critical juncture with respect to childhood 

obesity because the data between 1999 and 2006 indicate that 

there is a plateau not simply limited to Caucasian children, but 

also including Hispanic and African American children. 

That is true regardless of whether we are looking at overweight, 

obese or severe obesity. But we cannot become complacent about 

that. Over 30 percent of the pediatric population is still overweight 

or obese and those are children that are going to go on to develop 

the adult complications of obesity, including cancer, Type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease. 

In my view, we are at about where tobacco was in the 1960’s, 

that is, there was a plateau in tobacco consumption that coincided 

with an awareness of this problem. But it was not until at least 

20 years later that we began to see declines in per capita cigarette 

consumption consistent with a variety of policy and environmental 

interventions, and I believe that the awareness of the obesity epidemic has gotten us to the plateau. 

But we have not yet reached the point where we understand 

what policies and initiatives we need to initiate or can show that 

have an impact in the decline in pediatric obesity. We fund 23 

states from my division. Georgia and Iowa are included among 

those states. And the Division of Adolescent and School Health 

funds 22 state-based education and health agencies and one tribal 

government for coordinated school health programs. 

These are the carriers that we think are effective in beginning 

to address this problem. We also believe that there are at least six 

target behaviors that warrant addressing. These include physical 

activity, breast feeding, fruit and vegetable intake, television viewing, sugar-sweetened beverages and energy density. We think that 

the focus on these behaviors that particularly affect children are 

childcare, schools and communities. 

I would like to just point to policy initiatives in each of those settings that we think have made a difference. With respect to 

childcare, we are involved in the evaluation of what we consider a 

model program for group daycare settings in New York City, which 

has focused on the elimination of sugar-sweetened beverages, regulation of television time, promotion of 60 minutes of physical activity and low-fat milk. 

We believe that children are in this program for a substantial period of time and that these initiatives are likely to help control obesity. With respect to schools, there is a model program in Mississippi where the State Department of Education has worked with 

CDC, the Bower Foundation, The Alliance for a Healthier Generation and other partners to strengthen the state’s efforts in improving the health of its youths. 

This program has included new snacks, a ban on sugar-sweetened beverages, an effort to replace fryers with combination oven 

steamers, all of which can be expected to lead to an improvement 

9 

in child health. With respect to communities, CDC funded an initiative in Somerville, Massachusetts, a multi-component intervention that lead to a reduction in the rate of increase in BMI among 

children and adolescents in those school systems. 

In Charlotte, North Carolina, a CDC-funded program lead to a 

farmer’s market in a low-income community with high rates of 

chronic diseases and had a significant impact on fruit and vegetable consumption. The challenge here is that we are under invested in evaluation. We are relying on the best available evidence. 

What we need to do is grow the best possible evidence. It is critical 

that we identify what works and expand beyond that. We do not 

yet know the dose of these interventions sufficient to prevent or 

control obesity. 

It is also essential that we provide states and communities with 

the metrics to assess success and the capacity to measure the impact of their programs. I would like to close with just a few comments about some pending legislation. 

The Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act provides at least four 

opportunities to strengthen the role of parents. First, peer counseling for breast feeding. Second, the provision of breast pumps to 

allow mothers who are going back to work to continue to nurse. 

It offers an opportunity to focus on parenting practice, not only 

with respect to the choices that children are given, but also to help 

educate providers or parents that a fussy infant is not always a 

hungry infant, and some of the overeating that we think exists may 

occur because parents are trying to calm fussy infants by feeding 

rather than other soothing practices. 

Finally, it is important to understand the impact of laws on 

breast feeding at work. Second, the Child and Adult Care Food Program could expand to the policies that seem effective in New York 

City to other venues. Third, we believe that the implementation 

and broadening of the IOM recommendations that competitive 

foods in schools meet the dietary guidelines could be expanded in 

all schools to apply to all foods and all snacks. 

We ought to build on the school wellness policies and use CDC 

materials, like the School Health Index, to assure that school 

guidelines align with (inaudible) we need to expand beyond the 

Fruit and Vegetable Snack Program to foster farm-to-school programs and school gardens. And finally, we need to develop incentives for medical groups to collaborate with community-based programs to foster and monitor community-based interventions. In 

summary, thank you very much for your leadership in this arena 

and we look forward to providing more comments. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Dietz can be found on page 39 

in the appendix.] 

Senator CHAMBLISS. Thank you. Ms. Long. 

STATEMENT OF CINDY LONG, DIRECTOR, CHILD NUTRITION 

PROGRAMS DIVISION, FOOD AND NUTRITION SERVICE, 

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 

Ms. LONG. Chairman Harkin and Senator Chambliss, thank you 

for this opportunity to discuss USDA’s Farm-to-School efforts and 

the other aspects of our Federal nutrition assistance programs that 

support local farmers and promote healthy eating. 

10 

I would like to take the opportunity this afternoon to highlight 

several important efforts that we have undertaken to support our 

local farmers and combat the growing problem of childhood obesity 

through our nutrition assistance programs, particularly the school 

meals programs. 

First I will touch on some of our farm-to-school efforts. We are 

committed to working with our partners to identify strategies to 

link children with foods that are produced in the communities 

where they live and go to school. Local procurement can contribute 

appropriately and efficiently toward meeting the diverse needs of 

our child nutrition programs. 

Over several years we have been providing guidance on how 

schools can do business with local producers and still meet their 

Federal procurement requirements. Strategies for achieving this include tailoring specifications to include high standards for product 

freshness and quality to help obtain local produce. Another strategy for reaching local producers is utilization of small purchase 

thresholds by school districts, which allows for streamlined purchasing procedures. 

In addition, as you know, the Food Conservation and Energy Act 

of 2008 provided schools the ability to use a geographic preference 

to purchase unprocessed locally grown and locally raised agricultural products and in July, we issued guidance on how institutions 

can use these preferences and continue to work with our program 

operators to implement that provision. In addition, we also support 

local farm-to-school efforts by providing a range of technical assistance resources. We have issued a step-by-step guide called Small 

Farms, Small Schools Initiative, which details how to bring small 

farms and schools together. 

In 2005, we also issued a document targeted at school districts 

called Eat Smart, Farm Fresh, which is a guide to buying and serving those schools locally produced food. We are actually in the process of updating this document and hope to republish it later this 

year with new success stories and additional resources. We also 

support farm-to-school initiatives through our Team Nutrition 

Training Grants. 

Our TN grants offer funding to state agencies for establishing or 

enhancing infrastructure to support the implementation of healthy 

eating in schools. In some occasions, these grants have been used 

for farm-to-school activities, including things like school gardening 

projects. Of course these are not our only activities. As you know, 

the 2008 Farm Bill expanded the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, which provides another opportunity for linkages between 

schools and local producers. 

The program is designed to make fresh fruits and vegetables 

available to children in school and it is targeted to low-income elementary students in every state. Obviously local producers can be 

an excellent source for schools to obtain the fresh produce they 

need for this program and we are emphasizing that linkage as we 

work with our states to roll out the expansion of the program. We 

are also continuing our efforts to make the school meal programs 

as healthful as possible. 

One of the most important links the USDA can make between 

producers and the health of all of our program participants is to 

11 

make fruits and vegetables an important part of our programs. We 

estimate that our programs provide about $11 billion in support for 

fruit and vegetable consumption per year. We are also continuing 

to work to ensure that our school meal nutrition requirements support and promote healthy eating. 

We have contracted with the Institute of Medicine to put together an expert panel to develop recommendations for a comprehensive strategy to bring school meal programs and the Child 

and Adult Care Food Program in line with the current dietary 

guidelines for Americans. This effort is well underway and we expect to have the institute’s final recommendations this fall. 

While the school meal programs are under review, we have been 

and are continuing to encourage and support schools in following 

the dietary guidelines within the current program structure and 

the current meal requirements. We have provided a range of technical assistance materials to support them in this effort and in addition, our HealthierUS School Challenge is a key element of our 

effort to promote healthy school environments. 

The HealthierUS School Challenge recognizes that unhealthy 

food and beverage choices, along with inadequate physical activity, 

undermines children’s ability to learn in school. The HealthierUS 

School Challenge encourages and rewards schools that have taken 

steps to make it easier for their students to make healthier dietary 

and physical activity choices during the school day. 

Schools can earn a gold, silver or bronze award from USDA by 

meeting specific criteria, including offering lunches that demonstrate healthy menu planning, meeting specific standards for the 

foods sold outside of the reimbursable meal programs, promoting 

nutrition education and providing opportunities for physical activity to students. 

To date we have about 570 schools that have received a 

HealthierUS School award. In closing, I want to emphasize that 

the efforts that I have touched on this afternoon to support local 

producers and promote healthy food choices have been and continue to be a very high priority for the nutrition assistance programs. 

Chairman Harkin and Senator Chambliss, I appreciate the opportunity to be here this afternoon. I would be happy to try to answer any questions you have today. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Long can be found on page 57 

in the appendix.] 

Senator CHAMBLISS. Thank you very much. Mr. Holmes. 

STATEMENT OF GLYEN HOLMES, NEW NORTH FLORIDA 

COOPERATIVE ASSOCIATION, INC. 

Mr. HOLMES. Yes, Chairman Harkin and Senator Chambliss and 

members of the Committee and guests, I thank you for giving me 

the opportunity to tell a story about the North Florida Co-op and 

the benefits of the Farm-to–School program and working with the 

National Farm-to–School Network. Again, my name is Glyen 

Holmes. 

I am the executive director for the New North Florida Cooperative and I am originally from Mississippi. I worked for USDA for 

18 years before going into the private sector. I work with small 

12 

farmers, school districts and numerous partners in Florida 

throughout the southeast region. 

One of the most beneficial partners I have worked with over the 

years is Vonda Richardson and she is sitting here behind me. She 

is extension specialist with Florida A&M University Cooperative 

Extension Service and we have collaborated for about 12 years. 

NNFC, which is the New North Florida Co-op, it is established to 

assist small-scale farmers in accessing alternative markets for 

their product. 

Farm-to–School, in the beginning we called Small Farm to 

School. We all know that food has originated on the farm, but what 

makes our effort unique in what—we link small farmers with their 

product with school districts. This effort is grass root level and selfsupported. We are primarily at the school district level, although 

we work also at the state level with state food directors. 

In my experience, school districts participate with us because 

they see the nutritional cost-effectiveness and the social value of it. 

NNFC has worked with all types of school districts, including rural, 

urban and small and large school districts. School districts are able 

to incorporate fresh local products in their school meals, increasing 

the nutritional value of the food they offer to their students. 

The farmers also assess alternative, market which is crucial 

today. The cooperative itself has created jobs for local residents. 

The cooperative provides a fresh product and in a manner that allows schools to treat them like other vendors. NNFC Farm-to– 

School model is successful because it benefits the school, local community without overburdening food service. 

In May 1995, a group of small farmers from several counties in 

North Florida met to organize and develop a potential market for 

Farms-to–School. The group identified four problems faced by 

small-scale farmers. In some cases, we called it limited resource 

funds. 

One problem was a dire financial situation farmers found themselves in. Another problem was keeping farmers focused on one 

market while building capacity in the marketplace. The third problem was dealing with destructive attitudes and perception, and the 

final problem was identifying farmers—wanted too much in the 

form of property and services too soon. 

Taking these issues into consideration, it was decided NNFC will 

be a service-driven cooperative providing process and transportation and marketing services. NNFC was incorporated in October 

1995. Operating structure is very simple and straight forward, consistent with three components that work together. 

Participants who are farmers are responsible for what they do 

best, farming. A small force of part-time day laborers are engaged 

in value added processing and a management team provided leadership, organization, market development and planning and coordinating. 

Our first delivery, which may seem small in a large scale, but 

are real significant, our first delivery was 3,000 pounds of leafy 

greens to a small school district, Gadsden County, Florida, which 

feeds about 7,000 kids a day. We supplied only Gadsden County for 

about 2 years until we learned the ropes and built capacity in the 

13 

cooperative and with farmers. That food director is in Florida—I 

mean, Georgia now. 

She transferred to Georgia. Since 1995, the New North Florida 

Coop has helped schools, food service incorporate locally or regionally grown fruits and vegetables into child nutrition programs in 

over 100 school districts in several southern states serving well 

over one million school children. 

These states include Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. We just left Texas last week. We are 

getting ready to a pilot with the Houston Independent School District there. We provided training for food service personnel and 

menu planning, local product procurement in food and fresh 

produce storage and preparation. 

NNFC has worked with about 100 farmers in Florida, Georgia, 

Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas over the past 14 years. Farmers do not have to actually join the cooperative to participate in 

Farm-to-School activity. We work with small farmers in the area 

of crop production management, marketing, value added processing, transportation and distribution and logistics, which is crucial in being able to carry out a Farm-to–School project. 

Farm-to–School is more complicated than just asking a farmer to 

grow a product and instantly having a local fresh product ready to 

eat or ready to cook at the school lunch. NNFC has a storage, refrigeration and processing facility where it operates its washing, 

cutting and packaging operation. 

The facility is inspected by local, state and Federal health agencies, which is important today. We target products that schools are 

not currently serving or cannot get in a fresh form. Usually when 

we do that we look at what is culturally sound in that area that 

they cannot get through a bidding process. 

In that sense, we are known as a specialty item vendor. We are 

not considered a food vendor. Again we are a specialty item vendor 

so that we do not have to become competitors with large entities 

who are already supplying the school district. The products we 

offer year around are one, bagged collards, sweet potato sticks, 

green beans, which are seasonally. 

We have a small fleet of refrigerated trucks that make deliveries 

one to two times a month depending on the menu, so the food arrives within one or 2 days prior to being served. This system has 

given us a reputation of being a reliable distributor of quality 

produce and facilitates our Farm-to–School efforts. A lot of the— 

one main question that is always asked about the co-op is how you 

finance. 

We have been sustainable since our inception. Our operation is 

funded from revenue from direct sales from schools and other market outlets. A few loans and grants we have received to help build 

infrastructure and outreach to farmers and school districts. NNFC 

received two small grants after we started from USDA Ag Marketing Service totaling about $70,000 in the early years of the coop. 

These funds were used to enhance ongoing activities with schools 

we had started a few years prior. We also received a USDA—grant, 

which I think was very instrumental for us to get to this point 

here, in 1999 through 2000 for about $325,000 that enabled us to 

14 

acquire additional infrastructure that allowed us to increase capacity through increased capacity. 

Currently NNFC serves as one of the eight regional leads for the 

National Farm-to–School Network and is a hub for the Farm-to– 

School activities in the south—southern region. In this role, NNFC 

supports the national network in areas of policy, information, 

media and networking opportunity and training and technical assistance for individuals working on Farm-to–School issues in 

Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. In addition, 

our work is also is in the State of Florida, because we reside in 

Florida, so we also work in Florida. 

From the network perspective, Farm-to–School Program nationwide enables children to have access to nutritious food while simultaneously benefiting the community and local farmers by providing 

a consistent, reliable market. 

The network sites in over 2,000 school districts in border states 

are eating farm fresh food for school lunch, breakfast or snacks 

along with nutrition and agriculture education through taste tests, 

school guards and farm tours. Just having a choice of healthy options in the cafeteria through Farm-to–School meals may result in 

the consumption of more fruit and vegetables during the school 

meals and at home. 

Farm-to–School Program also provides great benefits to family 

farmers by opening up a local market for their product. A better 

Farm-to–School Program suggests that when schools dedicate a significant percentage of their purchase to local farmers, local farmers 

gain a significant and steady market. 

In closing, every child deserves the opportunity to eat food in a 

school that ensures their health and wellbeing and Farm-to–School 

Program is a wonderful solution to incorporate healthy food into 

the school meals. And as the Child Nutrition Reauthorization approaches, Congress has the unique opportunity to make this possible. 

The 2004 Child Nutrition Act included one provision on Farm-to– 

School section 122, a seed grant program with $2 million in discretionary fund that has failed to receive appropriation. In this Child 

Reauthorization Act, the network asks—that is the Farm-to–School 

Network—asks for Congress to enact $50 million in mandatory 

funding for section 122. 

This will fund 100 to 500 projects per year up to $100,000 to 

cover startup costs for Farm-to–School program. These compared to 

one-time grant will allow schools to develop vendor relationship 

with local small farmers and develop hands-on nutrition education 

to demonstrate the importance and relationship of nutrition and 

agriculture. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Holmes can be found on page 52 

in the appendix.] 

Senator CHAMBLISS. Well thank all of you for some very enlightening testimony and again, we appreciate very much your being 

here. Dr. Satcher, let me start with you. You made the point that 

I think is so valid, and that I talk about as I get around visiting 

nutrition folks, and that is that this problem really starts at home. 

If you do not have a parent who is willing to make the commitment to try to help their children have healthy meals and a 

15 

healthy lifestyle, then it sure makes it difficult just to dump them 

off at school and expect the schools to do that for them. 

Is there a way that your organization has developed any kind of 

message that can reach parents and what kind of experience have 

you had with this? 

Dr. SATCHER. Well I think it is a very important point. Thank 

you. I think it is a very important point. There is no substitute for 

the experience that children have at home in terms of nutrition 

and physical activity. 

The reason we say that the schools are the great equalizers is 

that there are children, as you know, who come from households 

where the parents are not really prepared sometimes to be parents. 

I mean, teenage parents sometimes are not prepared. 

Sometimes there is a single parent and all that she can do is to 

get the children off to school in the morning and try to be there 

when they get back in the afternoon. So what we hope will happen 

is that at least during the 1,000 hours that the children spend at 

school, there will be models of good nutrition and physical activity, 

and then that the schools can reach out to the parents. 

We have worked with the PTAs, and the PTA is represented here 

today, and they have been trying very hard to better engage parents with the schools and try to bridge that tremendous gap, and 

with the community, that sometimes there are community institutions, like the church, who can help with parents also. 

What we are trying to do more and more, and some of our chapters have done a better job than others, of engaging community institutions that can be supportive of the schools and the parents. 

But we agree with you that the role of parents is critical. 

But we also believe that there are some children who need help 

right now and if they do not get it, then we pay for it later in terms 

of overweight and obesity and sometimes even in other forms of illness and behavior. As I pointed out, children who have good nutrition and are physically fit are better disciplined in school. 

They are less likely to be absent from school, whereas children 

who are obese are four times more likely to be depressed and to 

be absent from school. So I think what we are trying to do, recognizing your point about the importance of parents, is to try to intervene at the level of the schools and then reach out to parents 

and communities at the same time. I think you are right, it is critical. 

Senator CHAMBLISS. And you also make a good point that there 

are some parents who just are not capable of providing the right 

kind of guidance and often times it is not through any fault of their 

own. I like your point about if a child has a good breakfast and a 

good lunch, that child is going to be less of a discipline problem. 

They are going to be easier to teach, according to my wife, who is 

a retired school teacher, and my daughter, who is currently a 

fourth grade teacher. 

Dr. SATCHER. This is a very important point. We struggled at the 

beginning of this program, because I mean the schools responded 

by saying well, here you are trying to dump another problem on us; 

we have enough problems already and now you are going to make 

us responsible for the child obesity problem. I think when we started to turn the corner was the report on learning, the learning conVerDate Nov 24 2008 01:10 Mar 24, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\54569.TXT SAG2 PsN: SAG2
16 

nection, when the schools realized that we were in this together, 

that we shared their goal, we wanted children to learn, we wanted 

them to be in classroom, we wanted them to be disciplined. I think 

that is a lesson for public health, is that if we want real partners, 

we have to respond to their needs and their goals also. 

Senator CHAMBLISS. I like your idea of incentivizing schools to 

participate in the program too and to have a goal out there and if 

they achieve that goal, to get some sort of reward. Do you limit the 

school as to what they can do with this grant money that they are 

awarded or to do whatever they want to do? 

Dr. SATCHER. I think we do not have a lot of money and we have 

been very fortunate at getting some support from foundations and 

the National Football League has been a steady supporter of ours 

and National Dairy Council. 

So we have been trying to No. 1, support anything that relates 

to teaching and learning or anything that relates to improving 

physical activity and good nutrition. We have some other ideas for 

the future in terms of perhaps the training and use of community 

help workers in supporting teachers at school, because many 

schools do not have the resources to have a physical education 

teacher. 

So I think we just have to continue to work together. But let me 

make one final point because I know you are dealing with health 

system reform. The point I tried to make when I testified before 

the House is that this cannot just be healthcare reform. We have 

to deal with all of the deterrents of health. 

If we deal with deterrents of the kind that we are talking about 

today, nutrition and learning, it will certainly reduce entitlement 

costs of healthcare in this country. There is no other way—we cannot—we are in this battle by chasing diseases. We have to figure 

out a way to intervene and I think incentives are the key to that. 

Some businesses have done that quite well. I was with the Technology Association of Georgia yesterday and some of the members 

there have really developed successful worksite programs by providing incentives for their workers to engage in physical activity 

and good nutrition. 

When I was director here, Bill, in 1996, at our 50th anniversary, 

what we did was—I think you remember—provided an extra half 

an hour for lunch if people would use it to be physically active and 

we tried to change the cafeteria too. And it is amazing how many 

people responded to that. 

Then you asked the supervisor and they said well, we did not 

miss them because they performed better when they got back than 

they would have. So I think there is something to be said for these 

kinds of incentives. 

Senator CHAMBLISS. And probably did not miss as many days 

being out sick too. 

Dr. SATCHER. Exactly. And that is what the businesses are saying. They are saying that it is really reducing absenteeism in the 

workplace and obviously reducing illness that they have to pay for, 

and improving working relationships, all these things we have 

seen. 

Senator CHAMBLISS. I want to commend both you and Mr. 

Holmes with respect to your programs primarily because there are 

17 

a lot of people who think that the Federal Government is the answer to everything, that we have all the money and we have all 

the power to make the policy. 

While we do probably spend too much money, we do not have the 

power to exercise the kind of discipline that we just talked about 

with respect to parent/children relationship regarding this particular issue. But what you two folks are doing with your programs 

is without basically any help from the Federal Government. 

You are out there involving volunteers and admittedly, Mr. 

Holmes, it is for a profit, but shucks, if it benefits kids and it benefits your farmers, and you do not have to have the Federal Government looking over your shoulder all the time to accomplish a benefit for both ends of it and in your case, Dr. Satcher, where you 

are seeing some very positive results with respect to the obesity 

issue and the wellness issue, I think it speaks volumes about your 

program that you are not looking to the Federal Government to tell 

you what to do. 

And as we are doing right now unfortunately in too many businesses around the country, we are having to pump a lot of money 

in, but we are putting mandates on them. You guys are out there 

working your programs and helping kids and not depending on the 

Federal Government to do it. Well my time is up, but I will come 

back the next round, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman HARKIN. Thank you very much, Senator Chambliss 

and Dr. Satcher, it is good to see you again. I used to work with 

you when you were both the Surgeon General and the head of 

CDC. I just am constrained almost to say, do you even recognize 

this place now, what it was in the 90’s when you were the head 

of it? 

Dr. SATCHER. Well, they invite me over here. 

Chairman HARKIN. You are close by. I just want to thank you for 

all your public service and for all you are doing yet, even today. 

Both you and Dr. Dietz talked about—mentioned the school 

wellness policies that we put in the last Child Nutrition Bill. 

I will not go into all of that, the history of it, but basically we 

just said that every school that gets a participation in the school 

lunch program has to have a school wellness policy. We did not say 

what it had to be; we just left it up to the schools. 

I think you mentioned that 90 percent have some, but there is 

a long way to go to bridge the gap between the policies and the implementation and even the policies themselves. It was Dr. Dietz 

who mentioned the IOM standards, Institute of Medicine standards. 

First you, Dr. Satcher, and then Dr. Dietz, if you could address 

yourself to that because as we reauthorize the Child Nutrition Bill 

again this year, should we be looking at somehow—now we mandated this. We mandated this in the last bill. They had to have a 

wellness policy. What we did not say is on what basis. 

Now the Institute of Medicine, as you know, has come up with 

standards and should we be thinking of saying to school districts, 

fine, you have wellness policies, but you should incorporate into 

those the IOM standards. I just wondered if you thought about 

that. 

18 

How do we get them—there is probably about as many different 

wellness policies as there are schools in this country. As you say, 

some of them are really good and some of them are not. How do 

we get them up to the IOM standards? What should we do on that? 

Dr. SATCHER. First let me just say that I think when Congress 

acted and passed the wellness policy—and I know how much you 

had to do with that—it was a major, major step forward. Bill has 

sort of done—Dr. Dietz here has done sort of a study of how long 

it takes from the time you have the Surgeon General’s report until 

you have this kind of policy and usually it takes much longer if you 

go back and look at history. 

So in 2004, when this legislation passed, it was a big step forward. It was a wellness policy and I think it was a major step. It 

could have been much more specific in terms of what was required, 

but I think it at least lead to the schools looking critically at what 

they were doing and working together with the district school 

boards to come up with policy. I think now it is time to put more 

teeth into it in at least two ways and one, as you say, using IOM 

standards, again which Bill has had a lot to do with, so using IOM 

standards, but also looking at implementation. 

I work—the other organization that I work with here is the 100 

Black Men. These are men who are professional black men who decided 3 years ago that they were going to reach back and mentor 

children from disadvantaged communities and now we have gotten 

involved with the health issue. They are really working to try to 

see if they can work with schools in terms of what will it take to 

implement these policies that you have on your books. 

I do not know. In some cases it is more funding and I happen 

to believe it is a good investment for government in terms of spending money now as opposed to spending it later when people are ill, 

suffering from cancer and cardiovascular disease and diabetes. So 

I support providing more funds that would strengthen the schools’ 

ability in physical education and good nutrition. I think it will be 

a good investment. 

Chairman HARKIN. Dr. Dietz, any comments? 

Dr. DIETZ. There are at least four things that I think could be— 

there are at least four things that I think could be done with respect to school wellness policies. One is that although schools are 

required to have them, they are not required to publish them. So 

shining some light on them at the community level might be helpful. 

Chairman HARKIN. Like published in what? I mean, I did not— 

Dr. DIETZ. Just make them publicly available. 

Chairman HARKIN. OK. 

Dr. DIETZ. Through the PTA or parent/teacher organizations. 

Chairman HARKIN. Web sites. 

Dr. DIETZ. Web sites. Right. Second, it might be useful to those 

districts to conduct and publish a periodic assessment of the implementation of those policies. 

Third, a lot of those school districts, as I understand from my colleagues in the Division of Adolescent and School Health, lack the 

capacity to implement or understand what that school wellness policy should be. And I know my colleagues in that division stand 

19 

ready to provide technical assistance to schools if they had the resources to do so. 

Finally, from the national level, it would be useful to monitor the 

implementation of those policies and their uptake to assess their 

effectiveness. 

Chairman HARKIN. Four great recommendations because this is 

something that I think we really want to look at, the last four, 

five—it has been 5 years since we put that into law—and to see 

how it is working. In some of our hearings that we have had, it is 

a patchwork. 

Some are really good. Some are really bad and some have good 

ones, but they do not do anything with it. So somehow we need to 

somehow get it moving a little bit better and put some more teeth 

in it someway, as we said. But the IOM puts out standards and it 

would seem to me that this ought to be at least a base or something that should be reflected in these school wellness policies. 

Dr. DIETZ. Could not agree more. 

Chairman HARKIN. Hmm? 

Dr. DIETZ. I could not agree more with that statement. 

Chairman HARKIN. I was just trying to figure out how to do that. 

[Laughter.] 

Dr. SATCHER. We will help you more. We will come up with some 

more recommendations, because we looked at a lot of different cities and a lot of different programs. 

Chairman HARKIN. That’s right, you have a lot of stuff going on. 

Dr. SATCHER. We have a lot of people out there working, as the 

senator said. They are volunteers, but they take very seriously 

their work in these communities. 

Chairman HARKIN. I would invite any input to our Committee. 

I mean, we are not going to do this tomorrow, but I mean, as we 

go through the year, Dr. Satcher, I would invite you to be proactive 

and give us suggestions on how we do that. 

Dr. SATCHER. OK. 

Chairman HARKIN. You do, you have your fingers out there in a 

lot of places out there and that can be very helpful. 

I want to get to you, Mr. Holmes. From what I read and what 

I heard, you have the model. It sounds like you have the model. 

I do not know how you did it. I mean, I have been looking for something like this in the country. 

In the last—in the Farm Bill, we put some things in there to promote schools getting non-processed foods locally, the farmers, vegetables, fruits, meats, things like that, eggs, dairy, that was not 

going through all the processing and stuff, and so we lifted that geographic preference ban that we had. 

Then we also did some other things. I was just looking here at 

my notes. In the Business and Industry Loan Program, we modified it to provide loans to individuals, cooperatives, businesses, any 

entities to establish and facilitate enterprises that process, distribute, aggregate, store and market locally or regionally produced 

agricultural food products and the secretary of agriculture is required to reserve at least 5 percent of the money for this activity. 

But you already have. You say you have storage, refrigeration, 

processing. You wash, you cut, you bag. You have a fleet of refrigerated trucks. You beat us to the punch. 

20 

Mr. HOLMES. Yeah, because the needs was there. 

Chairman HARKIN. How did you—— 

Mr. HOLMES. Well, back home from Mississippi. 

Chairman HARKIN [continuing]. Put all this together? 

Mr. HOLMES. Well back home from Mississippi, my momma always told us, we did not have much when we came up, but they 

teach you one thing, common sense and mother whip, and if you 

got that, you can make a way when you do not have it, because 

it teach you to have a vision. 

Several years ago, the first Farm-to–School meeting was held 

here in Georgia and the idea was then how can small farmers—and 

by that time, I was working for USDA and I worked in Natural Resources Conversation Service and most of my work was done with 

small-scale farmers. 

The problem was no matter what USDA came up with for the 

cost-share program, most of the small farmers could not afford to 

utilize it. 

Chairman HARKIN. That is right. 

Mr. HOLMES. We had more of an economical program than we 

had a conservation problem. We could not conserve our soil because 

we could not afford to do what needed to be done to conserve the 

soil. So I was always looking for a way to create an economical 

boost for small farmers. 

When I came up to that meeting in Georgia, I said that is it. I 

said that makes perfect sense. I said every county has a school district. Most farmers do not have the transportation logistics to travel out of their county to try to sell a product. 

At that time, I met a food director here that was from Florida 

and she just happened to be at the meeting. She was next door to 

me. And basically we started from there. I came over and I met 

with her and she sort of taught me the food service guide book and 

I sort of took my common sense and mother whip and worked it 

out to where if the opportunity is there, I figure what I needed to 

do was try to figure out a way to integrate that market. 

The way I do things is I always look at, not—you tell me what 

you cannot do, then I can figure out what I can do. We know that 

the school needed to be able to have a product that they can 

wash—I mean, there’s basically washing—and cook, because they 

have their—most cafeteria workers are part time. They are allotted 

so many hours, so the school districts do not have a lot of time to 

cut, dice and chop. Years ago they did that. 

So in order for me to stay in that marketplace, we had to upgrade and try to be able to have a finished product for that school 

district. We work with a lot of school policies that is already on the 

books. We do not create new policies. We go in and each school district can be different. Each state is different. 

But I go in. We work with the food directors, a lot of times the 

state food director, and they tell us what they cannot do and then 

we figure out what we cannot do and then we sort of get together 

and come up with ways to integrate a local partner in their school 

system. 

We went through the loan process. We borrowed money from the 

bank. We went through—one of the counties that we located in, the 

county we are located in was an empowerment zone. Some of the 

21 

benchmarks that the empowerment zone area had set was to help 

displaced farmers and workers. 

And so we went through there and we did not get a lot of money. We got $10,000, but we had to pay it back. But it is an evolutionary process. We just kept building on it. 

Chairman HARKIN. How many farmers you have now in this, in 

your co-op, that does this? 

Mr. HOLMES. One thing, I talk fast. I am from Mississippi again, 

so I talk real fast. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. HOLMES. Wherever it is hot at, people talk fast. They have 

to get out of the sun. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. HOLMES. Years ago, I tried to put—I do not like to put a 

number, because we provide a service, but we work with anywhere 

from 100 to 200 farmers at any given time. We do not specifically 

work—we work with farmer groups now. We stretch—the last 

project we did in Georgia was in Glennville, Georgia, with a co-op 

in Glennville, Georgia. 

We met with them with 25 district school districts. One of the 

key reasons they could not sustain it, because a lot of times small 

farmers and small farmer groups do not have the infrastructure to 

be able to maintain that market. 

But we work, right now, with about 100 farmers. We are working 

on a project now in Little Rock, Arkansas that hopefully it will be 

a good example if everything work out with that group in Pine 

Bluff. 

Chairman HARKIN. I do not know how you found this guy, but 

I am sure glad you got him here because—— 

Mr. HOLMES. Yeah, I can—— 

Chairman HARKIN [continuing]. Because this—I am not kidding. 

We spent a lot of time trying to get stuff in the Farm Bill, because 

I talked to school districts before and stuff and they said well the 

problem is, we do not have the time to go out to this one farmer 

and that one farmer and we cannot do all this stuff. 

Mr. HOLMES. Exactly. 

Chairman HARKIN. And then I got—I was talking to one of our 

big grocery people one time in Iowa. I said well, why aren’t you 

buying more stuff from local farmers and stuff and they said well, 

you know, we cannot do that. We just do not have the resolve to 

go to every little farmer and stuff like that. 

The idea came to set up aggregation centers like co-ops so we 

could go out to all these different farmers, aggregate it, clean it, 

cut it, wash it, refrigerate it, store it and deliver it. And then grocery stores are more than willing to buy that and so would school 

districts. 

So I did not know you existed, but I am sure happy I know that 

now. Just reading and hearing you, this seems to me like a kind 

of a model. As I said, we have the loan program. We also put in 

there a grant. So we have grants and loans for exactly what you 

are doing to be established all over the United States. 

The president put in his budget $22 million next year just in 

grants. Plus we had—and from the loan program, it looks like we 

are going to have about 199 million next year for the loans and 

22 

about another 22 million in grants to establish the kind of things 

that you have set up. 

So if you do not mind, I think I may send some people down to 

look at your operation. 

Mr. HOLMES. That would be great, because the model has been 

tested. I know the word. You have to have dedication and I think 

the biggest thing that I think that has been missing in Farm-to– 

School, is the ability to go in and interpret the menu process. 

I think that—if anybody come down to visit us, what I would like 

them to learn is how to go and do what we call meal analysis, to 

be able to convert a case and the bushels because when you go out 

there, remember this, if you remember Sanford and Son years ago, 

it had Hoppy and Smitty and they had Fred and Lamont. 

Well when Hoppy says something, everybody looked at Smitty 

because they could understand him. Well a farmer and a food director is just like that, but I consider myself Hoppy. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. HOLMES. When they look at me, I convert farmer language 

into food server language. I think that is why a lot of Farm-to– 

School programs are not really getting kicked off like they should 

because everyone—there is no one that is trying to understand 

each other’s language. They are assuming that because the school 

feed fresh produce that they can buy it and the farmer assume that 

since the school has this big old menu, they can just sell a pile of 

stuff to them. 

Well, it is not like that. Unless you go in and learn that procedure and that language, you cannot do it. 

Chairman HARKIN. Very ingenious. Congratulations, and I mean 

that. I am going to—— 

Mr. HOLMES. I appreciate it. 

Chairman HARKIN [continuing]. Have my staff try to get data on 

what you have done and we can use that as a model. 

Mr. HOLMES. OK. 

Chairman HARKIN. Also, you have to—if you need to expand, you 

can look at these programs to expand to. 

Mr. HOLMES. OK. 

Chairman HARKIN. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Mr. 

Chairman, great stuff. 

Senator CHAMBLISS. Mr. Holmes, they do not grow any collard 

greens in Iowa, but if we can ever get them eating collards, we got 

this thing whipped. We will be shaking all the way up there. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator CHAMBLISS. Next thing will be vinegar sauce to go with 

it. Dr. Dietz, you talked about this New York program that I guess 

it is a pilot program of some sort where you were talking about trying to incorporate exercise, sugar-free drinks and whatnot in this 

system there. 

Have you seen any results from that yet? Has it been in operation long enough that you can tell much in the way of positive results? 

Dr. DIETZ. Not yet. It is a group daycare program, which in contrast to other childcare programs, is regulated by the city rather 

than by the state. We have in the field now an evaluation of the 

23 

impact of that program, so I do not have any results to know how 

successful it is. 

Senator CHAMBLISS. I am particularly interested in your mentioning of sugar-free drinks because one thing that Senator Harkin 

has been a promoter of, and an issue that we have had to deal 

with, is our snack food and drinks and cafeterias and whatnot. We 

are going to be talking about that as we go through this process. 

What is your thought there with respect to sugar-free drinks 

versus non-sugar-free drinks versus pure water and nothing else? 

Any comments you can make there with respect to that? 

Dr. DIETZ. Sugar-sweetened beverages supply adolescents with 

about 15 percent of their daily caloric intake and although you cannot point to any single food behavior that accounts for the obesity 

epidemic, that is certainly a potential major contributor. And there 

have been estimates that the caloric excess that accounts for the 

epidemic, it is about 150 calories a day, or roughly what is contained in sugar-sweetened beverages. 

One of the things I learned recently about the city of Boston was 

that they have turned off all the drinking fountains in their schools 

because of concern about lead in the pipes. So the only alternatives 

there are expensive. It is either sugar-sweetened beverages or bottled water. 

And one very potentially inexpensive strategy in providing alternatives is to restore the availability of water to schools as an alternative to sugar-sweetened beverages. The other part of your question has to do with dietary sweeteners or sweet beverages which 

are not sweetened with sugar. 

There have been in a couple of studies a relationship between the 

consumption of those beverages and obesity, that is artificially 

sweetened beverages, which I don’t frankly understand except that 

it may be not that beverage that is doing it, but what you do when 

you drink that beverage, so that for example, the consumption of 

sugar-sweetened beverages or even sweetened beverages with artificial sweetener may also be accompanied by other dietary patterns, like the consumption of salty snacks, which could account for 

obesity. 

There is—I know that Dr. Kessler in his recent book talks about 

this addiction to sweetness and the need to reduce the taste of 

sweetness in the food supply as a way of weaning the population 

off sugar-sweetened beverages. I think that soft drink companies 

could contribute to that by reducing the amount of sugar that they 

add to those drinks over time. 

Dr. SATCHER. The issue of addiction to foods or certainly salt, 

sweets and fats, is an issue that I think we are really going to have 

to come to terms with because—and David Kessler in his recent 

book talks about that. 

But if we are addicting our children to sugar and fats and sweet 

and salts, then I think we have a responsibility to really look at 

that because that means that we are contributing—I guess we already knew that—greatly to this epidemic, not just in terms of obesity, but learning and all of those kinds of things. So I think it is 

an issue that needs to be looked at more. 

Senator CHAMBLISS. The problem I have with that, things I like 

to eat get plenty of salt, sugar and fat. 

24 

Dr. SATCHER. And most of us, we grew up eating foods that were 

highly—especially if you grew up like I did without refrigeration, 

so everything was preserved with salt. So food doesn’t taste good 

unless it is highly salted. 

But I think there is growing evidence that we are addicted to 

sugars and gradually I think you can wean yourself off of that. But 

we do not need to put our children through that. 

Senator CHAMBLISS. Ms. Long, in thinking about Mr. Holmes’ 

project there, Tom is right, this is kind of a model that I would 

hope USDA would take a look at and certainly try to do more encouraging folks across the country. 

As we get into this new era of fresh fruits and vegetables being 

available to schools for our lunch program and our breakfast program, are you all looking at doing any educational programs 

around the country to kind of help, particularly maybe inner-city 

schools that—I come from a rural area and we have access to a 

farmers market. We have access to farms. 

But in metropolitan and urban areas, they are not going to have 

that access in every case. Do you all have any programs in mind 

to try to help folks in that respect? 

Ms. LONG. Well, as you probably know, the administration has 

not yet put forward specific proposals or priorities for reauthorization, so I cannot speak to anything specific in that regard. But 

what I can tell you is that where we are already going in terms 

of trying to—in terms of nutrition education that would reach lowincome children. 

My testimony commented on the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program. As you know, that is targeted toward low-income schools. We 

think that provides an excellent opportunity to expose children, elementary school children, to fresh fruits and vegetables in the school 

context. 

We are working very hard with states and school districts to use 

the resources we have to compliment that program to do nutrition 

education and promotion as they are rolling that out. We have a 

lot of resources available that help school food service workers figure out how to serve fruits and vegetables in a way that is appealing to kids and a way that is attractive to their families. 

Kind of as Mr. Holmes alluded to, one of the first challenges with 

getting fresh produce on the menu is educating the food service 

professionals in how they can do that in a way that is acceptable 

to their customer, which is the students and the families. 

So those are some of the things we have currently planned and 

ongoing to achieve that. 

Senator CHAMBLISS. We have had this pilot program obviously 

for several years and I guess we got up to 15 states, maybe something like that, and now it is available to everybody in all 50 

states. What kind of reaction are you seeing at USDA from our nutrition folks around the country with regard to the availability of 

these fresh fruits and vegetables? 

Ms. LONG. I can say that in general the program is very popular 

in places where it has been implemented. I would say that the 

states that are new to the program are definitely embracing it. 

They are working very closely with their school districts to basiVerDate Nov 24 2008 01:10 Mar 24, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\54569.TXT SAG2 PsN: SAG2
25 

cally drum up interest in it because it is based on a school has to 

apply and want to participate in the program. 

We are about to field a major evaluation that was funded in the 

Farm Bill, as well this coming school year, that will help us—which 

will give us a lot more information about how the program is being 

implemented, how it is being received, is it having the kind of impact we hope. So we will have a lot more concrete information on 

how the program is working in the not too distant future. 

Senator CHAMBLISS. Mr. Holmes, do you have a problem in getting farmers to participate in your program or is there enough profit there for them, I guess, which would certainly be their motivation for participating, but is that an issue for your group? 

Mr. HOLMES. It is and it is not. It is kind of both ways. I know 

that seems kind of a funny answer with two answers. But a lot of 

farmers a lot of time, they like to sit back and let some develop 

first and then they will ease into it. They are not—they are risk 

takers when they plant their crop, but they are not marketers. 

So create the market then you call them. Well you cannot do 

that. I cannot go out and meet with the school district and say well 

I got—I want to sell you strawberries, but I have no way of knowing where I am going to get the strawberries from. 

Most farmers, what I try to do when I go into a community, is 

try to find a farm leader, somebody that everybody looks up to. And 

if he or she does something, they are going to watch that person 

and if it works for them, then they will do it. 

So the answer to that question is, it is not hard to get farmers 

onboard. You just cannot start with a lot of farmers at one time. 

When we do—we go out and we try to work with co-op leaders to 

try to train them then let them train their members. 

For example, the project we are doing in Arkansas now when we 

shop (inaudible) we chose a small co-op in Pine Bluff to work with. 

We empowered 25 school districts. We train them on the distribution, what I call the logistics as far as being able to map school district, because when we deliver, unless they have a central kitchen, 

we have to go to each and every school within that district and deliver to each kitchen. 

So map reading is crucial, how to navigate through the city when 

you are used to living in the country. So after that, we had to go 

back and make an assessment of whether that group has the capability to actually carry out a Farm-to–School program then report 

that back to the food director. 

A lot of times the farmers will be motivated when they start, but 

when they see how much work is involved in it, a lot of times they 

are kind of—they will back up a little bit. But I think if we had 

more of me out there, you have more time to recruit more farmers 

and bring them onboard to participate, because it is a great market. 

Senator CHAMBLISS. How far in advance do you have to contract 

with your school districts? 

Mr. HOLMES. Well what we normally do, and this may sound 

funny, but I have been doing this for about 15 years now and I 

have never one—have signed a contract with a school district. That 

menu is the contract. When we go in and meet with the school district, we develop a business friendly relationship. 

26 

We start now for the fall. We start with the school now. We analyze their menu, help them develop the menu process, because 

based on the frequency—most schools are on what they call a cycle 

menu and based on the frequency they are going to serve that item, 

based on the seasonality of it, then we go in, because most 

schools—through their menu—probably May to June. 

So most of the crop that we are planning, are fall crops, so basically that menu item that the school would—you know, the frequency they may get them, they are going to need that item. We 

take that and then we go to the farmer with it. 

So we start now, like I said, May, at the latest, April or May, 

because most of the crops have to be put in June and July to be 

able to catch the school season, which starts in August, September 

timeframe. 

So once we do that, it takes about—well once you get started, it 

really does not take that long, but the first year, it takes about two 

or 3 months to get the planning process out because you have to 

first know what crops to be grown in that particular area. You 

have to determine the cost per serving, because most schools deal— 

no matter how good it is for you, schools tell me, that if they cannot 

afford to buy it, they cannot serve it. 

So we have to look at the cost per serving as it relates to the 

school and then the profit as it relates to the farmer. Both parties 

have to agree on that process. Once we get that done, the schools 

then go in and put it on that menu. That is that contract. To me 

that is a contract. This ain’t fun, but that is that contract. 

Then the farmer feel confident then because we carry that menu 

to him and show him that menu and he feels confident in putting 

that product in the ground. From that point there, we will coordinate with the school and tell them, based on the life of that product 

far as how long it takes for it to mature out, when to expect that 

product be served. And they will pass it on to their cafeteria manager. 

What we also look at is crops that what we call a year-around 

crop and then we have what we call seasonal crops. So like, for example, fresh green beans, in Georgia you can expect to have them 

September, August, September, October timeframe. So they know— 

schools know that is the only time they can get fresh green beans. 

Leafy greens, for example, is a cool season crop. They know they 

get many of those throughout the school year. The sweet potato a 

lot of time you can harvest them and so they can have fresh sweet 

potato fries or sweet potato sticks year around. 

In every area we go and every state we go in, we look at what 

is specific to that state or what is specific to that county and we 

develop that into the school menu process. That way, they are assured that they have the volume, because most school districts are 

concerned with volume, and they have the quality control that they 

need to guarantee the product will be delivered on time, fresh and 

it will be safe from any type of hazard. 

Senator CHAMBLISS. Have you had success in selling your products to urban schools as well as to rural schools? 

Mr. HOLMES. Yeah, urban schools are—a lot of times urban 

schools are easier than rural schools because in a rural area, everybody know—a lot of times you get into a—in a rural school, they 

27 

will say well, my cousin, he probably does not know about this, 

that type of attitude, which is fine. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. HOLMES. But you cannot get around to everybody if you are 

just one person. In an urban school, they think it is trendy. Urban 

schools are more into the media and marketing type aspect. They 

want to—I look at urban food representatives, it is almost like politicians. They got to keep it coming, so they go out and they want 

to make school districts look real good by doing innovative things. 

So it is easy to sell a unique program to them. 

So to answer that question again, we are in Houston Independent School District and that is a management company that 

we are working with, which is Aramark, and they see it as a good 

opportunity to promote what they are doing because they are considered outsiders. So they bring in local farmers and they are 

proud of it. It helps them to ensure that they contract the next 

year. 

That school district serves about 240,000 kids a day. They have 

a central kitchen that they will be cooking out of and delivering to 

each school. That is an ideal spot for small farmers because it cuts 

back dramatic on the logistical problem because now they have a 

one-stop drop, unlike when we did Little Rock School District week 

before last, we had 45, 48 individual drops that we had to make, 

so that particular farmers group has a lot more work to do than 

the one in Houston Independent School District would have to do. 

But rural school districts, urban and what I call trendy school 

districts, you have some like in South Florida—well, not South 

Florida. Say in the panhandle of Florida, you have urban—you 

have rural in the north part. In the middle you have urban. And 

in the south, where you have a lot of military moving, I call them 

trendy. You do not know what they are going to each because they 

come from everywhere. 

But your urban school districts are so large the problem they 

have a lot of times is the cap they have on what they can spend 

on non-bid items. In Florida, for example, they can only spend 

$25,000 on produce without actually having a formal bid. 

In Alabama, it used to be 7,500; now it is up to 15,000. In Texas, 

it is 25,000. So with a large farmer, for example, if he tried to deliver say a fresh ear of corn in West Palm Beach, a 1–day serving, 

they would spend $17,000 just on feeding that corn to every kid in 

the school. 

So the problem they have in South Florida in doing Farm-to– 

School is that the cap that is on the non-item—I mean, the nonbid item. So it is hard for me to explain a lot because it is 15 to 

12 years, so I am trying to condense all that good stuff into an answer. But urban school districts, trendy school districts and the 

rural school districts, they all speak the same language, food service talk. 

If you can communicate, if you can translate per serving feedings 

into a product they are serving, and most schools want to stay between eight to 13 cents per serving. That is the key. If you get over 

that—because like the food director in Houston told me, I believe 

he said every penny he spends, every penny increase mean about, 

28 

I think he told me about $40,000 that he will spend if he has to 

go up one penny. 

So when you go from 13 cents a serving to 14 cents, that is a 

lot of money. So that is how we develop our market. Our product 

is priced per serving and that goes all the way back to the field. 

If you can get that per serving feeding cost, most schools will buy 

from you. I do not care whether they are urban, rural or trendy, 

they will buy from you. 

Senator CHAMBLISS. Mr. Chairman? 

Chairman HARKIN. Ms. Long, in your written statement, you 

said—let me read it to you. You said here that in 2005, FNS, Food 

and Nutrition Service, issued Eat Smart–Farm Fresh, A Guide to 

Buying and Serving Locally Grown Produce in School Meals, which 

provide best practices and strategies for finding locally grown food 

and implementing Farm-to-School initiatives. 

We will be updating this publication later this year with new 

success stories, additional resources from outside organizations and 

basic tools for operating a successful program from start to finish. 

I did not know this, to support these efforts, we have an Emerson–Hunger Fellow assisting the department with Farm-to–School 

issues. The Hunger Fellow is identifying opportunities to help institutions use local procurement options when appropriate in determining the most effective ways to improve Farm-to–School efforts. 

I know that Secretary Vilsack is extremely interested in this and 

since he has a larger travel budget than I do, maybe you could 

have your Emerson Fellow come down and take a look at this and 

analyze Mr. Holmes’ program and see if this might not be something that you want to use as a model. So I would like to—— 

Ms. LONG. Yeah, I had exactly the same thought. Our Hunger 

Fellow is, part of her mandate is to do some traveling and talk to 

folks who have had success with Farm-to–School and the things we 

have heard from Mr. Holmes today very much speak to ways to 

solve some of the things that have been identified to us as barriers. 

Chairman HARKIN. I would like to follow-up with you. I will have 

Mr. Gary Miller on my staff follow up with you on that. 

Now Dr. Dietz, you said in your testimony that the Farm-to– 

School programs are active in at least 40 states with over 2,000 

programs serving nearly 9,000 schools. That is 2006 data. Of the 

Farm-to–School programs that have been evaluated, most have 

demonstrated increase selection or intake of fruits and vegetables 

by students following the incorporation of farm produce into school 

salad bars, meal selections or class-based education. 

Do you have a compilation of these? Do you have a data base of 

these? I am just not familiar with that? I mean, if I ask you to analyze these programs and how they operate and what seems to be 

the key to success, would you have that kind of information or not? 

Dr. DIETZ. I do not think we at the CDC have that information. 

Chairman HARKIN. Would you have it at FNS, do you think? 

Ms. LONG. On the frequency of salad bars? 

Dr. DIETZ. Farm to? 

Chairman HARKIN. Dr. Dietz mentioned all these Farm-to–School 

programs. He said there is over 2,000. I did not know there were 

that many. Have you looked at these and analyzed them to see 

what are the keys to success on these programs? 

29 

Ms. LONG. We have. We do not have a systematic way of collecting the number of Farm-to–School programs. We do have a lot 

of anecdotal information about what is going on out there, and as 

I said before, that is really one of the—that is the primary focus 

of our Hunger Fellow’s activities for the next few months is going 

out and gathering information on what works, what does not, what 

are different models. 

Dr. DIETZ. Senator Harkin—— 

Chairman HARKIN. I [inaudible] CDC you do not track those 

things? 

Dr. DIETZ. No, it is certainly a reasonable area to survey, but we 

do not have—and I am not sure Dr. Wexler is here in the audience. 

There may be a mechanism through the school health policies and 

program survey to begin to track whether those programs exist or 

not. I am not sure whether we are currently doing it or not. 

But with your indulgence, Senator Harkin, I would like to come 

back to my response to Senator Chambliss, just mention two things 

that I neglected. 

One is there is an agreement between the Alliance for a 

Healthier Generation and the soft drink companies to change the 

products in vending machines for children in schools and they are 

quite useful standards so that there are no sugar-sweetened beverages and only 100 percent juice in elementary schools and it is 

graded up in terms of the portion size since then. 

The second is that the Institute of Medicine report wanted to 

apply dietary guideline standards to competitive foods and those 

beverages would be competitive foods. I think that if those guidelines were applied, they would open the door for the Alliance for 

a Healthier Generation’s agreement, which is consistent with the 

recommendations of the IOM Committee. 

Mr. HOLMES. Senator Harkin, I collaborate with the National 

Farm-to–School Network also and they asked me that, what you 

just asked, that question you just asked, in this booklet here? 

Chairman HARKIN. Sure. 

Mr. HOLMES. So I can pass it on to you when it is over with. 

Chairman HARKIN. All right, I will take it. We can take that with 

us, right? 

Mr. HOLMES. Oh, yeah. 

Chairman HARKIN. We will take that, take that with me. 

Dr. DIETZ. And I can let you know whether we are currently assessing this in this school health policies and programs survey. 

Chairman HARKIN. I know we are running out of time. This has 

been a great panel. I cannot tell you how much I picked up on this. 

But Dr. Dietz, you started talking about—you mentioned a little bit 

about childcare centers and childcare homes and how many kids 

are in childcare every day in America. 

It seems to me that is another place that we have—because we 

do provide—as you know, we provide through our childcare program, through the Child Nutrition Program we provide, as you 

know, supplemental foods for these childcare centers or even in a 

home-based. 

But I am not certain we are doing a good enough job of getting 

the proper kinds of foods and stuff for kids in childcare and the 

proper nutrition. I just wondered if you have taken a look at that 

30 

since there are so many kids every day either in a childcare center 

or in a childcare home? 

Dr. DIETZ. It is a critically important area because more and 

more data are becoming available that suggests that growth in 

early childhood is a significant predicator for subsequent obesity, 

particularly in the first several years of life. 

We are just beginning to explore this area and are hoping to coconvene a conference in the fall to begin to look at policies related 

to childcare. There is a model program in Delaware hosted by the 

NewMore’s (ph) Foundation, which has negotiated for the Child 

and Adult Care Feeding Program to apply many of those standards 

that you see in New York to childcare settings in Delaware. 

So I think that is a model and what we do not know is we do 

not know enough about the variation in state regulations and state 

practices to generate a very sophisticated response right now, but 

it is clearly an opportunity, and given the impact of early childhood 

growth on later obesity, it seems like an increasingly critical area. 

Chairman HARKIN. I did not know about Delaware. I will take 

a look at that. Last, I just hope that we can get a handle on food 

in schools outside of the lunch room. One of—I am speaking only 

for myself in here and I do not know how many others, but as you 

know, the secretary of Agriculture right now has the authority to 

regulate foods within the school lunchroom, but the secretary has 

no authority to regulate foods outside of the lunchroom. 

So we put a lot of your taxpayer’s money into providing nutritious meals for breakfast or for lunch, but then right outside the 

classroom and down the hall there are all the vending machines 

where they can get sugared sodas and candy bars and all kinds of 

junk food and that kind of destroys the value of the nutritious 

meals that we are trying to have in the lunchroom. 

So I am going to propose this year, and I hope there is good support for that, but to get the secretary the authority, if a school is 

in the lunch program, that the secretary has the authority to regulate all of the food in the schools so that they meet the dietary 

guidelines. 

[Applause.] 

Chairman HARKIN. And just try to get over this once and for all 

so that we do not have the vending machines and stuff competing 

with nutritious foods. Now a couple of observations on that. When 

I was in school, we did not have vending machines. We had vending machines. I am not that old. 

[Laughter.] 

Chairman HARKIN. There were vending machines in gas stations 

and places like—but not in the school. And if you brought candy 

or something in, you got your knuckles rapped probably. 

I do not know when it was in my life, probably when I was in 

the House of Representatives, maybe later in the Senate, all of a 

sudden I walked into a school 1 day, and I had been visiting 

schools—not that I do not go back to schools—but all of a sudden, 

I saw all these vending machines all brightly lit up. I looked at it 

and I thought, when did this happen? How did this happen? Just 

kind of overnight they just seemed to be all over the place. 

And we have had a lot of hearings on this. We had a hearing 

once—just in the last Child Nutrition Bill I had, and even before 

31 

that. In 1996, I had introduced an amendment on the Farm Bill 

in 1996 to take all vending machines out of schools. 

Well as you can see, I was a spectacular failure at that. 

[Laughter.] 

Chairman HARKIN. But we had—I will never forget, we had a 

school superintendent from Mississippi came up and testified and 

they had taken all of the candy and the soft drinks out of their 

vending machines and replaced it with bottled water, 100 percent 

juice, healthy snacks, and she said, you know, we found out an interesting thing; we did not lose any money at all. 

She said something I will never forget. She said, these kids—kids 

are funny. They love putting money in machines. 

[Laughter.] 

Chairman HARKIN. They do not much really care what comes 

out, they just like putting money in machines. And so they found 

that they really did not lose any of the income that they were losing from the vending machines by putting water and healthy 

snacks in there. 

I did not mean to take all this time to say it, but this—I hope 

in this Child Nutrition Bill that we can expand that authority and 

that we can reach some reasonable compromises on the status of 

these foods in schools and reach some guidelines. 

Who was it mentioned, we reached an agreement sort of with soft 

drink manufacturers a couple years ago—but we did not get it in 

the Farm Bill because it is probably more appropriate to put it 

under the Child Nutrition Bill—but we reached a pretty good 

agreement, I thought, with them on limiting what—the sizes and 

no soft drinks in elementary school or in high school and only some 

certain ones near the gym, that kind of stuff, and maybe afterschool for sporting events, things like that. 

But some states are moving ahead even more aggressively. My 

state of Iowa, just recently the Department of Education just 

banned for the next school year all soft drinks in schools, period. 

[Applause.] 

Chairman HARKIN. They just did it. So some people are way 

ahead of us on this and I hope we can catch up this year. I did 

not mean to take all that time. I just wanted to give people a flavor 

of kind of what we have to work with on this Child Nutrition Bill. 

That is all I have. 

Senator CHAMBLISS. We are going to have to wind up, but we do 

not—well, we had a request, which is unusual. Normally we do not 

take questions from the audience. We want to ask all the tough 

questions. Tom and I do not want to have to answer the tough 

questions. But we understood that maybe some of the young folks 

who are here with the school groups might have a question or two 

that they wanted to ask and we will be glad to throw it open. 

We only have about 5 minutes, but we will be happy to take a 

couple of questions if some of you young folks have a couple. And 

do not be shy now. 

Now what you have to do—good, there is a microphone right 

there. 

Ms. COURTNEY. Hello? Hello? 

Senator CHAMBLISS. Tell us your name, young lady, and where 

you go to school. 

32 

Ms. COURTNEY. My name is Carolyn Courtney. I go to Arbor 

Montessori School. For those of you who do not know, we have a 

garden at our school and we are now starting to get fresh produce 

that we have been able to do. 

The question I had is another part of our agriculture stuff that 

we have in our school is we have bee hives. So is there any interest 

in bees and raw honey as sweetener? So as part of your program, 

you could use raw honey, which is a lot healthier than some of the 

processed sugars that are really common. 

That is what I have been working on recently, is working on 

comparing processed honey and other processed sweeteners and 

comparing it to raw honey. It still has all the nutrients in it originally, so it is really healthy and stuff. Is that part of your program? 

[Applause.] 

Senator CHAMBLISS. Ms. Long, you ought to be thinking of how 

USDA will address while I—— 

[Laughter.] 

Senator CHAMBLISS [continuing]. Start off by talking a little bit 

about it. I am not sure that there is any active or aggressive movement within the School Lunch Program to utilize honey. It obviously can be used as a part of it. It is available and I know that 

school nutritionists, and there are probably a lot of them here, that 

will tell you that they utilize honey from time to time. 

I can tell you this, honey is a very active crop from the standpoint of the work we do on the Ag Committee, both from the standpoint of disease. We have had a serious issue with respect to bees 

dying all over the country for no reason whatsoever and we have 

put a lot of money in last year to have a study commissioned at 

USDA to try to figure out what was wrong because not many people understand what a real service bees perform in the agriculture 

community. 

Most people think bees only sting you. That is their only salvation in life. Bees pollinate crops, whether it is soybeans and corn 

in Iowa, or whether it is fruits and vegetables in Georgia. Bees are 

a very integral part of the agriculture community and when we 

saw what was happening last year, we took some action to commission a study to try to figure out what was going on and we have 

made some real good progress there. 

Ms. Long, let me ask you, do you know if USDA has any aggressive program toward utilization of honey versus any other sweetener? 

Ms. LONG. No, Senator, you are correct, we do not prescribe 

using this type of sweetener versus that type of sweetener. But 

what I will say is, as we have talked about before, menu planning 

at the schools is largely driven by student tastes. So to the extent 

that becomes a more popular item, that would likely follow. 

Senator CHAMBLISS. Do you want to comment on that? 

Chairman HARKIN. No. Anything else? 

Senator CHAMBLISS. Yes, ma’am? 

Student. I know in DeKalb County there are certain days on 

which they serve fresh fruit which could be local or unlocal, and 

I am pretty sure it is the same in other counties. However, often 

times a lot of the fruit they are serving is unripe so the students 

33 

are not eating it and they are just throwing it away. It is not even 

getting composted; it is just getting thrown away. 

So what is the point of serving fresh fruit if it is going to be 

unripe and not eaten? Is there something in any of these plans that 

prevents it from that, that makes it actually edible? 

[Laughter.] 

Senator CHAMBLISS. I wish we could get some of these nutritionists up here to answer this question. Well obviously you raised a 

very good point. I go shopping with my wife from time to time, as 

she does most of the grocery shopping in the family, and I have 

seen her pick through the avocados, for example. It is hard to find 

a ripe avocado that she can carry home and eat. 

But surely, our folks who know that they are going to be carrying 

bananas or kiwi fruit, or whatever it may be, back to the school to 

serve immediately or within a short period of time, will make sure 

that the fruit is ripe. I do not know what the real answer to your 

question is obviously, but it is certainly our intention that the 

fruits and vegetables that are served are served in a way that can 

be edible immediately. 

We do not want to be spending taxpayer money on fruits and 

vegetables, No. 1, that cannot be eaten, but No. 2, that are not 

eaten, and I do know there are some issues there. I have heard my 

wife talk about some kids who maybe do not like milk and they 

would take their milk and throw it in the trash even unopened or 

maybe take a banana that was ripe, but they did not want a banana, they wanted something else but they could not get it and 

they would just throw the banana in there. 

We have tried to take some action in that respect, but at the end 

of the day, both the answer to your question and the issue that I 

raised comes down to the local situation. It has to be policed and 

I will have to say, I interact with my school nutritionists on a regular basis and these are very professional men and women who are 

very dedicated to providing a good quality balanced meal to our 

young folks in schools and I think do an excellent job. 

Is there a mistake made from time to time that raises the issue 

that you do? Obviously I am sure that is the case. 

Chairman HARKIN. Senator, let me just take a little stab at that. 

When we started this Fruit and Vegetable Program in the 2002 

Farm Bill, it was a test. We took four states, 25 schools in the 

states, 100 schools and an Indian reservation to see what would 

happen about getting fresh fruits and vegetables. 

It was a resounding success. Every one of the first 100 schools 

that came into it, not a one dropped out. It was all a voluntary program. No one has ever mandated to be in it. And so this Farm Bill, 

we expanded it greatly to all 50 states and quite frankly, we put 

$1 billion in there over 10 years to ramp it up. 

My hope is, and my goal in doing a lot of this, was not only to 

get fresh fruits and vegetables to kids in school, but to instigate, 

to promote farmers growing more fresh fruits and vegetables. If 

there is going to be this huge demand, someone has to grow it. 

Now, right now, a lot of these vegetables or fruits, you mentioned 

fruits, are picked green someplace because they have to be shipped 

clear across the country and stored. Well maybe some of those 

could be grown more locally. 

34 

[Applause.] 

Chairman HARKIN. Take my own state of Iowa. We used to be 

one of the largest apple producers in America, Iowa. The Delicious 

Apple, by the way, started in Iowa, in the county right next to 

mine, as a matter of fact, where John Wayne was born. I do not 

know how I got into that. 

But anyway, but now we hardly have any apple trees. But we obviously have a climate that grows a lot of good apples, but we just 

got away from it. Well more and more now because of this demand 

for more fresh fruits in schools, farmers—and I do not mean the 

big farmers. We have big farmers that have thousands of acres of 

corn, soybeans. I am talking about smaller farmers. Younger people 

are finding that they can do this. They might have a job in town 

or something and they have some acreage. They can plant trees. 

We went from 100 acres of grapes in 2002—we had 100 acres of 

grapes in Iowa. We now have over 1,200 acres. So people are now 

finding more outlets. So I am hopeful that as we progress and as 

we get more of the schools involved in this, people locally in Georgia and Florida and places like that will say gee, maybe I could 

grow some of that for schools in this area and we would not have 

to pick them green and have them not taste as well as they are 

when you pick them fresh or to have fresh vegetables, things like 

that. 

So that is sort of maybe a little bit of what I hope we will see 

transpire. Thank you. 

Senator CHAMBLISS. Let me again thank all of you for coming 

today. I particularly want to thank our witnesses for being here 

and preparing to testify and presenting some excellent testimony 

and some ideas that we are going to take back to Washington to 

incorporate in the policies on our Nutrition Reauthorization Bill. 

I particularly want to thank Dr. Richard Besser, the acting director here at CDC, Amy Loy, as well as Heather. I saw Heather 

standing in the back and she must have stepped out. But anyway, 

Amy and Heather are the ones that really organized all this and 

it takes a lot of work to put one of these things on, so I do want 

to thank the folks at CDC for being very gracious hosts here at the 

Harkin Global Center today. 

It is not just by chance that we are in the Harkin Center. Senator Harkin has been very active and very supportive of the CDC 

for many years and he and Senator Specter both have been primarily responsible for the funding that we have gotten to carry out 

the 10–year building program that has made this a state-of-the-art 

facility. 

We are doing state-of-the-art work here. Tom, again, I just want 

to personally thank you for coming to Georgia again and visiting 

with us today and listening to our witnesses and our other folks 

here. Your leadership on agriculture issues as well as other issues 

in the U.S. Senate has been very well noticed and I am just very 

appreciative personally for our friendship and for your work on 

this. 

So thank you very much and let’s give my friend, Senator Harkin, a hand. 

[Applause.] 

[Whereupon, at 2:51 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

(35) 

A P P E N D I X 

MAY 15, 2009 

36 


54569.001
37 


54569.002
38 


54569.003
39 


54569.004
40 


54569.005
41 


54569.006
42 


54569.007
43 


54569.008
44 


54569.009
45 


54569.010
46 


54569.011
47 


54569.012
48 


54569.013
49 


54569.014
50 


54569.015
51 


54569.016
52 


54569.017
53 


54569.018
54 


54569.019
55 


54569.020
56 


54569.021
57 


54569.022
58 


54569.023
59 


54569.024
60 


54569.025
61 


54569.026
62 


54569.027
63 


54569.028
64 


54569.029
65 


54569.030
66 


54569.031
67 


54569.032
68 


54569.033
69 


54569.034
70 


54569.035
71 


54569.036
72 


54569.037
73 


54569.038
74 


54569.039
75 


54569.040
(77) 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

MAY 15, 2009 

78 


54569.041
79 


54569.042
80 


54569.043
81 


54569.044
82 


54569.045
83 


54569.046
84 


54569.047
85 


54569.048
86 


54569.049
87 


54569.050
88 


54569.051
89 


54569.052
90 


54569.053
91 


54569.054
92 


54569.055
93 


54569.056
94 


54569.057
95 


54569.058
96 


54569.059
97 


54569.060
98 


54569.061
99 


54569.062
100 


54569.063
101 


54569.064
102 


54569.065
103 


54569.066
104 


54569.067
105 


54569.068
106 


54569.069
107 


54569.070
108 


54569.071
109 


54569.072
110 


54569.073
111 


54569.074
112 


54569.075
113 


54569.076
114 


54569.077
115 


54569.078
116 


54569.079
117 


54569.080
118 


54569.081
119 


54569.082
120 


54569.083
121 


54569.084
122 


54569.085
123 


54569.086
124 


54569.087
125 


54569.088
126 


54569.089
127 


54569.090
128 


54569.091
129 


54569.092
130 


54569.093
131 


54569.094
132 


54569.095
133 


54569.096
134 


54569.097
135 


54569.098
136 


54569.099
137 


54569.100
138 


54569.101
139 


54569.102
140 


54569.103
141 


54569.104
142 


54569.105
143 


54569.106
144 


54569.107
145 


54569.108
146 


54569.109
147 


54569.110
148 


54569.111
149 


54569.112
150 


54569.113
151 


54569.114
152 


54569.115
153 


54569.116
154 


54569.117
155 


54569.118
156 


54569.119
157 


54569.120
158 


54569.121
159 


54569.122
160 


54569.123
161 


54569.124
162 


54569.125
163 


54569.126
164 


54569.127
165 


54569.128
166 


54569.129
167 


54569.130
168 


54569.131
169 


54569.132
170 


54569.133
171 


54569.134
172 


54569.135
173 


54569.136
174 


54569.137
175 


54569.138
176 


54569.139
177 


54569.140
178 


54569.141
179 


54569.142
180 


54569.143
181 


54569.144
182 


54569.145
183 


54569.146
184 


54569.147
185 


54569.148
186 


54569.149
187 


54569.150
188 


54569.151
189 


54569.152
190 


54569.153
191 


54569.154
192 


54569.155
193 


54569.156
194 


54569.157
195 


54569.158
196 


54569.159
197 


54569.160
198 


54569.161
199 


54569.162
200 


54569.163
201 


54569.164
202 


54569.165
203 


54569.166
204 


54569.167
205 


54569.168
206 


54569.169
207 


54569.170
208 


54569.171
209 


54569.172
210 


54569.173
211 


54569.174
212 


54569.175
213 


54569.176
214 


54569.177
215 


54569.178
216 


54569.179
217 


54569.180
218 


54569.181
219 


54569.182
220 


54569.183
221 


54569.184
222 


54569.185
223 


54569.186
224 


54569.187
225 


54569.188
226 


54569.189
227 


54569.190
228 


54569.191
229 


54569.192
230 


54569.193
231 


54569.194
232 


54569.195
233 


54569.196
234 


54569.197
235 


54569.198
236 


54569.199
237 


54569.200
238 


54569.201
239 


54569.202
240 


54569.203
241 


54569.204
242 


54569.205
243 


54569.206
244 


54569.207
245 


54569.208
246 


54569.209
247 


54569.210
248 


54569.211
249 


54569.212
250 


54569.213
251 


54569.214
252 


54569.215
253 


54569.216
254 


54569.217
255 


54569.218
256 


54569.219
257 


54569.220
258 


54569.221
259 


54569.222
260 


54569.223
261 


54569.224
262 


54569.225
263 


54569.226
264 


54569.227
265 


54569.228
266 


54569.229
267 


54569.230
268 


54569.231
269 


54569.232
270 


54569.233
271 


54569.234
272 


54569.235
273 


54569.236
274 


54569.237
275 


54569.238
276 


54569.239
277 


54569.240
278 


54569.241
279 


54569.242
280 


54569.243
281 


54569.244
282 


54569.245
283 


54569.246
284 


54569.247
285 


54569.248
286 


54569.249
287 


54569.250
288 


54569.251
289 


54569.252
290 


54569.253
291 


54569.254
292 


54569.255
293 


54569.256
294 


54569.257
295 


54569.258
296 


54569.259
297 


54569.260
298 


54569.261
299 


54569.262