Between running to lecture halls and settling into a library nook, students are finding more opportunities to mix in time between spinach beds or apple trees. While learning about how the food they purchase in a grocery store is made, students are providing fresh food to their local communities.
Across the state and country, students and school faculty are participating in a growing movement: farm-to-school programs.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm to School 2023 census found that 81% of school food authorities participated in a least one farm to school activity as of fall 2024. Nationwide, the number of school food authorities participating in farm-to-school activities increased by 9% from 2019 to 2023.
In Michigan, 3,308 schools participated in farm-to-school programs in the 2022 to 2023 school year, bringing fresh farm products to 1,417,512 students, according to the census.
Farm-to-school programs don’t just provide schools with dairy, meat, or produce, they also provide educational activities for students.
Jeremy Moghtader, program manager at the University of Michigan’s campus farm, said students from different fields of study, like engineering, environmental sciences, and public health, learn skills that can be applied to a future career path.
Other students might just want time to dig in and get their hands dirty.
“People can engage at different levels or depths,” Moghtader said. “So I think what students get out of those interactions might vary at the different touch points, but that could be as straightforward as, you know, they want to be outside, they want to have a chance to do something that isn't on their computer, and they want put their hands on the earth and pick a fresh cherry tomato and have it be delicious.”
School farms also provide better access to produce, said Moghtader. At the University of Michigan, students sell produce from the farm directly to hungry students through their new mobile farm stand.
“Just the lay of the land in Ann Arbor is that there aren’t full-service grocery stores in or near campus,” Moghtader said. “So it's nice to have some additional fresh produce access, I think, on campus through the farm stand, which really creates kind of an engagement opportunity for students to see some vegetables that they may or may not be familiar with.”
Matt Hargis, a farm-to-school supervisor, works at Drew Farm. The farm provides the Detroit Public Schools Community District with fresh food and wellness education. It’s considered to be the center of the Detroit School Garden Collaborative. Currently, 82 schools in Detroit are participating in the program, but future plans include starting a garden at all DPSCD schools.
Hargis said the Detroit community has recently had more of an appetite for local food after the COVID-19 pandemic, and he said, so far, people have positively responded to Drew Farm’s work.
“There's definitely more of an interest in eating farm-to-table and making it affordable,” Hargis said. “So I think that, despite it all, we're in a very strong position just due to the fact that the community is very supportive of what we're doing.”
Michigan agricultural research
Some school farms have a long history, dating back to the 17th century. That’s true at Michigan State University, which became a premier land-grant university by 1862. The school’s name at its founding was the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan.
James Averill is the associate director of AgBioResearch at Michigan State University. He said the university oversees 34 farms across the state, encompassing 25,000 acres. Those farms can be divided into plant-associated, animal or livestock-associated, and natural resource-associated groups.
“We take a lot of pride in being the first land-grant university in the United States that has that focus of teaching, research, and outreach to help meet the needs of Michigan agriculture, and not only here in Michigan, but start looking around at how we can impact the agriculture and the natural resources here in the United States and around the world,” Averill said.
Michigan is one of the most agriculturally diverse states in the nation, producing over 300 different types of commodities, according to the Michigan Farm Bureau. Agriculture is the state’s second-largest industry, bringing more than $125 billion to the state’s economy.
The agriculture industry is becoming increasingly important to the state economy. The state set a record in agriculture-related exports in 2024.
Averill said that agricultural diversity would not have been possible without the research conducted at Michigan State University’s farms and the bountiful supply of freshwater from the Great Lakes.
Farm-to-school programs face challenges
Some farm-to-school programs have been in limbo as the USDA eliminates funding for some grants and programs under the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency.
The USDA oversees Child Nutrition Programs, which include the School Breakfast Program and the National School Lunch Program. It also oversees smaller programs, like the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program. The USDA cut nearly $18 million from the 2025 Local Food For Schools program in March. The federal funding loss could make it more difficult for state or tribal governments to bring local food to schools and child care facilities.
The USDA also slashed more than $11 million headed to the Michigan Department of Education on March 17. That funding was previously headed to a pandemic relief program that aimed to help public agencies buy food from local producers to send to underserved communities.
Some farms receive multiple forms of USDA funding, like Drew Farm. Hargis said the farm receives funding through the Child Nutrition Programs, but also receives other USDA grants through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Partnership for Local Agriculture & Nutrition Transformation in Schools. Those other grants are used to fund operations like a summer initiative that brings high schoolers onto the farm as apprentices.
Hargis said the USDA budget cuts have not yet impacted Drew Farm, but said there’s anxiety that funding changes might be headed their way soon.
“I think a lot of people are sort of waiting for a shoe to drop,” Hargis told Michigan Public. “And I think like, even within the local Detroit agricultural community, there's been a lot of disruption amongst programs from the USDA and other agencies, and I think it's just a difficult time and we're striving to make the best out of it.”
The USDA’s 2023 census found that not all school food authorities rely on federal COVID-19 relief funds for their farm-to-school programs. They often rely on school or district funding.
Michigan has a farm-to-school funding program: 10 Cents a Meal for Michigan’s Kids and Farms. The 10 Cents a Meal program allocates funds to early care and education centers for food item costs, transportation fees, and food labor expenses. The program is funded by the Michigan Legislature, but this year’s grant funds are lower than past years’ funding.
Averill said the farms at Michigan State University rely on both federal and state funding to operate.
“And so we can't do what we're doing without those funds coming in,” Averill said.
The farms are facing other challenges in addition to the funding limbo. Averill said the infrastructure at the MSU farms around the state is dated and needs updating. He said he’s hoping to see a new farm bill in Congress that would allocate funding to land-grant institutions.
“We have facilities that date all the way back into the late 1800s still in some of our structures,” Averill said.
Despite the uncertainty facing some farm-to-school programs, there’s growing support for the work school farms are doing, said Hargis.
“I think for the farm-to-school movement, you know, again, it's a difficult time, but it's the time for all of us to really pick up from our bootstraps and just get to work,” Hargis said. “And you know the movement is strong. The people are resilient. And it’s all really about securing our future.”
