Organic, non-toxic nutritious lunches to cultivate children's green mindset
Nutritious lunches keep running into problems, and the Ministry of Education, the Department of Health, and the Council of Agriculture promised last week to propose ways to improve them by November 17. Now, with less than 10 days until the deadline, the Green Party, the Homemakers United Foundation, the National Alliance of Parents Organizations, the National Teachers' Association, and farmers from the Tucheng Ammunition Depot came first to the Ministry of Education on the 7th, bringing several plates of non-toxic, bright green vegetables and fruits to ask about the possibility of school lunches using local agriculture and non-toxic produce.
School nutritious lunches are provided in several ways, such as schools running their own kitchens, ordering boxed meals, or bidding through group meal contractors, and each has its own difficulties in promoting local non-toxic agriculture.
Small schools with their own kitchens, because they have around 100 students and monthly meal fees of no more than 100,000 yuan, are not restricted by the Procurement Act and therefore do not need to hold bids, making it easiest for them to achieve the goal of cooperating with local non-toxic farms. In fact, the Yilan County Education Department promoted a "School Lunch Local Ingredients Promotion Plan" last year, hoping to cooperate with local small farmers to promote food education, but it still faced many obstacles and achieved limited results.
Take Dajin Elementary School, which has only 57 students in the whole school. Although it has its own kitchen and kitchen staff and can draw up its own menu, the ingredients are still purchased through a long-term cooperative fruit and vegetable supplier, and it cannot decide the source of procurement. The school explained that having few students causes costs to fluctuate greatly (currently about 30 yuan per meal), and because the economic conditions of parents in the community are poor, switching to local small farmers would inevitably raise costs, making it hard for parents to afford. As a result, most schools in Yilan that took part in the plan could only let students experience farming courses, with the harvest used as "extra dishes" rather than replacing purchased ingredients.
Renmei Waldorf School in Taoyuan County is an independent education system that emphasizes the relationship between "humans and nature," and hopes to use agricultural products that do not pollute the environment, land, or water as ingredients for students' nutritious lunches. First, enthusiastic mothers set up a mothers' kitchen cooperative, choosing organic or additive-free ingredients as much as possible to supply lunch for half the teachers and students; then the school purchased additional kitchen equipment and hired a nutritionist, so that the school kitchen could supply healthy vegetarian lunches.
An ordinary school lunch costs only about 30 yuan per meal; the cost of organic, non-toxic ingredients, plus the school's water, electricity, gas, and kitchen labor expenses, pushed the price per meal up to 80 or 90 yuan. For suppliers unfamiliar with organic ingredients, they were also unwilling to spend effort developing farmers from scratch, signing contracts, and arranging logistics and delivery for just over 100 lunches. To lower ingredient costs and solve the procurement problem at the same time, enthusiastic parents ultimately stepped in, pooling funds, visiting farms, confirming ingredient sources, and delivering vegetables themselves, finally bringing the cost down to 70 yuan.
But not every school can invest that much, or accept nutritious lunches at twice the price. Is it really so difficult to let children eat one non-toxic meal and experience the health benefits of non-toxic vegetarian food and a connection to their own land?
Wu Yiru, principal of Qimei Junior High School in Penghu County, is currently working hard on this. With the help of village chief Xu Wanjing, starting immediately, nutritious lunches will use local Qimei farm produce as much as possible, no longer shipped over the sea from Taiwan, China from far away. Wu Yiru said that although production is limited and they still need to buy Taiwan, China fruits and vegetables through vendors to make up for shortages, the corn, sweet potatoes, cabbage, kohlrabi, cauliflower, Chinese cabbage, and garland chrysanthemum grown by Qimei villagers, as well as dragon fruit and bananas, have all been put on the menu, letting children eat fruits and vegetables grown by their own neighbors. This not only ensures that ingredients are fresh and safe, but also protects local farmers' livelihoods.
"If purchased through vendors, the price of fruit per day cannot exceed 10 yuan, but when buying from villagers, each child gets a whole dragon fruit! We have also made arrangements with a farm to visit it in person next year." Wu Yiru said that Qimei Junior High School can implement this smoothly because the whole school has only 130 teachers and students, and the meal fee is below the bidding threshold, so the school directly visits local farms to find dishes. Moreover, because of the special island location, after switching to local farms, the ingredient cost actually dropped from 18 yuan to 12 yuan. "We also asked the parents who grow vegetables to volunteer themselves, so the supply of ingredients is not lacking. Although the lunch secretary has to contact many small farmers, greatly increasing the workload, it is really great that children can eat vegetables grown by their neighbors!"
Xie Guoqing, chairman of the National Alliance of Parents Organizations, also once tried to promote the concept of one organic vegetarian lunch day per week in Beitou District, Taipei, China, but it was difficult to carry out. This is because schools in Taipei, China seldom run their own kitchens and mostly use joint bidding, and the result of being bound by contract is that ingredients for a single day cannot be replaced. Xie Guoqing said: "Parents in urban areas may seem able to afford organic, non-toxic lunches, but because of the bidding problem, there is no way out. Even if they are willing to spend money, they cannot eat it." Not loosening the Procurement Act is, in many people's eyes, a wall preventing local non-toxic agriculture from entering medium and large schools.
But the Ministry of Education believes that although schools are restricted by the Procurement Act, they can still include "using organic, non-toxic ingredients" as a selection criterion when bidding, so that vendors will not simply lower bids and choose cheap ingredients. The right to choose ingredients still remains in the schools' hands, and everything cannot be blamed on the Procurement Act.
Green Party spokesperson Pan Hansheng believes this statement is unfair, because school bidding cannot ignore price and parents' burden, and the government can at least intervene with public authority to solve the price problem from two aspects. First, the current national nutritious lunch subsidy is 2 billion yuan. Since higher education can have "50 billion in five years" for one school, then the national student lunch subsidy should also be increased. Second, the Council of Agriculture spends several hundred million yuan each year subsidizing chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Why not shift that to subsidizing farmers transitioning to organic and non-chemical agriculture? This would let farmers who are friendly to the land lower costs, and after ingredient prices fall, vendors will naturally include them in their choices, which could instead become a competitive advantage in bidding.
The nutritious lunch issue is of great importance. The food safety of 1.5 million students nationwide is already under threat. Although most students' lunches are held hostage by group meal companies, more and more schools are working to introduce the concept of local production and local sales, putting local ingredients and organic, non-toxic nutritious lunches on the table and trying to connect the dining table with farmland for students. This "green food power" welcomes you to join.
Further reading
Who kidnapped children's school nutritious lunches?
Control Yuan investigation report on food poisoning incidents in nutritious lunches
Campus Organic Day - a mouth revolution, changing the world through eating
Download Campus Organic Day lesson plans
