Farm to School is a relatively new approach in Canada, and literature on the topic is limited as compared to the US. Farm to school efforts in Canada to date have focused on developing programs, and not as much on research.
Farm to Cafeteria Canada is currently developing a Farm to School Evaluation Framework / Toolkit for Canada to enable practitioners, researchers and policy makers to better articulate, track, measure and communicate the impacts of farm to school activities and policies. The framework will include agreed-upon research questions and priority outcomes worthy of consistent measurement along with related indicators and measures. The framework will also make strong links to other policy priorities such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals, healthy school communities, student well-being, and the momentum towards sustainable regional food systems.
In 2014, the US National Farm to School Network undertook a collaborative process to develop a cross-sectoral Evaluation Framework for farm to school to guide practice, research and policy development for the growing field. The results of this process included the articulation of a series of priority outcomes, measures and indicators that could be tracked at the program, research and policy levels, as well as the development of the US Benefits of Farm to School fact sheet that shares the positive impacts of farm to school that have been documented through research.
To date Canada has developed an emerging map of the Canadian farm to school landscape, released a handful of peer reviewed journal articles about various aspects of farm to school plus some grey literature as documented in Benefits of Farm to School: Evidence in Canada. We have also articulated emerging empirical evidence of how farm to school initiatives in Canada align with the new Canada’s Food Guide.
Given Canada’s unique context, there would be great benefit from the development of an Evaluation Framework for Farm to School in Canada to enable practitioners, researchers and policy makers to better articulate, track, measure and communicate the impacts of the farm to school approach.
There is a huge opportunity for farm to school to expand and to thrive in Canada. We hope that the development of a Canadian evaluation framework for farm to school will make a strong contribution to the great momentum we’re seeing in this field.
A Farm to School Evaluation Framework for Canada will:
The framework PROCESS will also seek to:
Over the longer term we anticipate that the framework will allow stakeholders to:
The process of developing a Farm to School Evaluation Framework for Canada will involve:
To inform the development of the evaluation framework and accompanying tools, Farm to Cafeteria Canada and its F2SCDI project partners are using a modified Delphi method consisting of 3 surveys and thematic virtual conversations to achieve agreement on what priority outcomes and indicators should be consistently measured to demonstrate the impacts of farm to school in Canada.
We are inviting academics, government representatives, public health professionals, teachers and administrators, farmers, community partners, and other representatives that are involved in farm to school or related programs, policy, advocacy and research to participate in this process. Whatever your role, we want your input!
If you would like to participate we ask that you fill out a short (3 minute) registration survey where we will record your name, email and key areas of interest so that we can have an understanding of who is contributing to the process.
The information you provide in this registration form will be kept confidential at all times and will be used to distribute survey links to you. None of the information provided in this form will be linked to your later survey responses.
After completing this registration form, we will send you links to the surveys as they are made available, which you will be able to complete anonymously. We expect that each survey will take approximately 30-40 minutes to complete and that these will be available from August 7 – August 31 (Round 1), September 21 – October 9 (Round 2), and February 15 – March 5th (Round 3). We also plan to hold virtual conversations during the months of November and December for those who would like to discuss the progress of the framework. Once you register to participate in the process you can choose to participate in as few or as many of the surveys or conversations as you like.
Check out our 3.5 minute introduction video and our process summary document for a quick overview of our Evaluation Framework process including why we’re undertaking it.
For additional information please contact Carolyn Webb, Regional Lead for Farm to School in Ontario, at cwebb@sustainontario.ca.
The development of this evaluation framework has been an initiative of the Farm to School: Canada Digs In! partnership:
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