A new project aimed at helping small farms and encouraging students to eat more fresh vegetables by moving locally grown produce into school lunch programs has been funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food Systems. "We've seen in Southern California and in Berkeley that getting fresh produce into the schools also benefits small- and medium-sized farms," says Gail Feenstra, a food-systems analyst at the UC Davis-based statewide Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SAREP). "It's exciting to be able to evaluate and quantify how this will work here in Yolo County." Feenstra will be part of the $2 million project "From Farm-to-School: Improving Small Farm Viability and School Meals," led by researchers from Occidental College in Los Angeles. Feenstra will be evaluating the impact of farm-to-school pilot projects. The Yolo County portion of the grant, called the "Farm-to-School Connection" includes outreach to farmers from the Community Alliance With Family Farmers and funding for a school salad-bar coordinator for the Davis Joint Unified School District. Also collaborating on the project are the Davis Farmers' Market and Ann Evans of the California Department of Education, who is coordinating the Yolo County effort. The USDA initiative received more than one thousand proposals nationwide, only 86 of which where selected for funding.