Kalona farmer James Nisly’s passions for healthy eating and local food production are so great, his influence has extended into area schools, shaping cafeteria menus for over a decade.
His farm, Organic Greens LLC, has been producing organic sprouts, greens and field crops since 1998. About 15 years ago, with his own daughters in Iowa City schools, he turned his attention to school meals, forming an important relationship with Iowa City Community School District’s former food service director to push farm to school procurement into cafeterias.
“I just believe that healthy food is the foundation for healthy people,” Nisly said.
For years, Nisly worked to advocate for more local lunches, having conversations with farmers and school officials about the value of sourcing locally. Perhaps most notably, he organized an event that brought school representatives together to taste a handful of kid-friendly dishes prepared by area chefs with local ingredients.
Local foods are fresher and more nutritious than alternatives from the global food supply chain, but “localness” alone isn’t enough to constitute a healthy meal.
“If Twinkies were produced locally, I would not be promoting Twinkies,” Nisly said.
The kinds of meals he and his chef friends served constituted wholesome, produce-packed alternatives to highly-processed cafeteria staples like pizza, corn dogs and nachos. But convincing school officials to deviate from the norm proved challenging, Nisly said.
Using evidence from case studies linking behavioral improvement to unprocessed healthy food and working with the University of Iowa College of Public Health to vet the benefits of a more natural school lunch, Nisly was able to make a convincing argument.
Today, he is one of several farmers to sell his products to local schools through the Field to Family Food Hub, his sweet potatoes frequenting cafeteria menus. Additionally, Field to Family is one of many Iowa organizations working to bring edible education into cafeterias and classrooms, hosting events like Farmer Fairs annually, providing support to school gardens and helping schools celebrate Iowa Local Food Day each October.
Nisly is pleased with the progress he has seen.
“There’s a lot of hype, chatter and excitement around healthy food,” he said. “It gets the students excited about it. They’ll pick up on that excitement and they’ll try foods they’ve never had before in their lives.”
The benefit of Farm to School efforts goes beyond health and nutrition. Public procurement by schools and other institutions provides farmers with access to a bigger market and uses public dollars to support local foods. For students, the educational component is crucial as well, helping them understand how the food on their plates got there.
Nisly’s Farm to School sweet potatoes, for example, are fertilized with a “green manure” cover crop, which is rototilled into the soil to improve its structure and help the potatoes absorb soil minerals. Nisly doesn’t plant sweet potato seeds into that soil; instead, he plants “slips,” or small pieces of sweet potato vine. Throughout the season, he works hard to keep the weeds in check and the sweet potato plants strong until harvest. Once he digs the tubers up, he cures them in a high-temperature, high-humidity environment to preserve his harvest.
“It’s also really a healthy thing for students and adults to have a connection with where their food comes from,” Nisly said. “Food doesn’t just come from the grocery store– people work hard to grow the food they eat.”