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Plant the Seed, Build the Future
WANDA will join the National Farm to School Network’s 2026 Partner Meeting in Sacramento, building on a partnership that began in New Mexico and a shared belief that children should know where their food comes from, see themselves in the people who grow it, and encounter culture as part of nutrition education.
Long before a child can pronounce “food system,” she is already living inside one.
She is learning what food means at the breakfast table, in a child care center, beside a grandmother in the kitchen, on a garden field trip, through a cartoon character on a screen, and in the stories adults tell her about what is “good” or “bad” to eat. By the time that child reaches a school cafeteria, much of her relationship with food has already begun to take shape.
is returning to the national farm-to-school table this fall.
WANDA has been invited to participate in the National Farm to School Network’s 2026 Partner Meeting, taking place October 13–15 in Sacramento, California, in partnership with the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The gathering will bring together more than 200 partners from across the country to exchange ideas, build relationships, strengthen strategy, and advance farm to school and farm to early care and education, or farm to ECE. Participants will also have access to the California Farm to School Summit on October 15.
For WANDA, the invitation is a continuation of a relationship that took root at the 2025 National Farm to Cafeteria Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where WANDA joined the Network and introduced partners to WANDA’s World, its emerging culturally grounded nutrition education ecosystem for children and families. The 2025 gathering was organized around the theme Rooted in Culture, Growing for the Future, an apt description of the work WANDA believes must happen if farm-to-school efforts are to reach children not only through procurement, but through identity, imagination, and belonging.
Farm to School Starts Earlier Than School
The National Farm to School Network defines farm to school through three core strategies: purchasing local foods for meals and snacks, creating opportunities for children to learn through gardens, and connecting students with education about food, agriculture, health, and nutrition. Its farm-to-ECE work extends those ideas into preschools, child care centers, family child care homes, Head Start and Early Head Start programs, and other settings where young children spend their earliest years.
That early-childhood focus is especially important to WANDA because nutrition education too often arrives after children's preferences, habits, identities, and ideas about food have already been shaped.
National Farm to School Network describes farm to ECE as a way to help children and families gain access to fresh, affordable, culturally relevant local food while also incorporating gardening and food, nutrition, and agriculture education into early-learning environments. The Network also sees those experiences as a way to strengthen family engagement, support child development, and cultivate more just local food systems.
WANDA sees another opportunity inside that framework: helping children understand not only what grows, but who grows it.
“Children should not have to wait until adulthood to discover that Black women have always been farmers, food scientists, nutrition leaders, growers, cooks, entrepreneurs, and knowledge keepers,” said Tambra Raye Stevenson, Founder and CEO of WANDA. “Farm to early childhood education gives us the chance to connect the garden to the classroom, the classroom to culture, and culture to possibility. WANDA’s World asks children to see food not simply as something they consume, but as something they can understand, grow, protect, create, and someday lead.”
Where WANDA’s World Meets Farm to ECE
WANDA’s World grew out of a question that has followed the organization for more than a decade: What would nutrition education look like if Black children were not treated primarily as populations at risk, but as future leaders of the food system?
Little WANDA, the young Black girl at the center of the platform, moves through food adventures that connect health with agriculture, culture, geography, family, and the women who make change from farm to health. Through storytelling, digital learning, games, animation, and real-world activities, WANDA’s World is being designed to make nutrition education feel less like a lecture about what children should avoid and more like an invitation to discover where food comes from and what it can mean. That philosophy aligns naturally with farm to ECE.
A child can plant collard greens and learn what a seed needs to grow.
She can also learn why those greens have traveled through generations of Black families.
She can meet a farmer and understand where the vegetables in her meal came from.
She can also learn that farming is a profession, a business, a science, and something someone who looks like her can do.
She can taste fonio, okra, sweet potato, hibiscus, callaloo, or another culturally familiar food and learn about nutrients. She can also learn that her family's food does not need to lose its history in order to belong in a conversation about health.
For WANDA, that is the difference between simply delivering nutrition information and cultivating food belonging.
A National Network Built Around Local Relationships
National Farm to School Network operates across all 50 states, Washington, D.C., Tribal Sovereign Nations, and U.S. territories, with more than 500 partner organizations spanning schools, early-care sites, producers, nonprofits, universities, and government agencies. The Network describes its larger purpose as strengthening local and regional food systems by changing how children eat, grow, and learn about food.
The scale is significant. Using USDA Farm to School Census estimates, the Network reports that more than 74,000 schools participate in farm-to-school activities, reaching roughly 45.6 million students, with approximately $1.8 billion spent on local food.
But national numbers only become meaningful when they reach a child's actual plate, classroom, garden, and family.
That is one reason the Network's Partner Meeting matters. Unlike a large public conference designed primarily around presentations, the annual partner gathering is intended as a working space for organizations already engaged in the movement to learn from one another, identify barriers, share approaches, and build relationships capable of surviving after everyone flies home. This year's agenda includes partner-led workshops, networking, a policy and advocacy presentation, a World Café with partners, and a day at Soil Born Farms.
For WANDA, those conversations offer an opportunity to learn from practitioners already doing the daily work of purchasing local food, training educators, partnering with growers, creating gardens, and bringing food and agriculture education into early childhood settings.
They also offer WANDA a chance to contribute something distinctive: a Pan-African, culturally grounded approach to childhood nutrition education that connects the earliest stages of the pipeline with the women and girls WANDA hopes will eventually lead agriculture, nutrition, and health.
The Update That Brought WANDA Back to the Table
Trisha Bautista Larson, MPH, Programs Director at the National Farm to School Network, has been an important point of connection for WANDA as the organization deepens its engagement with farm to ECE. Larson leads work connected to the Network's early-care efforts and serves as a contact for organizations seeking to participate in its farm-to-ECE community.
“Farm to early care and education is about creating meaningful connections between young children, families, local food, and the people who grow it. Partners bring different strengths to that work, and WANDA’s emphasis on culturally grounded storytelling and representation adds an important dimension to how children can learn about food, agriculture, and health. We’re excited to continue building relationships across the Partner Network and creating space for organizations to learn from one another as this movement grows.” — Trisha Bautista Larson, MPH, Programs Director, National Farm to School Network
That emphasis on connection matters because no single organization can build a just childhood food environment alone. Farmers need reliable markets. Early-childhood educators need training and usable resources. Families need to see their cultures respected. Programs need funding. Children need opportunities to touch soil, taste unfamiliar foods without shame, recognize familiar foods with pride, and understand that somebody with a name, a family, and a livelihood grew what appears on their plate.
From Little Eaters to Food Citizens
National Farm to School Network describes part of the promise of farm to ECE as helping develop the next generation of responsible food consumers. WANDA would push that idea one step further.
We want children to become food citizens.
A consumer learns how to choose between products. A food citizen begins to understand the relationships underneath those choices: where food comes from, who grows it, how land is cared for, why culture matters, how communities feed one another, and why some neighborhoods have more choices than others.
That kind of citizenship can begin surprisingly early.
A preschool garden may look like a few small hands pressing seeds into dirt, but it can also become a child's first lesson in stewardship.
A farm visit may look like a field trip, but it can become her first encounter with agriculture as a livelihood.
A culturally grounded food story may look like entertainment, but it can become the moment a child realizes that her grandmother's ingredients belong in a conversation about nutrition.
And seeing Little WANDA move through that world can help a girl imagine herself not simply eating from the food system, but one day shaping it.
“For WANDA, the goal is not to create children who can simply repeat which foods are healthy,” Stevenson said. “We want children who are curious about food, connected to culture, confident enough to ask questions, and able to imagine themselves as the farmers, dietitians, scientists, chefs, entrepreneurs, and advocates our communities will need. That pipeline begins much earlier than college. It begins with what children are allowed to see.”
Growing the Partnership in Sacramento
The 2026 National Farm to School Network Partner Meeting will take place October 13–15 at the Sheraton Grand Sacramento Hotel in Sacramento, California. It is being held in partnership with the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and Partner Meeting registration includes participation in the California Farm to School Summit on October 15.
For WANDA, Sacramento is the next stop in a relationship that began with a shared table in New Mexico and continues around a common conviction: Children's food environments should nourish more than their bodies.
They should nourish curiosity.
They should nourish culture.
They should nourish relationships with farmers and land.
They should nourish the possibility that a child might someday grow up and change the very food system she is learning about.
That is why WANDA is headed back to the table with the National Farm to School Network.
Because if we want the next generation to build a healthier and more just food system, we cannot wait until they are grown to introduce them to it. We have to plant that possibility early.
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