ESTIMATED READING TIME: 4 MINUTES
What goes on the plate matters just as much as how it gets there.
Around the world, school meals are increasingly recognized as one of the smartest investments governments can make to address today’s food systems. These pressures range from global supply pressures to everyday realities of child nutrition.
When a child receives a meal at school, the impact extends far beyond nutrition become hubs of learning about food, health and behavior. Students discover where food comes from, what makes a balanced diet and how their choices link to local agriculture. This makes schools powerful starting points for strengthening food systems at both community and national levels.
Schools as a starting point for food systems change
This is where AgriCorps focuses its work. AgriCorps builds capacity for school-based agricultural education systems in developing countries in order to reduce generational cycles of hunger and poverty. These systems support communities by diffusing agricultural innovations to farmers through in-school youth as early adopters. By working at the intersection of agriculture, education and food security, AgriCorps equips young people with the skills and confidence to influence how food is grown, prepared and consumed in their communities.
This agricultural learning reinforces the School Meals Coalition aim of using schools as entry points for sustainable food systems transformation.
Learning by doing through School-Based Agricultural Education (SBAE)
School-based agricultural education is a proven model that blends classroom learning with practical experience through supervised projects and school demonstration farms and supervised experiences. For more than a century, this ‘learning by doing’ model has shown that schools can drive both youth interest and local economic growth.
AgriCorps helps schools implement these hands-on learning opportunities so students can explore new farming, processing and marketing methods, practice leadership and life skills and discover how agriculture can shape their futures.
Through the broader Movement for School-Based Agricultural Education - a network led by AgriCorps that brings together global and local partners committed to expanding agricultural learning in schools - AgriCorps supports alignment across ministries, local organizations and international partners to embed agricultural education within school systems and national policies.
These efforts strengthen the links between what children learn in the classroom, the food they grow at school and the practices their families adopt at home.
The skills students gain do not stop at graduation. They influence how young people eat, the livelihoods they pursue and the food systems they help shape as future consumers, producers and leaders.
A Closer Look at Liberia
This hands-on approach is already creating visible change in Liberia, where school-based agricultural education is helping students build practical skills that support both their families and communities. Across more than 150 schools, these programmes are reaching 4,500 students every year. Weekly clubs supported by trained teachers guide students to manage their own projects and establish small demonstration farms. These farms allow students to apply classroom lessons to real soil and crops.