THE IMPACT OF FARM TO SCHOOL LEGISLATION ON FARMERS, SUPPLY CHAIN BUSINESSES, RURAL COMMUNITIES AND ECONOMICS

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: EXTENDED
• Funding Source: AFRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 1025612
• Grant No.: 2021-68006-34029
• Project No.: COL0-2020-04603
• Proposal No.: 2020-04603
• Program Code: A1661
• Project Start Date: Jan 15, 2021
• Project End Date: Aug 31, 2024
• Grant Year: 2021

Project Director
Jablonski, B.

Recipient Organization
COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
FORT COLLINS,CO 80523

Performing Department
Ag and Resource Economics

Non Technical Summary
Rural communities continue to face many challenges relative to their urban counterparts. Reversing these trends requires investing in a broad range of assets that comprise a community's wealth. In recent years, the U.S. has refined its rural development and agricultural policies to more effectively target heterogeneous segments of the agriculture sector; support for local and regional food systems, for example, is now included in six farm bill titles. Farm to School (FTS) is the most prevalent local foods promotion program in the U.S.; 41 states and the District of Columbia have passed 146 bills and 63 resolutions enacting FTS legislation since 2002. Despite research demonstrating the child, producer, and community benefits of FTS, rural school districts are less likely to participate in FTS programs. Thus, it is unclear whether rural communities benefit from these interventions. Further, no research has focused on the relationship between local stocks of community assets and FTS, or differences across types of state policies and implications for both school purchases and producer and supply chain business viability. This project, submitted to the Rural Economic Development program (A1661), integrates research and Extension work to ask the question: What are the impacts of state-level FTS policies on rural wealth, and how do state-level farm to school procurement polices impact school meals, local producers, supply chain businesses, and communities? This work is guided by four objectives. Objective 1 explores the relationship between FTS activities, state FTS policies and rural wealth using publicly-available national datasets, as well as a recently-developed dataset that measures the stock of county-level assets. Objective 2 evaluates to what extent state-level FTS procurement incentives impact school nutrition service director decisions about school meals. For Objectives 2 and 3, we focus on four partner states--Oregon, New York, Michigan, and Colorado--and on FTS policies that incentivize local procurement. Objective 3 expands on results from Objectives 1 and 2 to determine the extent to which state-level FTS procurement incentives generate benefits for local producers and supply chain businesses in and around farm to school districts, and the communities in which they are located, as well as if and how they contribute to the stock of rural assets. Objective 4 seeks to inspire new policy and research dialogue on the role state FTS policies can play in supporting positive rural development, school food procurement decisions, and producer and supply chain business outcomes. All research and Extension objectives have been framed in consultation with an impressive Advisory team that is already committed to supporting the project. This project will make important contributions to advancing economic opportunities for rural entrepreneurs and communities via local and regional food systems.

Animal Health Component

0%

Research Effort Categories

Basic

(N/A)

Applied

100%

Developmental

(N/A)

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
608	6050	3010	70%
601	6030	3010	15%
608	6050	3080	15%

Knowledge Area
601 - Economics of Agricultural Production and Farm Management; 608 - Community Resource Planning and Development;

Subject Of Investigation
6050 - Communities, areas, and regions; 6030 - The farm as an enterprise;

Field Of Science
3010 - Economics; 3080 - Sociology;

Keywords

rural wealth

farm to school

local food

rural development

Goals / Objectives
This project will answer the question: What are the impacts of state-level farm to school policies on rural wealth, and how do state-level farm to school procurement polices impact school meals, local producers, supply chain businesses, and communities?The project's multidisciplinary and integrated work has four overarching objectives:Objective 1: Explore the relationship between FTS activities, state FTS policies, and rural wealth. Using publicly available data on FTS programming and policies, as well as a database recently developed by PD Jablonski and co-authors on the stocks of rural wealth, this research will explore the relationship between particular community assets, intensity of FTS participation, and state policies enacted to support FTS programming across the U.S.Objective 2: Evaluate whether state-level FTS procurement incentives impact what school nutrition service directors serve in school meals.Using the data and analysis assembled in Objective 1, publicly available data on school district finances, data provided by our partner states on purchases as part of their FTS incentive procurement programs, and survey data collected from school nutrition service directors, we will work with our partner states to understand the specific context of school nutrition service directors' food procurement decision-making (Objective 2, part 1), the role of FTS procurement incentives in this decision-making (Objective 2, part 1), and the impacts of FTS procurement policies on school food expenditures and revenues (Objective 2, part 2).Objective 3: Determine the extent to which state-level FTS procurement incentives generate benefits for local producers and supply chain businesses in and around FTS districts and the communities in which they are located. Once we better understand how school districts respond to procurement incentives (Objective 2), we will work to understand to what extent these incentives get passed through to local producers, local supply chain businesses, and local communities. There are two components to Objective 3. Objective 3, part 1 examines the relationship between FTS and the farm economy, estimating the impact of procurement incentives on the local farm and non-farm economy, as well as the relationship between local food spending and local (farm and non-farm) economic indicators. Objective 3, part 2 specifically estimates how FTS subsidies impact apple market pricing in an attempt to isolate the price effects of the policy in order to assess the impact to local producers and supply chain businesses.Objective 4: Inspire new research and policy dialogue on the role state FTS policies can play in supporting positive rural development, school food procurement decisions, and producer and supply chain business outcomes.We will use the data and analysis compiled as parts of Objectives 1-3, combined with Extension resources and the networks and knowledge of our Advisory Committee and state partners, to contribute to a dialogue among researchers, Extension personnel, and policy makers on how local and regional food systems can play a critical role in rural economic development.

Project Methods
Obj 1. Utilize principal component analysis to reduce dimensionality of the data on the stocks of wealth, incorporating our revised measure of cultural capital. We will then regress each FTS intensity variable on the measures of state level policies, the asset indices, and control for Rural Urban Continuum Codeto better account for rurality. Given that we believe that the relationship between community assets and the dependent variable will vary depending on levels of other stocks of assets (i.e., their interactions), we will also incorporate additional pairwise interactions for select capitals (equation 2). These models will be estimated using Ordinary Least Squares.Obj 2, part 1.Survey school nutrition service directors within each partner state to better understand how and why directors respond to the policy. Questions will focus on their familiarity and experience with the FTS procurement policies and practices, as well as the barriers and opportunities to participating in FTS. The results will be analyzed through the findings of Objective 1 so that we can examine the relationship between nutrition service director responses and their community assets. Qualitative data analysis protocols will involve coding a sample of the transcribed in-depth interview data using NVivo software and reviewing our categories. Obj 2, part 2. a) Leverage publicly available data and detailed local food purchasing data provided by our state partners to develop a cross-sectional data set and employ a nonlinear regression approach (e.g., probit or logit), to conduct the analysis separately for each state in order to account for each state's unique subsidy eligibility criteria.b) We will construct a panel data set of district-year observations of all districts in each state and combine all partner states in a difference-in-difference regression. c) Construct a panel of the subset of school districts that receive FTS procurement incentives and include local purchasing data provided by state partners to conduct a fixed effects regression at the district-level to isolate our impacts of interest.Obj 3, part 1. Use the panel data set described in Obj 2, part 2. Our dependent variables will be economic indicators of farm income and income and wages in non-farm economic sectors that include local food system intermediaries and time-varying rural assets identified as significant in Objective 1.These variables are measured at the county-level and we will link them to the school district data based on the county in which the district resides. With these district-year observations of all in districts in each state, we will again combine all four states in a difference-in-difference regression.The key independent variable in the regression is an indicator variable equal to one if a district is using FTS procurement subsidies and equal to zero otherwise. Obj 3, part 2.we will develop equilibrium displacement models (EDMs) of the apple markets in New York and Michigan.The EDM can be parameterized using data from the literature on the sensitivity of demand for and supply of apples to changes in price, or elasticity,local purchasing data of apples by districts from our state partners, and USDA NASS data on apple production. We can then simulate the impact of the subsidy on the equilibrium price received and quantity of apples produced in each state.Obj 4. We will write journal articles based on our results, present findings at academic and practitioner conferences, and leverage our Advisory Committee to disseminate final results, including at the National Farm to School Network's biannual meeting and to the USDA AMS led local foods working group.Evaluation of the project will include: 1) pre-post assessment with the Advisory Committee, 2) training evaluations, and 3) data collection.

Progress 01/15/22 to 01/14/23

Outputs
Target Audience:During this reporting period, we primarily targeted members of our advisory team, including representatives from the state Departments of Agriculture and Education in four states, the National Farm to School Network, and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) - including the Agricultural Marketing Service and Food and Nutrition Service (FNS). This target audience has been critical in helping us to refine our research questions, gain access to data, understand nuances of the data and interpretation, and determine relevant outputs. We have also used this group as a community of practice of sorts to a) understand the types of data collected across states and the format, and b) how policy implications should be framed to have the broadest and most useful impact. We have also started to share results with researchers to get feedback from key academic conferences. And, in a limited way we have engaged with broader stakeholders including USDA FNS and Farm to Institution New England. Changes/Problems:In this reporting period, Ashley Spalding from USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) joined our project. Ashley has been a welcome addition, including taking the lead on two new USDA Farm to School publication, where she is integrating our team and research. This is a fantastic and fruitful collaboration that will greatly extend the visibility and impact of our work. There have been two major challenges/problems in this reporting period. The first is that we realized that the transaction data from Oregon and Michigan do not represent all local food transactions. In some cases, they may only represent transactions for which the school food authorities want to be reimbursed. Accordingly, there are major sample selection issues with these data. We have had several meetings/discussions about this, and Plakias and Xu are now working on a strategy to impute the missing data. The second is that we realized conducting a survey for Obj 2 wouldn't yield the level of nuance we felt was important to understand 'decision-making' through a community capitals lens. Accordingly, we decided to focus data collection on one state, Oregon, and conduct in-depth interviews. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This research project is supporting three PhD students (one 1st year - supervised by Carolan - and two fourth year - one supervised by Jablonski and one by Plakias), two research scientists, and one undergraduate honors student (for research credit). The fourth year PhD students (Xu and Kashyap) both presented their work at the Applied Agricultural Economics Association annual meeting - both presented in one session (that the research team organized), and one (Kashyap) presented two additional times, including as a finalist for the graduate student Extension competition. Kashyap also presented to the USDA FNS Mountain Plains Farm to Child Nutrition Program, virtually. Additionally, Horan, an undergraduate honors student at Ohio State supervised by Plakias, used research as part of this project as part of her undergraduate honors thesis. She successfully submitted her honors thesis in the summer of 2022 and is now a master's student at Chatham University. Additionally, Horan presented a poster based on this research at the College of Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Studies at Ohio State. All students are fully involved with the Advisory Committee, which has provided important exposure to how stakeholder providing meaningful contributions to research, and how research can be effectively translated to support stakeholders and policymaking. Finally, one of the PhD students has started with Plakias, Jablonski and Spalding (who has joined the research team from USDA ERS) on a new USDA ERS report. The PhD student played an important role in developing the proposal for USDA ERS leadership. And, now that it has been approved, the team - including the PhD student - have started contributing sections as a way to more broadly disseminate the research we are doing in this project. This is great exposure for a PhD student and an excellent opportunity to deepen connections with USDA ERS. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?As much of the research is still ongoing, it is primarily the research team and advisory team that has seen the results of this work and provided early-stage feedback. That being said, Kashyap presented the farm to school intensity maps to the USDA Food and Nutrition Service - including school nutrition service directors across the mountain west. Plakias and Jablonski also presented at the quarterly National Farm to Institution Metrics Collaborative (hosted by the Farm to Institution New England): https://ftimetrics.localfoodeconomics.com/. The Collaborative is a group of national Farm to Institution leaders dedicated to developing best practices for measuring the impact of the institutional market across the supply chain. Their nation-wide, multi-sector Collaborative seeks to develop a common set of food procurement metrics, benchmarks, and best-practices for institutional dining and food service that promote the health and resilience of their community's economic, ecological, and social systems. Now in its fourth year, the Collaborative has over 100 members from 30 states, representing the country's leaders in farm to institution work. Accordingly, this is an excellent group with which to disseminate findings. We look forward to returning to speak with this group as we are further along with the research. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Obj 1: Kashyap will lead work in finding data associated with these three types of capital and integrating them into a revised assessment to see if we see different relationships between farm to school intensity, cultural capital, and state farm to school policies emerge. Obj 2: We will finish a paper on school nutrition service director decision making around farm to school incentives and submit it for publication in a peer-reviewed journal (journal to be decided). We are also going to present results of research related to this objective at the annual Agriculture and Human Values meeting in June 2023 (Hale and Plakias). Hale and Plakias will also prepare a manuscript on pathways for local food purchases and the impacts of state-level procurement incentives on local food spending by school food authorities and submit it to the peer-reviewed journal Food Policy for consideration. Obj 3: Xu and Plakias will finish a paper on the local apple demand by school food authorities and the interactions between local and nonlocal apple markets and submit to peer-reviewed journal. Xu will also present the results of this ongoing research at the Midwest Economic Association annual meeting in March 2023. Additionally, Bauman will lead work that uses restricted-access census data to investigate if state F2S policies affect performance of farmers adopting local channels. Obj 4: We will continue to meet with our Advisory team quarterly, and to work with them to understand implications of this work and how to best disseminate the results/findings to our target audience. The team plans to submit an abstract to the Northeast Farm to Institution convening in the spring of 2023. This meeting will be hybrid (some sessions held virtually and others in person). The Northeast Farm to Institution Summit strengthens the regional food system by celebrating and supporting the role of institutions as anchors in the region. By bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders in a collaborative process, the summit generates ideas and connections that advance the ability of the Northeast to support viable farm, food, and sea businesses and healthy, just communities. The Summit welcomes both newcomers and pioneers on the forefront of the farm to institution movement to share their work, make connections, generate energy, and co-create strategies for addressing the most pressing challenges for our regional food system. Accordingly, this should be a great event for us to engage in. Perhaps most excitingly, the team will support Spalding in finalizing one and starting a second USDA ERS EIB report. The first report should be completed by the summer 2023, and start the year-long peer review process. Once complete it will also be used to contribute to an update to the congressionally-mandated trends in local and regional food systems report (2015).

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Obj 1: We completed most of the work on this objective during this period. With the support of a CSU undergraduate (working with Carolan and Chaifetz), we transformed the National Farm to School Network's (NFSN) National Farm to School Policy Handbook into a database. The policies were previously held in various spreadsheets and PDFs; with guidance, the student was able to clean the data and incorporate more variables into a database detailing farm to school policy through 2020. The database will be made publicly available and was provided back to NFSN for internal use and future updates. Additionally, the database was integrated into a number of research components described below. Pratyoosh Kashyap (grad student supervised by Jablonski), submitted an article for publication (currently under review in Food Policy). The article leverages the USDA's 2019 FTS Census, a new disaggregated database on state-level FTS policies, and the new comprehensive dataset of stocks of local wealth to assess the relationship between FTS intensity, FTS policies, and community wealth. The research finds positive associations between cultural and social capital and FTS intensity, highlighting local assets that are often overlooked in community development programs. Further, we find that different types of FTS policies are associated with levels of FTS intensity; procurement policies have positive associations and education policies have negative associations. Results provide rationale for more nuanced consideration of the types of FTS policy and local assets by policymakers and community economic developers. In addition, to improve the stocks of local wealth database, and particularly to investigate the role of cultural capital, Hale led a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed community development scholarship in the U.S. that employs the concept of cultural capital between 2001 and 2021. Results show that the various ways cultural capital is understood and deployed are reflective of disciplinary and practitioner assumptions and norms. Though cultural capital is often not well defined, our review suggests that it tends to be viewed as creative industries and amenities; a distinct social group; knowledge, values, attitudes, norms, and beliefs; place-based characteristics; and/or an exercise of power. Due its place-based, symbolic, and meta qualities, cultural capital may need to be understood differently from the other capital which has important implications for research and practice - namely the importance of community participation in determining what matters. Despite our findings that cultural capital is difficult to empiricize, Carolan has led work to help us to think about this more quantitatively. Accordingly, based our systematic literature review and the analysis of the farm to school qualitative data (see Obj 2), there appear to be three aggregate buckets that we can locate cultural capital: institutionalized; objectified; embodied. This information will be used in year 3 research. Obj 2: During this period, Hale and Carolan conducted 14 interviews with school food procurement representatives (some were distribution companies contracted to do this work) from Oregon. Participants were selected from the top 20 outliers on either side of the intensity/community assets analysis done by Kashyap (40 total). The outliers are those schools that we'd expect high or low based on assets but their intensity suggested the opposite. These were reviewed by a local expert from the Advisory Team who provided further direction. We also reviewed a list of non-participating schools supplied by another member of the Advisory team and added a few more potential participants who weren't already on our list. The team now has a full paper outlined, with the findings and discussion sections 75 percent complete. Related to Part 2 of this objective, Co-PI Plakias used transaction data from partner state Oregon as well as data from the Farm to School Census to develop a difference-in-difference model. With this model, we estimate the impact of receiving state procurement incentives on total food spending and local food spending. Preliminary results suggest procurement incentives do not impact local or total food spending for school food authorities in the sample, and thus may not pass through to local farms and food businesses. This work is ongoing and will be further developed in the next period of the grant. Obj 3: Lei Xu (graduate student at Ohio State, supervised by Plakias) has led the work with the F2S apple data from two partner states: Oregon and Michigan. After participating in F2S programs, school districts switch some purchases of foods from wholesalers to local farmers, driving the demand for local foods to increase. In this research, we explore the implications of raising demand for local fresh produce on local and non-local economies by using the apple market as a case study. Few research studies calculated the price elasticity of demand for local apples, so we first use 2017-2021 Oregon transaction data to calculate uncompensated demand elasticity by using the Almost Ideal Demand System model. The uncompensated demand elasticity is elastic, and we apply the elasticity to the equilibrium displacement model with market segments to simulate the impacts of raising demand for local apples on the price and consumption of local and non-local apples. We find the price and quantity consumed of local and non-local apples are all impacted by the raising demand, and the magnitudes of the impacts are different across market segments. School districts in the segment with high local apple demand and low non-local apple demand have a positive change in total apple consumption, while school districts in the segment with low local apple demand and high non-local apple demand are negatively affected in total apple consumption. This study adds to the existing literature on the elasticity of demand for apples and other fruits that are commonly purchased by school districts, and this study is also one of the few studies exploring the interactions between local food markets and non-local food markets in the US. This work is ongoing and will be further developed in the next period of the grant. Obj 4: Our advisory team met three times during the second year of our project as a full group (1/24/2022, 5/12/2022, 9/14/2022). The advisory team has played a critical role in both shaping the research, and also in understanding issues with the data, and outputs that will best inform future policy. The January 2022 meeting focused on getting feedback on the FTS intensity maps. From this process we realized an error that we (and all previous F2S published research) was making in terms of how we analyzed census data! Textbook reason why having an advisory committee is so critical! The May 2022 meeting focused on getting updates from each state on policy/procurement items relevant to the project, as well as on any F2S data collection and evaluation work planned over the next 12 months. We also got feedback related to supply chain margins. In the September 2022 meeting, we used a Miro board to have the advisory team assist us in understand how school food authorities can purchase local food. From this process, Plakias and Chaifetz developed a diagram of how school food moves that we have used in external presentations. Additionally, Plakias organized an optional meeting of the advisory team to discuss how states are tracking local food purchases as part of their state procurement incentive policies. There is a lot of desire to share across states, and not great existing forums in which this can occur. She also facilitated discussions about how to best share potential policy-relevant implications of the research team's work. As a result, we have added "implications" slides at the beginning of the research deck we send out in advance of each advisory team meeting.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2022 Citation: Hale, J., A. Irish, M. Carolan, J.K. Clark, S. Inwood, B.B.R. Jablonski, and T. Johnson. A systematic review of cultural capital in U.S. community development research. Submitted to World Development.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2022 Citation: Kashyap, P., B.B.R. Jablonski, and A. Bauman. Exploring the Relationship between Stocks of Community Wealth and the Intensity of Farm to School Program Activities. Submitted to Food Policy.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2022 Citation: Bonanno, A., D. Thilmany McFadden, B.B.R. Jablonski, and A. Bauman. No farm left behind: farm performance and farm to school programming intensity. Submitted to Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Jablonski, B.B.R, Z. Plakias, P. Kashyap, L. Xu, and J. OHara 2022, Do Farmers and Communities Really Win from Farm to School Programs? Presentation at the Annual Applied Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Kashyap, P., B.B.R. Jablonski, A. Bauman. 2022, Exploring the relationship among stocks of wealth, state farm to school policies, and the intensity of farm to school activities. Presentation at the Annual Applied Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Plakias, Z., and B.B.R. Jablonski. 2022, The Impact of Farm to School Legislation on Farmers, Supply Chain Businesses, Rural Communities and Economics, Presentation to the National Farm to Institution Metrics Collaborative and Farm to Institution New England (virtual)
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Kashyap, P., and B.B.R. Jablonski. 2022, Measures of Farm to School Participation Intensity, Presentation to the Mountain Plains Farm to Child Nutrition Program, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service (virtual)
• Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Horan, J. 2022. Analyzing the impact of COVID-19 on farm participation in Oregons Farm to School program. Honors Thesis. College of Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Sciences. The Ohio State University.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Horan, J., Z. Plakias. Analyzing the impact of COVID-19 on Farm Participation in Oregons Farm to School Program. Poster presentation. College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. The Ohio State University.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Kashyap, P. 2022. Adoption of Farm to School Activities. Presentation as part of the 2022 AAEA Extension Competition for Graduate Students. Presented at the Annual Applied Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA.
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: https://foodsystems.colostate.edu/research-impacts/farm-to-school/
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: https://localfoodeconomics.com/farm-to-school/

Progress 01/15/21 to 01/14/22

Outputs
Target Audience:During this period we primarily targeted members of our advisory team, including representatives from the state Departments of Agriculture and Education in four states, the National Farm to School Network - including their research and evaluation team, the US Department of Agriculture - including the Agricultural Marketing Service and Food and Nutrition Service. This target audience has been critical in helping us to refine our research questions, gain access to data, understand nuances of the data and interpretation, and determine relevant outputs. Changes/Problems:There are two major change to this research project. First, we are focusing on three states instead of four. Though Colorado remains part of our Advisory team, due to COVID and school closures, the state delayed funding to schools through its farm to school incentive program for >2 years. Accordingly, the program is too delayed to include in this research. That being said, we have incredible partners in the other three states and our optimistic that the research in the three states along with the national-level analysis, will yield important results. Second, co-PI O'Hara got a new job with USDA - working with the Chief Scientist's Office. Accordingly, Ashley Chaifetz from the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service assumed his role with the project. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This research project is supporting two PhD students and one post doc, and one undergraduate student (for research credit). The research has supported one PhD student in presenting preliminary results of his research at the Food Distribution Research Society, the North American Regional Science Association, and to the USDA Food and Nutrition Service. Additionally, project funds enabled him to attend the Montana Farm to School annual convening and gain additional context and insight into the work he is conducting. The Montana Farm to School Summit 2021, hosted by Montana Team Nutrition of Montana State University was held in Helena, Montana on August 11-12, 2021. This game him a chance to meet with school food service personnel, teachers, food producers and vendors, and farm to school practitioners from the Mountain Plains region engaged actively in Farm to School activities. He participated in workshops, field-visits, and had the opportunity to network with Farm to School stakeholders, learning about success stories as well as the challenges of participating in the program. He was also able to work with the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service on an internship this summer. Unfortunately, the internship was virtual due to COVID, but it provided an excellent opportunity for the PhD student to more closely engage with our USDA partners. The Post doc was able to present preliminary results of his work to the Rural Policy Research Institute this spring. Both PhD students will be presenting their work this summer at the annual Applied Agricultural Economics Association annual meeting in California. At Ohio State, the PhD student working with Co-PI Plakias is scheduled to present work from this project at the AAEA Annual Meeting in 2022 and has gained a second paid research opportunity through Ohio State Extension aligned with this project (to develop an ex ante analysis of the impacts of a F2S reimbursement policy in Ohio) through their involvement in this project. The undergraduate at Ohio State has had the opportunity to present one poster, and has another poster presentation scheduled, both on Ohio State's campus. She is also writing an Honor's Thesis using data from the project and data she collected (which will be shared with state project partners) on a topic closely aligned with the project (F2S participation by Oregon farms during COVID-19). She will graduate from Ohio State in May and has been accepted to a Master's program in Food Studies at Chatham University with the support of Co-PI Plakias. Related to this work, we generated a novel data set of farm characteristics for farms selling to school districts in Oregon. This work, led by undergraduate student Jillian Horan at Ohio State (supervised by Co-PI Plakias), involved conducting a web search of farms identified in the transaction data provided by the Oregon Department of Education and capturing public information on farm size, ownership, use of direct marketing, product offerings, value-added agriculture, and web and social media presence. Horan then explored differences in patterns before and the COVID-19 pandemic. She found that more farms sold to school districts during the pandemic than before the pandemic. Horan also found the average number of school district transactions per farm (direct and via intermediary combined) decreased during the pandemic. In addition, on average farms selling to districts during the pandemic were more likely to have a social media presence and more likely to engaged in direct marketing (at the time of data collection in late 2021 and early 2022) than farms selling to districts prior to the pandemic. Horan presented this work as a poster at the Ohio State Spring Undergraduate Research Festival, has submitted it to the Ohio State College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, and is writing her Honors Thesis on this topic. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?As much of the research is still ongoing, it is primarily the research team and advisory team that has seen the results of this work and provided early-stage feedback. That being said, Kashyap presented the farm to school intensity maps to the USDA Food and Nutrition Service - including school nutrition service directors across the mountain west. There is significant interest in seeing locations of different types of intensity, and investigating why some places have "stronger" farm to school programs than others. Additionally, PD Jablonski presented at the annual USDA Food and Nutrition Service convening on the impacts of farm to school; bringing together much of her previous USDA NIFA funded research as well as some of the preliminary findings of this project. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Obj 1: Over the next reporting period, we intend to: 1) Finalize the cultural capital systematic literature review and submit a manuscript to a peer-reviewed journal, 2) Finalize the state policy database, 3) Finalize the analysis looking at the relationship among stocks of wealth, intensity of farm to school, and state policies. And, we intend to present the results of this work at the Applied Agricultural and Economics Association annual meeting this summer and submit a peer-reviewed article for publication. Obj 2: We intend to finalize the data collection process across our three states to understand how school nutrition service directors responded to state incentives, and begin to analyze these results. Obj 3: Over the next reporting period, we intend to: 1) Conduct econometric analysis to explore the determinants of apple price premia for F2S reimbursement program participants, 2) Develop, parameterize, and refine our equilibrium displacement model of apple market impacts from F2S reimbursement policies, 3) Present preliminary results at an Applied Agricultural and Economics Association annual meeting this summer as part of an accepted track session co-sponsored by the Food and Agricultural Marketing Policy (FAMPS) and Extension Sections, and 4) submit a publication based on this work to a peer-reviewed journal. Obj 4: We will continue to meet with our Advisory team quarterly, and to work with them to understand implications of this work and how to best disseminate the results/findings to our target audience.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Obj 1: We have conducted a significant amount of research to support this objective during this period. First, we have worked to investigate better indicators associated with cultural capital that could be integrated into the database on the stocks of wealth developed by PD Jablonski and co-authors. To do this, Hale is leading the team in a systematic literature review to understand how cultural capital is conceptualized and deployed in US focused community development research, and specifically trying to identify how it is operationalized. For the systematic literature review, the inclusion criteria includes: research population in US; peer reviewed studies with stated conceptualization of cultural capital or related topics; community development focus which we define as being concerned with how the quality of interaction among people and places improve over time. The exclusion criteria includes: study populations outside U.S.; studies from before 2002; educational studies, healthcare studies, archeological methods articles, commentaries; articles that do not reference development in some way or are at an individual level without connection to community; focused upon a discipline or institution without also discussing development; Articles on interest based associations in community development without also using a place based associations of community development. Our team identified 3372 records through database searching. Once duplicates were removed, records screened (title and abstract), we had 1302 texts. 335 were accessed for eligibility, and we ended up with 136 studies in our study. We are now finalizing the results of this work and hope to have an article written and submitted to a peer-reviewed journal this summer. Preliminary results were presented to the Rural Policy Research Institute in March 2022. Final results will inform the refinement of the wealth creation database. Second, graduate student Kashyap has led the team in creating farm to school intensity indices. In this research, we leverage the USDA Farm to School Census and quantify the adoption of farm to school activities by school food authorities to compare intensity of program participation across the US. We construct three measures of farm to school intensity: 1) overall measure of intensity describing the adoption from all farm to school activities, 2) procurement intensity measuring the adoption of procurement activities, frequency of serving local foods, and weighting by local food expenditure, 3) education intensity and staff, which measures the adoption of education activities including gardens and activities of promotion related to education as well as full time or part time staff for coordinating farm to school. Results from this work have been presented at the Food Distribution Research Society, the North American Regional Science Association, and to the USDA Food and Nutrition Service. Third, we have been constructing a detailed database of state policies that can support our analyses. In conjunction with the National Farm to School Network, we reviewed all policies listed in their State Farm to School Policy Handbook, which spans 2002 to 2020. They have been characterized and categorized them into a useable spreadsheet for analysis and the team is currently performing a final review ahead of use. Finally, leveraging the farm to school intensity indices, the policy database, and the wealth creation database, Kashyap has been leading research to empirically estimate the relationship between community assets and farm to school. Preliminary results reveal that vendor and kitchen related challenges adversely affect farm to school participation, whereas higher participation is associated with higher price challenges. Measures of cultural capital, human capital, natural capital, and social capital positively affect participation farm to school. We also find that while state FTS legislation focused on procurement of local foods positively affect intensity of participation, legislation focusing on education activities are inversely related. Lastly, we also see regional clustering within states in FTS participation and are investigating those relationships explicitly using spatial models. Obj 2: We conducted some preliminary research to explore the characteristics of school food authorities that are associated with applying for and receiving reimbursement incentives. We considered reimbursement incentive programs in two of our partner states, Oregon and Michigan. In 2018-2019, the school year we studied, Oregon used an opt-in model in which all school food authorities were eligible to receive reimbursement incentives. In contrast, Michigan used a competitive funding model in which only some school food authorities were eligible to apply and only some school food authorities that applied received support. Using data from the USDA Farm to School Census, as well as data from the two states' Departments of Education, we estimated discrete choice regressions to explore the factors that are associated with SFAs' application for and receipt of these reimbursement incentives. Results from this research were published in the journal of Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems. Additionally, we have started to draft some preliminary questions for our primary data collection, designing our sampling strategy in partnership with our advisory team, and working to conceptualize and operationalize cultural capital to understand the decision-making context. Obj 3: We conducted substantial preliminary research for this objective. First, focusing specifically on local apples as a product, we developed a data set of local apple prices paid by school districts (by state, apple size, and apple variety) as well as premiums paid by districts for local apples relative to the closest shipping point price for that apple variety. This work, led by graduate student Lei Xu at Ohio State (supervised by Co-PI Plakias), involved cleaning the transaction data provided by Departments of Education in two partner states so that all data were in common units, merging these data with USDA AMS Market News data by date and location, generating new variables, and calculating descriptive statistics. Our preliminary descriptive work shows districts paid a mean price paid per pound of $0.79 and $0.76 for local apples in Michigan and Oregon, respectively. Local apple price premiums paid by districts (relative to nearest shipping point prices) have a wide range, with negative premiums in some instances. On average, local apples purchased by districts fetched a premium of 35% (Michigan) and 44% (Oregon) as a percentage of the nearest shipping point price. Consistent with what we see in other retail environments, districts pay a higher price for certain apple varieties (e.g., Honeycrisp). In addition, in both state smaller size apples fetch a higher premium, consistent with what we hear from state partners about apple demand by districts. We also find districts pay more on average for apples sold directly by farms than apples sold through intermediaries; we have plans to explore these marketing channel differences more in future research. Along with this conducting this preliminary descriptive work, during this reporting period we began outlining our approach and identifying additional data sets needed to parameterize our equilibrium displacement model to measure the impact of F2S reimbursement policies in our partner states on apple market equilibrium, the distribution of impacts across marketing channel types. Obj 4: Our advisory team met four times during the first year of our project as a full group. We additionally met with each state partner team at least once. The advisory team has played a critical role in both shaping the research, and also in understanding issues with the data, and outputs that will best inform future policy.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: OHara, J.K., B.B.R. Jablonski, & Z. Plakias. 2022. Which schools receive state-level support for local food purchases? Evidence from reimbursement incentive programs in Michigan and Oregon. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742170522000059
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Hale, J., Irish, A., Carolan, M., Clark, J., Inwood, S., Jablonski, B., & Johnson, T. 2021. A Systematic Review of Cultural Capital in U.S.A. Focused Community Development Research. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/QXKUA
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Hale, J. 2022. A Systematic Review of Cultural Capital in U.S.A. Focused Community Development Research. Invited Presentation at the Rural Policy Research Institutes Rural Cultural Wealth Convening.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Horan, J. & Z. Plakias. 2022. Analyzing the Impact of COVID-19 on Farm Participation in Oregon's Farm to School Program. Spring Undergraduate Research Festival, The Ohio State University.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Jablonski, B.B.R.. 2021. Farm to school research and rural implications. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Services Farm to School Convening.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Kashyap, P., Jablonski, B.B.R., & Bauman, A. 2021. Exploring the Relationship among the Intensity of Farm to School Activities, the Local Food Environment, and Stocks of Community Wealth. Selected Presentation at the Food Distribution Research Society 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Kashyap, P. & Chaifetz, A. 2021. Price competitiveness of online direct-to-consumer sale of local fruits and vegetables in the Northeastern United States. Selected Presentation at the Food Distribution Research Society 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Kashyap, P., Jablonski, B.B.R., & Bauman, A. 2021. Exploring the Relationship among the Intensity of Farm to School Activities, the Local Food Environment, and Stocks of Community Wealth. Selected Presentation at the 68th Annual North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Kashyap, P. & Jablonski, B.B.R. 2022. Measures of Farm to School Participation Intensity. Invited presentation to the Mountain Plains Farm to Child Nutrition Programs at U.S. Department of Agricultures Food and Nutrition Service.
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: https://foodsystems.colostate.edu/research-impacts/farm-to-school/
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: eXtension website: https://localfoodeconomics.com/farm-to-school/