The Marin Food Systems Project aims to rebuild healthy and mutually supportive relationships between Marin County schools, their parent communities and local farms; to reintegrate an understanding that human health and is directly linked to the environment; and to create opportunities for students in schools to have hands-on, real world environmental education experiences.

       Gallinas School Garden
        Photo by Harriot Manley MFSP is a project that is fundamentally about transforming the relationship between students, their own health, schools, local farms, and the environment into a positive, mutually beneficial sense of connection. MFSP is a collaborative county wide project of EECOM. We have worked with over 45 schools and educational programs to promote healthy local food, nutrition education, local farm education and experiential environmental education. The programs we support, encourage, and provide resources for, are comprised of school gardens, cooking classes, local farm tours, healthy foods served at a variety of local schools. The project has a specific emphasis on working with underserved communities in Marin County. We believe that all students in the county should have the opportunity to benefit from nutritious foods and experiential education.

The Marin Food Systems Project began in the year 2000 with a group of volunteers working together to develop partnerships within the community that link services to help schools. Our local food systems develop a mutually beneficial relationship that serves the health, education and sustainability of the Marin County community.

Primary Goals

• Promote and support locally based sustainable nutritious food systems in Marin County schools
   
• Provide an agricultural literacy component for schools
   
• Increase agricultural awareness and education for teachers, parents, and students
   
• Link gardens, farms, and ecological concepts with classroom education
   
• Increase consumption of fresh local produce in the school lunch programs
   
• Increase local food security
   

EECOM’s Marin Food Systems Project (MFSP) is a broad coalition of teachers, parents, and community leaders who recognize the important connection between a healthy diet and a student's ability to learn effectively and achieve high standards in school.

MFSP is committed to fostering the awareness of Marin's agricultural heritage and legacy through a dynamic curriculum that links together school gardens, local farms, public education, community agencies and the environment. To accomplish our goals, we use an integrated strategy that promotes student and family health, sustainable agriculture and environmental education. The Marin Food Systems Project helps schools and districts integrate nutrition education, garden experiences, wellness policies and the food served in schools.

The outcome is improvement of the health of the entire community through awareness of the connections between human patterns of living, the environment, and the ecology of human health. About EECOM’s Marin Food Systems Project grew out of concern about the lack of connection between youth in Marin and local agriculture, student lack of agricultural literacy, and the absence of locally grown nutritious foods in Marin County schools. The Marin Food Systems Project has an active Advisory Committee made up of representatives from Slide Ranch, UC Cooperative Extension Marin County, Marin County Office of Education, Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT), Marin Organic, Tamalpais High School District, and Paradise Valley Produce.

Need For & Purpose of Project

EECOM’s Marin Food Systems Project grew out of concern about the lack of connection between youth in Marin and local agriculture, student lack of agricultural literacy, and the absence of locally grown nutritious foods in Marin County schools.

Marin County comprises of 19 school districts located in the Coastal, Rural Inland and Eastern, city centered corridors of the Marin County. While 50% of the land is in active agricultural use (mostly in the Rural Inland corridor), there has unfortunately been very little connection between the rich agricultural resources of Marin and the schools that thrive there.

Due to the increasingly urban culture in which most children are being raised, they are no longer directly in touch with the natural world and the sources of their food and fiber. The Marin Food Systems Project aims to raise the understanding about Marin agricultural issues among educators so that they can engage their students in meaningful locally based learning.

Through the MFSP we can solve multiple issues by having healthy, nutritious and locally produced food is a central focus integrated into school learning environments. Healthy local food in the cafeteria results in students better able to learn and concentrate in school. It results in healthy students with vibrant minds, bodies and who feel connected to that which sustains them. School gardens allow students to learn by doing; by having their senses engaged in the learning process and by being directly involved in nurturing something that in turn will nurture them.