Members of the PA Farm to School Network joined rural and urban farmers, educators, advocates, community groups, home cooks and gardeners, and other farm to school stakeholders at the 34th annual Pasa Conference for three days of learning on sustainable agriculture and food system topics. Here are some highlights and resources from the conference that relate to the network’s farm to school work: 

• A farm to institution panel, featuring farmer Crystal Davis of Davis Grown Farm, and Warren DeShields of The Common Market, discussed tools to build capacity and launch or grow efforts to market to schools, including working with distributors or aggregators, like The Common Market, Zone 7 (NJ and PA), and Three Rivers Grown (Pittsburgh region), to purchase local food.
• Closing plenary speaker Dr. Lyla June Johnston, an Indigenous musician, scholar, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne), and European lineages, spoke on how pre-colonial Indigenous Nations shaped large regions of Turtle Island (also known as the Americas) to create abundant food systems for humans and non-humans. Read Dr. Johnston’s PhD dissertation, “Architects of Abundance: Indigenous Food Sytems, Indigenous Land Management, and the Excavation of Hidden History” and watch her TED Talk here. 
• The session Federal Procurement Policy Reform & Small Farms, provided an overview of the Local Food Procurement Assistance and Local Food for Schools programs and explained how producers can engage in policy advocacy to reform federal procurement policies. Here are some ways you can take action today:
  • Use this how-to guide and sample message to ask your state Representative to sign on as a co-sponsor of the Keystone Fresh Act, PA’s Local Food Purchasing Incentive (LFPI), which will provide Pennsylvania family farmers with access to school food markets and increase the volume and variety of PA-grown food products in K-12 school meals. Representatives Danilo Burgos and Johnathan Fritz plan to reintroduce the bill this legislative session and PA House Representatives have the opportunity to add their names as  co-sponsors and show their ongoing support for the bill before it’s introduced. 
  • The School Nutrition Association of PA (SNAPA) is calling on Pennsylvanians to protect school meal funding. The House Ways and Means Committee has proposed cutting $3 billion from school meal programs in an upcoming Reconciliation Bill. This would raise the eligibility threshold for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) from 25% to 60%, removing 766 Pennsylvania schools from the program, and eliminating access to free school meals for an estimated 377,585 students in our state alone. CEP has been a vital tool in ensuring students receive the nutrition they need without barriers like application paperwork, meal debt, or stigma. Learn more and take action now!

For more information about Pasa, visit pasafarming.org. We hope to see you at the conference in 2026!

PA Farm to School Network members and The Food Trust staff attended the 2025 Pasa Conference in Lancaster, PA.