Better Food = Better Students

Tony Geraci doesn't just want kids to eat their veggies, he wants them to know where they come from and how they grow. As the person in charge of food and nutrition for Baltimore's public schools, he doesn't want to serve children nutrient depleted food that has traveled across the country. Instead, he thinks they should eat locally grown food -- in some cases, food grown by the students themselves. He believes good food not only fuels the body, but also feeds the mind and the soul.

"The single most powerful way to change the way children look at food is to connect them with real food," says Geraci. "Give them an opportunity to put a seed in the ground and watch that seed grow into a tomato plant. Watch what happens as a kid plucks a cherry tomato off the vine, still warm from the summer sun, pops it into their mouth and the flavor explodes. That's a moment you can't teach in a book," he says with a grin.

That's an epiphany Geraci thinks every child should be able to experience because it forever changes the way children look at food. "It's no longer a consumptive act," he explains. "They learn the virtues of stewardship. They learn the virtues of tilling the ground and looking toward the earth as a sustainable partner in life."

Since his arrival in Baltimore a little over a year ago, Geraci has revolutionized food service in Baltimore City Public Schools where some 75 percent of the just over 82,000 students are eligible for free lunch. He has made national headlines with innovations such as Meatless Mondays, the introduction of fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables to the menu, and healthier versions of old stand-bys. He puts in 80-hour workweeks during which he never loses sight of the kids. His contagious enthusiasm gets things done, although not always in the most conventional way.

"I spent a good deal of my life raising hell," Geraci says. "So now I feel compelled to raise hope."

The best way to get to know Geraci is to spend time in his element and it's nowhere near his desk, in his office, at the school system's North Avenue headquarters. We met up with Geraci at Great Kids Farm, a 33-acre parcel of land just off Route 40 outside the beltway.

Until Geraci convinced school administrators to let him turn it into a working farm, rundown buildings and garbage littered the over-grown property, slated to become a used car lot. That was last November. Today, the land is transformed into a thriving, productive farm buzzing with activity from children and volunteers, as well as the honeybees they've introduced.

On a recent Saturday morning Geraci welcomed a group of some 100 volunteers to Great Kids Farm for a morning of planting, digging, raking, hauling and building. It was also the kick-off of Disney's Give-a-Day, Get-a-Day volunteer initiative.

Drawing on his New Orleanean roots, he energizes the crowd saying, "This project is like gumbo. We are all these unlikely ingredients brought together in this amazing stew that's created some fantastic flavors." His passion for his mission is infectious as he tells the story of what he is working to accomplish.

As the eager volunteers move to their assigned tasks, we begin our tour of the farm, which he considers a teaching platform for kids and a model for other school systems.

It soon becomes clear that everything he does has a connection to kids. "My philosophy is that if something doesn't have a direct connection to a kid, it's not worth doing," he says.

Geraci points to a plot of land where children are pulling up eggplant and pepper plants from their roots. He explains that when he first saw the property, a decrepit building sat where rows of vegetables now grow. The organic lettuce, he says, is on its sixth planting this season. They sell some of it to local restaurants and some goes to the recently opened Great Kids Caf� located within school headquarters on North Avenue.

The caf� is open daily and operated by students in the hospitality program. Geraci says, "Opening the caf� in 'the belly of the beast' was purposeful. I wanted to be in people's faces so they understand that we're here for these guys. There is no other reason that we have jobs."

Moving on, we peek into one of three greenhouses on the property. It's full of micro-greens planted by school groups. In 10 days, the quick growing crops of lettuce and basil, can be harvested and sold for profit.

Trudging through mud alongside rows of root vegetables, Geraci yanks a spring onion from the ground and savors the smell, a mixture of earth and onion. We pass a fenced in area containing several dozen chickens and he explains that like crops, the penned in birds are rotated around the farm fertilizing and pecking the ground, and eating beetles that have infested the gardens.

The pinging sound of driving a metal stake into the ground leads Geraci to describe one of his most exciting projects, the construction of hoop houses�big, portable greenhouses. At Great Kids Farm the volunteers are erecting one that can be relocated around the property. Across town, on the grounds of Lake Clifton High School, a crop of 200 houses is being planted.

Geraci considers the hoop houses a solution to a number of problems facing the city. He shares the grim statistic that 75 percent of children who age-out of foster care become homeless. "That's a travesty. That's something we can fix," he says with emotion. "So we created an entrepreneurial opportunity (for the foster children) and taught them how to build hoop houses."

The first 20' x 148' structures, made with heavy-duty plastic, are by now producing the kale, cabbage and beets served in Lake Clifton's cafeteria. The hoop house technology is easy and cheap at only $5000 each, with irrigation.

"Kids are doing it all without taxpayer dollars. It's all done with sweat equity, donations and grants," says Geraci, who is clearly committed to this project. "We are doing cool, cutting-edge stuff. The work they do today will be felt generations away."

Locally grown food is another hot topic for Geraci, who notes that 40 percent of food costs are directly related to transportation. He believes that by eliminating long-distance transportation, you not only increase the value of the crop, but also maintain the nutrient density. Since September, schools have been serving local, fresh fruit at a fraction of the cost of pre-packaged portions.

When asked how the kids were adjusting to the new, authentic flavors of the food Geraci describes his "no thank you" policy, which encourages kids to try new foods and helps his staff determine what goes on the menu.

"If you expose them to real food, they'll eat real food, but without exposure they have no point of reference," he says.

Students are offered "no thank you bites," a one ounce serving of a fruit, vegetable or whatever entr�e Geraci is "trying to push." The rules prohibit the kids who don't like the food from saying "yuck" or "nasty." They may only say, "no thank you."

Children who try a new food earn a star and an invitation to Geraci's monthly "constellation party" where they talk about what they liked, what they didn't like and how they would change it. "It becomes this open, non-threatening forum where kids get heard. Suddenly kids are having conversations around food that they've never had. It's real simple," he says.

Continuing the tour of the farm, we pass volunteers who are clearing land for new fields and repairing an animal barn, which will eventually house cows, geese, pigs, and rabbits. A small herd of goats has been in residence on the farm for months and has already eaten its way through vines and shrubs in the new orchard.

As we make our way toward the Route 40 edge of the property, where Geraci soon hopes to have a farmer's market, he points out healthy springs swimming with bugs and fish. He notes the newly planted blueberry and raspberry bushes that will serve as border hedges and he shows off the deer fencing erected by community volunteers.

"Every community can do this," he says about volunteer involvement. "The doctors, lawyers, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, and construction people all have kids and families. So rather than going to the mall and shopping for weekend, a family will come here and say 'let's do something together.' It creates a bond that we keep over looking. It's a simple, easy thing."

Next, passing through a wooded area Geraci notes that the fallen trees are also full of life. Volunteers drilled holes in the wood and inoculated them with spores to produce a variety of edible mushrooms. Geraci wants kids to know that every piece of ground has a purpose.

"We can do all kinds of stuff. You don't need an open field. You can use dark wet pieces of wood to grow stuff. We harvest the mushrooms and sell them to restaurants to provide revenue to keep doors open."

As the din of the passing traffic grows louder, Geraci describes what sounds like his most ambitious vision. We step over broken panes of glass and peer into the largest greenhouse on the property where, by early 2010, he plans to cultivate crops combining aquaculture and hydroponics. Essentially, nutrients from fish, living in tanks will feed into a duct system that will feed traditionally planted crops as well as inverted or hanging plants, yielding double or triple the production of fruit.

"We're not talking about rocket science. I am talking about ancient technology. And, I am talking about connecting our kids with real food again," says Geraci.

As our tour came to an end Geraci, using a food metaphor of course, sums up his quest, "We are trying to preach hope, but along with hope comes the commitment to work. Hope without work is a wish sandwich."