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Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Apr; 20(7): 5332. Published online 2023 Mar 30. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20075332

PMCID: PMC10094287PMID: 37047947

What Is a School Farm? Results of a Scoping Review

Sammy A. Blair,1 Gabrielle Edwards,2 Katharine Yu,1 Eduardo Jovel,1 Lisa Jordan Powell,3 Kerry Renwick,2 and Annalijn I. Conklin1,4,5,*

Paul B. Tchounwou, Academic Editor

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Abstract

As school farms become more prominent programs to teach food education, research is needed to support school farms’ implementation and sustainability. This scoping review included 94 articles on school farms from three bibliometric databases covering broad international literature. Vocational agricultural training, animal husbandry, and crop production were common characteristics of school farms across 103 years of publications. Themes of sustainability, healthy eating, and food systems were more prominent in recent literature. Peer-reviewed studies (1985–2019) provided some empirical research showing school farms’ impact on students. This review discusses school farms’ structures and objectives as promising food education and production programming.

Keywords: school farm, food education, food access, school food, agricultural education, food literacy, food security, food systems, vocational agriculture

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1. Introduction

Research shows young adults who leave secondary school without consistent food education lack knowledge of basic nutrition, food skills, food systems, everyday food practices, and food production [1,2]. Links have been established between food system knowledge and protecting the environment [1,3,4]. There is also recent research on the importance of socio-cultural competency as a part of food literacy to support food practices, healthcare, and education involving food systems [5] and diet-related diseases [6,7]. Healthy School BC defines food literacy as food-related knowledge, attitudes and skills which include understanding the linkages between food, health and wellbeing, knowing how to select nutritious foods and comprehending what constitutes a healthy diet [8]. Providing students with a capacity for food literacy, or the understanding, skills, and behaviours to participate in an interconnected food system, will promote understanding and knowledge that is critical for healthier and more just food systems [9], community food security, and food sovereignty of current and future generations [9,10,11,12].

When individuals develop an understanding about what they eat and how their food is produced, there is potential for different levels of engagement and action when making food choices and interacting with the food system [4,9,11]. Some of these choices reflect the social, cultural, economic, and political factors affecting people’s access, control, and thus impact on the food system [5,13,14]. The expected benefits of food literacy education have inspired schools to prioritize nutrition education and also expand it to include broader food system topics of agriculture, ecology, social, and economic food- and health-related topics as essential knowledge for today’s complex food environments [1,5,15].

There are many different delivery methods of food literacy education. Examples include: educators’ use of school gardens; classroom cooking programs; class connections with local farms; and units within home economics courses [11,16,17,18,19]. One example of a specific food education program is a school farm. School farms teach about the food system and engage students through direct experiences of agricultural production on farms managed by or in collaboration with schools. School farms use experiential learning pedagogies to contribute to food literacy and support food education to ultimately build community food security [10]. According to recent literature in the 21st century, school farms are also known to engage students who may be marginalized in their communities [20,21,22] because the programs offer a venue for students from different backgrounds and cultures to find purpose, connection, and skills in an educational environment outside the traditional classroom setting