This SoCal school district is taking farm-to-school seriously

The orange slices in the Upland Unified School District salad bars are absolute flavor bombs. That’s because a day and a half before they’re delivered, the oranges served in the district’s 15 schools were still ripening in the sun.

Upland USD’s nutrition department, led by director Ksenia Glenn, partners with an established local farm, Old Grove Orange, to source the fruit, which delivers it — sliced into wedges and ready to eat — fewer than 24 hours after harvest. The farm, located just 33 miles east of the southern California district, produces Valencia oranges, cara caras and other citrus fruits. They even have navel oranges that grow on 110-year-old trees. The farm is also rich in blackberries, figs and flowers.

But the school district purchases more than these fruits through Old Grove. The farm also functions as a food hub for more than 15 small growers in the area, an arrangement that makes it simpler for clients like Upland USD to source local ingredients all in one place.

Through Old Grove Orange, the district serves its students a bounty of produce that’s grown less than 100 miles away. According to an archive of its orders, the district has sourced at least 20 different types of fruits and vegetables from the hub, including dragonfruit, pomegranates, several varieties of apple, baby cucumbers, lettuces, mandarins, persimmons, tangerines and speciality radishes. They’ve also purchased local honey from the group.

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The district also orders from Riverside Farm Hub, which sources produce from both the northern and southern parts of the state; each week, they purchase close to 100 different types of produce, from arugula and avocados to strawberries and spinach. They purchase produce through their regular nutrition services fund.

Glenn says that between 50 and 75 percent of the produce on their salad bars and for their grab-and-go items currently comes from these two suppliers.

“Why local?” Glenn asks, “the first reason is for nutritional value…every day that a fruit or a vegetable is harvested and not eaten is a loss of nutrients.” Second, she notes that “it’s a completely different taste when produce is harvested ripe and eaten right away.”

One thing that makes serving local produce possible is a partnership between Old Grove Orange and a processing plant that breaks fruits and vegetables into ready-to-serve portions.

“We don't have the luxury we had pre-Covid to have the staffing to wedge oranges,“ Glenn explains. “I’m lucky if I have a person to serve lunch, right?”

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The district partners with Old Grove to help students make connections between the food they’re eating and the place where they live in other ways, too. The farm hosts all members of the nutrition staff and students from nine out of the district’s 10 elementary schools on farm field trips and runs mini farmers markets at the schools. They also partner with the district to provide harvest-of-the-month boxes with ready-to-eat produce and educational materials for classrooms so kids can try new things.

Outside the partnership, the district also runs a robust school garden program. Every school has a school garden and the district runs a garden club program. Food educators, funded by a variety of grants and other funding sources, run these programs.

Glenn says it took the district a while to get back on its feet after the pandemic. After Covid subsided enough for students to return to school in person, they spent the first year in survival mode. By the second year, Glenn says they realized they needed to “get off of autopilot and start looking back into food quality.”

In addition to the rapid expansion of their local produce procurement, Glenn and other staff members started to put time and effort into small changes, like creating an order form for the food hub to make it simpler to place orders.

They also started making improvements to menu items, starting with the cold entreés at the high school. Inspired by the celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, Glenn assessed each item carefully, starting with the tuna sandwich.

Then they made changes, “looking through Chef Ramsay’s eyes.” They swapped a hoagie roll for a specialty bread from a local bakery, added a “wreath” of lettuce and increased the portion size of the tuna. Finally, they switched from opaque foil to a biodegradable package with a clear window.

They did the same for the other three cold entreés, “and guess what? With that little change,” she reports,”now all of the sudden the sandwiches were the most popular thing on the menu!”