This past November, 56% of Coloradans agreed school meals should come at no cost to students. The passage of Proposition FF was a major win for Western Colorado Alliance. Our members select issues we wish to support every election year and last year, in support of this proposition and others, our Alliance sent out mailers, passed out literature, and knocked on doors.

Proposition FF, also known as Healthy School Meals for All, provides no-cost breakfasts and lunches to public school students and is funded by reducing income tax deduction amounts for those earning $300,000 or more.

There are multiple benefits to this program for students. The program will remove the bureaucracy required to track student food debt. That means more resources can go to the students.

Healthy Meals for All also reduces the stigma brought upon students who receive free or reduced-price lunches. There are accounts of students who have avoided free meals for fear of being labeled as “poor.” Offering Healthy Meals for All means some students will no longer feel socially isolated based on their lunch selections.

All of these benefits will help in student health and educational outcomes. But there’s another major advantage to the new law: It offers the opportunity to revolutionize local food.

Starting in 2024, school districts will be incentivized to purchase from local growers. Currently, many school districts already participate in local food purchases at a limited scale. Products can include seasonal apples in the fall or milk from local dairy providers.

But what if we could feed our students year-round with locally sourced food? That is a goal of Western Colorado Alliance’s Local Food and Agriculture Committee. Our vision for a food-sovereign Western Slope starts in our schools. The additional funding decided by voters will be the mechanism to begin this process.

This May, Western Colorado Alliance Local Food and Agriculture Committee met with School District 51’s head of nutritional services. District 51 serves around 20,000 students in the Mesa County area. We discussed the importance of creating early contracts for farmers to expand their contracts. On the Western Slope, several farms are ready to expand. Thanks to FF funding, school districts can provide farmers with guaranteed contracts, providing the security to expand their operations. The more local food we grow, the better outcomes we’ll see for our students and our community.

And local food is a positive for our planet and its people. Our food often travels long distances. Lettuce from Arizona and peaches from Georgia travel hundreds of miles. Those miles are traversed by gas-guzzling semi trucks emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, the food loses nutrients during the time it takes to travel. As a result, consumers have to eat more to feel full. Local food means more nutritious, filling food for consumers.

On the Western Slope, we are lucky enough to have farms within driving distance from our homes — no semis needed for the freshest produce possible.

Local food is key to having a healthy, just, and self-reliant Western Colorado. Our Alliance believes in creating a food-sovereign Western Slope, wherein our communities can feed themselves. It will take time to reach this goal but there’s no better place to start than our schools. We now have the
opportunity to give our students the healthiest meals possible, and change our local food economy and our community health. The Alliance is working to make it happen.