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Christina Muniz is a native Texan whose passion for sustainable food led her to theÌę
And that led to aÌęÌęat the in Durham where Muniz spent the summer crafting a document that will help make it easier for local farmers to get their food into New Hampshire public schools by becoming approved vendors of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Working with the, whose aim is to connectÌęGranite State farms with schools, Muniz producedÌęa clear, concise how-to brochure that cuts through the reams of red tape wrapped around the vendor application process.
The USDA spends about $2 billion a year on food for feeding programs, including the National School Lunch Program. Being an approved vendor would put some of that money in farmersâ pockets and fresh local food in school cafeterias.Ìę
Working through the USDAâs Agricultural Marketing Service, farmers would have a guaranteed buyer: The AMS is a USDA subsidy that buys food (100 percent domestic) at market value and sells it to schools at a lesser rate.Ìę
Currently there arenât any New Hampshire food producers approved to sell to AMS. That doesnât mean local farmers arenât selling to schools; they are but the schools arenât getting any help with the cost and farmers arenât guaranteed theyâll keep buying from them.
The problem, Muniz says, is the AMSâ multiple-step application process and the pages and pages of content that must be combed through to understand those many steps.
âIt can be very daunting,â Muniz says. âItâs a long process â not difficult but long. Itâs pretty time consuming; itâs taken me weeks to sort through it.â
In an effort to simplify the procedure, Muniz spent the summer paring down the information on the USDA website into a 12-page document. New Hampshire Farm to School will help get the pamphlet to farmers. Ìę
âI wanted to create a user-friendly guide on how to connect with the USDA that says, âThis is what you need doâ so the farmer will think, âOh, I can do that,ââ Muniz says.
Thatâs something of a personal philosophy â âI can do thatâ â for Muniz, who began her college career as an aerospace engineer. When it didnât prove exciting enough, she switched to anthropology graduating with a bachelorâs degree from Texas A&M. She then spent two life-changing years as an AmeriCorps volunteer at Heifer Internationalâs Overlook Farm in Massachusetts.
âThat taught me there was a whole other world out there,â says Muniz, whose focus at UNH Law is on food and agriculture.
She followed the Heifer experience with an internship at the Center for Food Safety in Washington, D.C., where she started expressing her passion in terms of how things should be, not how they were, leading people to say she should become a lawyer.
âIt started to make sense to me,â Muniz says. âThe logic of it.â
She recalls an incident as an undergraduate taking those aerospace classes. A professor told the students that during the Apollo 13 crisis, someone at the Kennedy Space CenterÌędumped a box on the table and said the contents were the tools they had to fix the problem.
âLaw is basically like that box the NASA engineers had to work with,â the long-time San Antonio resident says. âHereâs the box, here are the tools, figure it out. I like that kind of challenge.â
Of the food brochure challenge, Muniz says, âIt took longer than I thought and was more cumbersome but it was worth it.
âGetting farmers to sign on will take time. It wonât happen this year but maybe next. Local businesses and farms arenât going to supply all the New Hampshire schools but they could supply more. And anything more is going to benefit everyone.â
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Written By:
Jody Record â95 | Communications and Public Affairs | jody.record@unh.edu