Get to Know Farm to School Summit Keynote Speaker Rodney Taylor
By Danielle Moore
Rodney Taylor, Director of Nutrition Services for Riverside Unified School District. Taylor is a noted pioneer and expert in Farm to School salad bars, and is a charter member of the National Farm to School Network. Rodney will share his experience in leading the popular Farmers’ Market Salad Bar Program, which boasts significant successes at providing greater access to fresh fruits and vegetables to public school children in 29 elementary schools. This salad bar program revolutionized school lunch programs by shifting the “center of the plate” towards fresh, local fruit and vegetables. Not only did this program get kids eating more fruits and veggies, the program is financially solvent.
Besides delivering the keynote at the 3rd Annual Farm to School Summit, Taylor is presenting at the Saturday Educational Session, “Farm to Institution.”
Q: When and why did you start a farm to school program?
A: Back in 1997, I was working for the Santa Monica Malibu School District as their Director of Food and Nutrition Services and we had salad bars in 5 of our 10 elementary schools. I was approached by a parent about the idea of buying produce from the local farmer’s market. We piloted the program and it went well. Three years later we had it fully institutionalized in all of our schools.
Q: Tell us a little about the success and challenges of the farm to school program initially?
A: Initially, the biggest challenges were bureaucratic challenges. When you are working in an organization built on policy and procedures, it doesn’t really foster innovation and creation.
Also, small farmers have cash flow issues. The traditional food service in a school district takes 30 to 45 days to pay their bills. Our farmers delivered twice a week. If they made their delivery on Thursday, we would need a check for them for the previous Tuesday delivery they already made. The school district couldn’t figure out how to do that, so the first year the city of Santa Monica paid the farmers, and then we would reimburse the city.
There were also challenges of distribution regarding how we would get the product to the schools. In Santa Monica we had to go to the farmer’s market and pick up the product. We didn’t have an additional driver, so the farmer’s market’s assistant manager would pick up our product from the market and deliver it to our schools. We didn’t have the staff, so the PTA provided us with the support we needed. In those days, farm to school wasn’t even mentioned. Farm to school came after the farmer’s market salad bar. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. We didn’t even know what questions to ask in those days. We set up the program, then people started asking questions and we started to compile data to address the issues that had to do with up front costs, sustainability, labor and replic-ability.
Q: What about the challenges in your current district?
A: There are not challenges for us now. I came to Riverside in 2002, and in 2005 we began our first pilot program. After five years the program was in 29 of our 31 elementary schools. From 1997 to 2005 no one else had replicated what we had done in Santa Monica so we decided we’d do it here. There are very different dynamics. In Santa Monica we had bigger financial challenges. Now, I understand that food service is all about perception. In those programs that don’t perform well, there is a poor perception of the program in the community. We found we can change perception by implementing a salad bar or farm to school program. We demonstrated that in Riverside
Q: How have you incorporated local food at each level of the lunchroom?
A: The salad bar for us is very different form other salad bars. It is a complete lunch. When a kid comes to our school to have lunch, they have a choice between the all-you-can-eat salad bar and hot lunch. The salad bar offers all components required by the USDA including fruit, milk, bread, protein and vegetable. That is what makes it very different. Kids are able to have that in the elementary schools. In middle and high school we do not have the salad bars. My experience has shown me that the middle and high school kids aren’t interested in eating a salad bar. For them, our chef has developed a line of sandwiches and salads using locally grown products called Fresh Express. That would include a fruit parfait or a mandarin orange chicken salad. We’ve utilized commodities to keep the cost down. The other thing we have done in the elementary school is we made a commitment this year to only serve fresh fruit and veggies. We want to increase it to 60% of the $1.4 million we spent on produce last year.
Q: A lot of people say having salad bars and fresh produce in schools presents a host of challenges. Why do you think that is?
A: The challenge exists in the adults’ minds. We are talking about bureaucratic organizations. As adults we are already resistant to change, but in a bureaucratic organization the biggest challenge is resistance to change. They say it’s too much money to invest, but I can tell you that when I came to Riverside, the department owed the school district $3.1 million because they built a new central kitchen and couldn’t make the lease payment. Yet, we invested $300,000 per year for salad bars. Ten years later, we not only paid off the $3.1 million, but we started the school year with a $5.7 million reserve. Our return has been that we no longer owe any money and we have a reserve. My philosophy is simple – we run it like it’s a business, even though it’s a public entity. If you and I were to go into business, wouldn’t you expect money for investment? We made an investment and the dividends justify it. In 2002, we fed 42% of student and now we feed 70% because we changed perceptions about who we were, increased the food quality and gained the trust of the parents. The district administrators and teacher all embrace the program.
Q: How have farmers benefited from your farm to school program? Are they receiving fair prices for the food they sell to your school system?
A: They are not only receiving fair prices, I watched one farmer upgrade his trucks three times to meet the demand. The first year we spent $30,000, and last year we spent a total of $400,000.
Q: How do you get around the challenges of training your staff on how to prepare and serve all these fresh fruits and vegetables?
A: We have three ways of training. We hire a salad bar coordinator and we have monthly trainings for the managers. A manager that is going to receive the salad bar is trained in another school to see how the salad bar works and plan how it will work at their school. Logistically every school is different. The coordinator stays in the school for a few weeks depending on how quickly the staff adjusts. The training is ongoing, so as we get new employees, there is continuous staff development to ensure the integrity of the program is never compromised.
Q: What do you recommend for a district that can’t afford a salad bar coordinator?
A: In each case, the salad bar coordinator was obtained through grants. The most important thing is partnerships and collaboration. We partnered with Occidental College, who wrote the grants and got the money. They did the research while we did the groundwork. That has been an important partnership along with local hospitals. You don’t have to be a grant writer. With my track record it was easier for me. Not everyone has that kind of track record where they can get that kind of money. I would say I didn’t even need that money to get going but I wasn’t going to turn it down. Again, it’s the investment that you make. If your program is suffering, then you can’t afford not to do it. If you continue to do what you’ve always done, then you are going to get what you’ve always got. If you are struggling and continue to do the same things, you are going to continue struggle.
Q: What are you going to talk about at the Georgia Farm to School Summit?
A: I’m going to talk about, first and foremost, why it’s important for us to act as nutrition administrators. We are entrusted as administrators to provide kids with nutritionally sound meals, not to make excuses. I am going to talk about why it’s important to treat the nutrition program like a business versus an entitlement program like it has always been. Finally, I am going to talk about how I turned these programs into programs that provide nutritious, healthy meals that have a healthy bottom line.
How do you change perceptions? How do you fund it? I’ll give you an example: we have 15 non-school district sties that we provide food for in the city. We have provided meals to the meals on wheels program. The local college has all their frozen food delivered to us so they can buy in bulk for cheaper, and then we deliver to campus. Recently, the local Air Force asked us to provide meals to their reserves. We turned it down, but we went and talked to them. I meet this week with a local company that wants us to run their lunch program down the street. So what I’ve done is taken my private industry background and applied those principles in the public sector and I have shown why it will work in a school nutrition program. The approach is not new, but because of the way a nutrition program is designed, it will work. I will help to answer all these questions.
Q: How is your school meal participation? After all the hype went down for the farm to school program, did participation level off?
A: Its kept increasing at almost 3% to 5% per year. Some years it was as high as 7%. We grew our revenue $1 million per year over a 7-year period. We went from an $8 million revenue in 2002 when I took this job, to $18 million last year. We had an operating reserve of $1.4 million and the year before it was $1.2 million. And I’ve got news for you; I’m not going to be close to the smartest person in the room in Georgia. I am just a guy that knew that the way school food service was being run was bound to fail. I tell my colleagues “you need to adjust your sails, because the winds of change are blowing.”
Q: What kind of feedback do you get from the students, parents and faculty?
A: We were talking yesterday and laughing about it. We meet with the superintendent’s advisory committee. We went from the usual complaints from years ago like “the quality of the food is bad,” then it was “there is not enough variety,” then “the lines are too long.” Now, last year there wasn’t one complaint. This year the only question they had was why we took away potato chips. I told them that we are a nutrition program and potato chips offer no nutritional value. They don’t fit into our reputation as a national leader.
Q: What is the best piece of advice you would give to a school considering a farm to school program?
A: When you start any program, start small. Start with a pilot program and work all the bugs out. You need to answer all the questions that are going to come at you. In the end, expand and do everything slowly and thoughtfully. Don’t rush into it because right now farm to school is big. Everything that is done should be done in the interest of children. I don’t speak because I want to be a celebrity. I do it because our kids are under attack from obesity. One in three children are going to contract diabetes because of obesity. It’s not only one in three, but one in three by the time they reach 25 years old. You can modify eating behaviors. Kids will eat healthy if given a choice. We can’t continue to serve starchy, sodium-laden, processed meals. They are not going to do any good.
Q: What aspect of Plow Forward are you most looking forward to?
A: I am looking forward to hopefully inspiring directors in the South, where childhood obesity has some of the worst figures in the country. My parents happen to be from Louisana and Mississippi where there is a large population of African American and Latinos. The affects of obesity are staggering when you look at them. The numbers are one in two that will contract diabetes due to obesity for this population and we should be outraged by that.
Q: Why would you recommend your session to an attendee at Plow Forward?
A: I think they will hear someone who is a passionate advocate of children, who has developed a model that transforms food service programs and, probably more than anything else, a guy that shoots straight.
Q: What message would you like the participants of Plow Forward to take away from your session?
A: I tell food service directors all the time that if you are not having fun, you aren’t doing anything. I am having a blast and working harder than I ever have before. There is nothing nobler than serving children. Every day, 43,000 parents drop their kids off and entrust their well being to me. I am going to teach them to be healthy eaters, ensuring they not only live long lives but healthful and active lives.