Local Collaboration Success — Enhancing Local Sustainability In Mesa County

School kids get hungry. Whether they’re running on the playground or burning calories calculating equations, feeding students is a big job. Providing healthy, appealing and delicious meals is a top priority for Dan Sharp, director of food and nutrition services for Mesa County Valley School District 51 (D51).

So when local rancher Janie VanWinkle came to him with a proposal to utilize local beef in school meals this year, Sharp was intrigued.

All the local ranchers who donated the cows. Photo courtesy of Business Incubator Center

“It’s a dream we’ve had for several years,” he explains, noting that D51 currently procures all of its milk and apples regionally and that expanding local purchasing is a component of the Healthy School Meals for All initiative approved by Colorado voters in 2022. “The bottom line is that buying local beef provides a better quality product than what we can get outside of Mesa County. It supports our local community and local ranchers.”

Buying local beef, or other agricultural products, for an entity as large as the school district isn’t easy. Procurement requirements favor large industrial suppliers and purchases. Local producers have to prove that they are providing high quality products. The economics for both the school district, which has a limited budget, and the supplier, who has to turn a profit, can be tricky.

In the case of D51 buying 7,000 pounds of local beef — an initiative humorously known as “Bring a Cow to School” — everything came together thanks to a federal grant targeting economic stabilization in Mesa County.

The Economic Recovery Corps (ERC) grant awarded to the Business Incubator Center (BIC) is one of 65 bestowed nationally. Each grant is unique to local economic priorities and in Mesa County, the focus is on agriculture, a sector comprising 40% of the region’s economy, according to BIC CEO Dalida Sassoon Bollig. With this funding, the BIC established AgriWest and hired local rancher and Western Colorado native, Janie VanWinkle, as a 30-month fellow. In this role, VanWinkle provides technical assistance while working with local producers to design sustainability measures that can be implemented locally and recreated nationally.

VanWinkle likes the metaphor of a three legged stool when explaining what success in agriculture looks like. “You can’t be successful without considering the economics, the social impact and our environment. In other words, as producers we need to be able to make a profit, feed people and care for the planet or it won’t be a sustainable industry,” she says.

A core task for VanWinkle is creating the AgriWest council. The council is open to all growers of any size, growing any commodity, whether they are beef producers, orchardists, vintners or farmers. “It’s a grassroots effort open to anyone interested in food sustainability in this region from lavender to livestock,” stresses VanWinkle.

Colt Erickson brought lunch but ditched it for the meatloaf! Photo courtesy of School Distric 51

The council has three objectives. First, creating and sustaining jobs to keep agricultural producers in business. Second, fostering cooperation between diverse agricultural interests for the benefit of all producers, and third, helping the local community support local agriculture.

Bring a Cow to School falls under this third priority. For the current school year, 10 ranchers sold 7,000 pounds of homegrown beef to D51. This beef is used to make meatloaf from scratch. Meatloaf will be on the lunch menu throughout the district every five weeks, according to Dan Sharp. In addition to dining on locally-grown beef, students also learn about agriculture and sustainability, with ranchers visiting schools to talk about their trade.

The results so far have been positive. Sharp states that, from the D51 perspective, the program has “exceeded expectations.” VanWinkle shares this opinion, adding, “I’m one of the beef producers who came to a school to interact with teachers and students. The kids thought it was pretty cool to meet someone who knows about cows.” As for the meatloaf, it too exceeded expectations. “The kids loved it. They were gobbling it up,” laughs VanWinkle.

For more information on joining the AgriWest council, please email inquiries to frontdesk@gjincubator.org.

Originally published in the Winter 2024-25 issue of Spoke+Blossom.