Women and Children First

Fresh fruit and vegetable consumption in schools has been on the rise for the past decade in Burlington, VT, where nearly half the children qualify for free or reduced-price meals. Burlington is one of 15 school districts in the nation to be named a USDA model farm-to-school program, an effort where local farms are tapped to provide a share of the foods served in schools. Burlington’s program has now grown beyond the cafeteria to bring healthy, fresh snacks into the classroom.

“The idea that children are somehow protected from food insecurity by parents is a myth,” says Ed Frongillo, professor of public health at the University of South Carolina. “Children are aware of the inadequate quantity or quality of food, the struggles that adults are going through to meet food needs, and the limitations of resources for meeting those needs.”

In the Mozambican village of Cobue, Constantia and her family farm a small plot of maize and cassava. They are subsistence farmers who eat what they grow themselves. Most rural Mozambican farmers have neither fertilizer nor formal training in agricultural techniques or management. A hoe and machete are the tools of their trade.

At Platte River Elementary School in Benzie County, MI, 65 percent of the children qualify for free or reduced-price meals. And thanks to a farm-to-school program, children are also able to take fresh fruits and vegetables home with them.

In recent years, health professionals in the developing world have concluded that nothing is more important to human and social development than good nutrition at critical stages of a person’s life, especially in childhood.

The U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) treat hunger and poverty as interdependent problems. The first MDG—dramatically reducing hunger and poverty—measures progress against hunger by gauging how many children remain chronically undernourished.

Mark Coe is one of the many Michigan residents who have found a niche in agriculture after major upheaval in their previous industries. Coe owned a photography development business in Mount Pleasant, MI, a bustling city compared to his hometown, Kaleva, a small town where he grew up surrounded by farms. The digital revolution in photography swept in so fast that it put Coe and most of his competitors out of business. In his early 40s, he moved back to Kaleva to care for his aging mother and mull over how to put his career back on track. Calvin Lutz, a childhood friend and the owner of Lutz Farm, asked him if he would be interested in helping out part-time with managing the farm. Lutz, a third-generation farmer, raises an assortment of fruits, vegetables, and Christmas trees on 1,800 acres.

Tianna Gaines-Turner and her family live in one of the most distressed neighborhoods in the city, the Frankford neighborhood in northeast Philadelphia. In some neighborhoods of Philadelphia, as many as half of all residents live below the poverty line. She and her husband are raising six young children, and the family is dogged by hunger most of the time.