[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15679-15680]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               RECOGNIZING NATIONAL FARM TO SCHOOL MONTH

  (Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to 
address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, October is National Farm 
to School Month. It is time when we celebrate food education, school 
gardens, and lunch trays filled with healthy, local ingredients.
  Farm to School brings healthy foods from local farms to 
schoolchildren nationwide. The program teaches students about the path 
from farm to fork and instills healthy eating habits that can last a 
lifetime by introducing children to real food.
  At the same time, use of local produce in school meals and 
educational activities provides a new direct market opportunity for 
family farmers in the area and lessens environmental impacts of 
transporting food long distances.
  More than 31 million children eat a school lunch 5 days a week, 180 
days a year. If school lunch can taste great and support the local 
community, everybody wins. In the early 1990s, there were merely a few 
Farm to School programs, and today there are thousands.

[[Page 15680]]

  Mr. Speaker, as chairman of the Nutrition Subcommittee, it is 
encouraging to see this program grow and our schoolchildren's diets 
improving. A lifelong love of healthy, locally grown food from your 
local farmer is something we can all support.

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