Pao Saephan’s strawberries are just days away from being fully ripe. (Rebecca Plevin/Valley Public Radio)

Pao Saephan crouches down in his sun-drenched field. He cups a red jewel in his hand. In a few more days, his strawberries will be fully ripe. He’ll pick them once they are rosy red from stem to tip.

“We want all the strawberries, to be full ripe, full flavor, with 100 percent sugar in them,” says Saephan.

In the past, he would sell the fresh berries at his roadside stand, in the small town of Reedley, southeast of Fresno.

“We have farmed a long time, but this is my passion, to be farming something that feeds local,” says Saephan.

Saephan is the first small farmer to sell his produce directly to Fresno Unified. He could pave the way for other small farmers to begin selling their produce directly with the school district.

Jose Alvarado, food services director for Fresno Unified notes that the district is located in the “produce and vegetable capital” of the world. “We have been taking advantage of that,” he says, “but now it’s taking it to another level, from the farmer, when the occasion is right, and it meets our needs. Strawberries were just a natural for us.”

Alvarado hopes every Fresno Unified student can taste Saephan’s strawberries at their peak. His goal, he said, is for children to “experience fresh produce and make healthy eating choices over a lifetime.”

Still, he acknowledged that there are several barriers to linking small farms and large school districts. For logistical reasons, it’s often easier for school districts to buy produce from large distributors.

“Some school districts like to work with one company: you go to the grocery store, not the cucumber stand, the broccoli stand, the strawberry stand,” Alvarado said.

He said another challenge is that some small farmers are not trained in food safety.

“Pao is our first step to truly go to the farm – we have worked with other farmers, this is one where the farmer was lacking all the food safety certifications,” Alvarado said. “We’re breaking new ground with Pao, and learning what it takes for him to be certified.”

Despite those barriers, Alvarado said there are many benefits to buying produce, and especially strawberries, from local farmers. Among those is the cost.

The district serves about 85,000 meals a day. Alvarado’s goal is for each of those meals to include three or four of Saephan’s beauties.

“A locally grown strawberry that we buy from the farmer more than likely will be more cost effective for the district,” Alvarado said. “But that’s not the driver.”

Beyond dollars, strawberries are one of those fruits that just taste better when they’re picked fully ripe.

“The driver is, fresh products that taste good are more likely to be eaten than products that don’t,” Alvarado said. “If they don’t eat it, we’re wasting money.” Plus fruits and vegetables in school lunches that end up in the trash aren’t helping children’s overall nutrition either.

Fresno Unified students should start seeing Saephan’s berries on the menu in May.

Kids line up for a free summer meal through a Chico Unified School District program. (Photo: Patrice Chamberlain)

To understand some of the powerful hunger issues in our state, go no further than the Silicon Valley YMCA.

The Y runs summer youth programs in Gilroy. Vice president of programming and community development Mary Hoshiko Haughey says last summer they had a boy in the middle school group who wasn’t eating his lunch.

“This was the first day of the program, and our staff asked ‘Why aren’t you eating?’ ‘What would you like?’” Haughey recalled. “And he said, ‘I can’t eat because I need to make sure my brother and sister are eating. Do they have food in their program too? Otherwise I have to save it for them.’ And finally we put him on the phone with them at another site and they said ‘yes, we’re eating,’ so he finally did too.”

Haughey paused. “It’s an example of the adult issues that our young children are taking on. He wasn’t going to eat unless he knew his siblings would.”

It’s also an example of the importance of the summer meal programs that are offered throughout the state. Some school-based programs directly continue the work of the School Lunch Program and Summer Food Service Program that serves free and reduced meals to low income students throughout the year. Others are sponsored by food banks or summer youth program sites.

The Silicon Valley Y is part of the California Summer Meal Coalition, which is working to increase awareness of the USDA summer nutrition programs offered through the California Department of Education.

Part of the problem, says Patrice Chamberlain who works with the coalition, is that there are not enough sites serving the meals. Last year the state COULD have received $36 million more in federal reimbursements had more sites signed onto the program.

School budget cuts, she says, are making things worse. “More school districts have been faced with a dwindling budget where they’ve had to cut summer school programs and there has been a decline in participation in summer meal programs,” Chamberlain says.

A recent report by California Food Policy Advocates tracked the number of children in federally funded summer nutrition programs and found the number of California students served in July 2011 declined six percent from June 2010, nearly 30 percent compared to July 2008 and over 50 percent from July 2002. They tied it directly to cuts in school summer programming.

Chamberlain says that’s why the coalition is working to get the meal programs in other locations. Last year, for example, the city of Oakland worked with the Alameda County Community Food Bank to serve summer meals at libraries in low-income neighborhoods.

State Superintendent Tom Torlakson has been working to spread the word about the need for summer meal locations. The awareness campaign may be paying off. This summer, the California Department of Education has indicated that there is a 60 percent increase in the number of summer meal sponsors.

Chamberlain says part of the reason to prioritize this issue is the summer connection to childhood obesity. A new report from the National Summer Learning Association found that kids gain weight two to three times faster during the summer than during the school year.

“Without the structure of the school year, and the additional barriers that impact many low-income neighborhoods, access to healthy food is really limited,” Chamberlain says.

This map has a comprehensive list of summer meal sites in California.

The secret, or in this case, the vegetable, is in the sauce. (Jyoti Das/Flickr)

Health advocates are outraged. Corporate suppliers of school lunches are pleased and, presumably, kids are thrilled.

Earlier this week, Congress blocked the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s proposed rule changes for school lunches. Congress was worried about potential changes in starchy vegetables (think French Fries), sodium and whole wheat.

But more than anything else, pizza is getting all the attention. To clarify, it’s the tomato paste on the slice of pizza that has counted as a vegetable. That’s not new. The new proposal would have increased the tomato paste requirement from the current two tablespoons to half a cup.  Industry said that much tomato paste would render a slice of pizza inedible. So, two tablespoons per slice of pizza stands as a vegetable serving.

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Inside Scoop rounded up the best bits of outrage, starting with Food Politics author and NYU Professor Marion Nestle.

“Does the Senate think this can pass the laugh test? … The Senate’s action has nothing to do with public health and everything to do with political posturing and caving in to lobbyists.”

From Gawker: “Got it, everyone? Your kids can continue stuffing their faces with as much frozen pizza as they want now. It’s essentially the same thing as eating celery.”

Oregon congressman Earl Blumenauer had my personal favorite: “Congress says pizza is a vegetable. Is The Onion now writing legislation?”

For readers above a certain age, you may be having a flashback to the Reagan administration’s attempt to declare ketchup a vegetable. The 1981 proposal failed and The New York Times ran an odd footnote to that controversy, reporting on the famous, wealthy, Republican Senator who vehemently opposed the idea.

Who was it?

Senator Henry Heinz. The fact that his name is synonymous with ketchup did not stop him from calling the ketchup/vegetable idea a “ridiculous regulation,” adding, “I suppose I need not add that I do know something about ketchup.”

Finally, to you science-minded readers, yes, botanically, a tomato is a fruit. The reason the federal government calls it a vegetable stems from a tariff on imported vegetables passed by Congress in the 1880s. A tomato importer declared he didn’t have to pay the tariff, since tomatoes are a fruit. The Supreme Court settled the matter in the 1890′s, declaring tomatoes a vegetable.