Excellent site and an excellent idea, I must say. My heartiest well wishes to all those who are working on this initiative, and I do hope that OpenIdeo reaches to the beyond of everything.

Another thought on 50-within-50.

Apart from eating local, my father (http://vijoyprakash.in/tag/right-to-food/) initiated another idea a couple of years back in one of the poorest and severely malnourished regions of the world - Bihar in Eastern India. The idea was on broadening the spectrum of food intake through revival of traditional food basket of the region, which has gotten eclipsed not only by fast food but also by neo-age grains, vegetables etc, which are more in vogue.

Example, people in India used to grow and consume a multitude of grains - Sorghum, pearl millet, finger millet, maize along with rice and wheat. This was practical since varied climatic and soil conditions allowed for production of diversified grains. Also, meat consumption was diversified, with people eating not only poultry and goat, but also few birds. A special community called Musahar, who are one of most underprivileged people in India today with a literacy rate of just 9%, was known for catching and consuming field rats. However, over time, with food fads and the green revolution, a large section of the Indian population has become dependent on wheat and rice for its staple consumption. Many times, other grains have been stigmatised of being low quality due to its consumption by poor people who can't afford rice or wheat.

This might be a dangerous trend, as we are becoming overdependent on a select basket of foods, which is causing rapid food inflation. To curb rapid growth in prices, we must eat local and diversify our food spectrum. The revival of commercialisation and consumption of field rats is not only symbolic but aimed at providing livelihood options to several Musahars of Bihar. It might sound and seem repulsive, but so does eating chicken or goat to vegetarian people as well.

Hey Jennifer!

Very interesting piece of idea, i must say!

The concept is very much scalable and diffusible in a small amount of time. But, what is the incentive for the schools to take this up?

In order to convince someone to adopt something, there must be some incentive for them to do so.

But, having said that, this concept will greatly help kids connect with their food producers. And, kids can be great 'carriers' of the pollen (this idea) to their parents.

Wonderfully simple idea!

Good luck with the challenge!

Cheers!
Srini

Hi Jennifer, I'm not from Australia but I wonder about the resources that already available to the rural schools - moms. What is the Parent Teacher Association like? Is there a culture of stay-at-home parents? How is the education system doing in terms of the budget? If so, I wonder if a) schools can build intensive gardens to supply the veggies and fruits for the school b) parents can form a business to funnel money back to the PTA and therefore back to the school. At some schools, parents are required to commit x number of hours of service. This could be a way to contribute directly to the health of all the children and increase parent participation (which increases kids' rates of staying in school, getting good grades, graduating, etc). Of course, someone at the district should probably create the monthly menus and garden inventory to ease someone the trouble of creating the menu curriculum over and over again, but this has a possibility of recycling the food, money and time of the community.

Hi Jennifer,

Would you like to skype or chat about the thinking around your concept from the workshop. I ended up in the final team (of 3) working on this concept - which is awesome by the way. Let's arrange a chat I thunk it would be valuable. Maybe email me direct at ewan@studiopropeller.com

Hey Jennifer I was lucky enough to be part of the team who built on your concept at the IDEAS festival OpenIDEO workshop in Brisbane last week, we had so much fun and could really see this working here in Australia. We all got behind your concept with lots of brainstorming.
We thought that the 50 miles is pretty limiting (as some Australian schools are in pretty remote locations), and perhaps this could be flexible, almost so each school had a goal towards x amount of miles (and this would encourage schools to become more local to improve this figure).
We brainstormed this idea as a business model, so that it would work as an alternative to the current canteen system here in schools in which an outside catering company usually comes in to run the canteen. In this instance, the business would partner with a local entrepreneur and a school to provide a healthy 50/50 school canteen business which is scalable depending on the school's needs - from providing lunch box catering to the full cafeteria style food hall.
I was excited by the potential for this concept to change the way Aussie schools and kids think about their food, as we are really lacking a food culture in schools here - lunch is never a full sit down meal in schools. Instead it's always on the run and not so healthy.
We also thought that a first testing of this model could maybe occur in a preschool where there are already chefs & kitchens on site, and vegie gardens/food awareness in preschools at the moment is growing.

Yes! "Free 50-50" is the way to go. Doing this in Europe, 50% from your 35KM/22Mile region, and 50% outside, rest of the world, as some people just love Mango's and Banana's which do not grow in Europe.

So if you have any questions, please feel free to drop a line.

50 within 50 was a hit at the Ideas Festival in Queensland! Areas discussed in our workshops that you might like to explore further – a supporting campaign (online + offline) to highlight the issues, curriculum development and celebrity endorsement. Bring on the builds!

Way to go on making the Shortlist on the Local Food Challenge! Selecting 20 concepts out of over 600 was a tough job and we're excited to have you move through to the Refinement Phase. You can get a low-down on how the phase works over on Field Notes: http://bit.ly/refine_lowdown

Basically over the next 10 days we'd like you to further fine-tune your idea. You might explore opportunities and challenges to implementation, visualise further, expand on engagement strategies or connect various dots and details that would assist bringing your concept into fruition.

If you hit the Update This button on the right of your post, you'll see we've added 5 new fields to help you refine: Concept Builds, Actions, Project Partners, Funding Sources and Virtual Team. Check them out and feel free to keep updating your post throughout the phase – based on feedback and collaboration with fellow OpenIDEATORS and your own ideating goodness!

Oregon (USA) is doing some really cool things with the Farm to School Act (working w/ schools to incorporate more locally grown produce into school lunches) and the Havest of the Month: which highlights a fruit or veggie from a local producer during a month of the school’s lunch program. Check out this story for links on the Acts and other info that might be useful for you!: http://eugenedailynews.com/2011/04/18/oregon-farm-to-school-act-could-bring-more-local-food-to-eugene-schools/

I really like the concept behind this...I think it's great that you're thinking within at multiple scales. The Australasia element is a unique and pretty keen addition.

I'm wondering it you might add one additional scale. That of the school itself. Mini-farms on school properties is a growing idea here in the States (see http://www.edibleschoolyard.org/) and has been mentioned in a couple of concepts. I think it might be a great way to tie in at a more basic level the core values of the scheme with the people you want to impact.

50 + 50 = 100 – which is the percentage I'm awarding to this gem & ensuing discussion (Disclaimer: I'm awarding this personally and do not represent OpenIDEO on this comment)

Thank you Chris and Kartik for your comments. You certainly bring up some interesting points regarding school funding and mother nature's unavoidable elements. These variables would disrupt the logic of this idea, no doubt. I'm not aware of the school funding scenario in Australia. It also occurred to me that this idea might single out low-income schools that might not be able to afford the costs of sourcing locally; however, sometimes setting stringent limits can create very creative solutions, such as the Millennium Development Goals: Eradicating Extreme Poverty and Hunger, Universal Education, Gender Equality, and so on by 2015. So perhaps 50 Within 50 would also have a time line of say 5 years or 10 years to allow the school systems to implement steps to move toward locally sourced food and community economic development. And perhaps 50 Within 50 would encompass an overall core set of values and goals and the steps in order to reach the goals would be specialized to each of the states and territories (depending on their location, resources, etc.).

Catchy stuff, like it. Chris already brought up some of the caveats that occurred to me. Also, I am unaware of the school funding scenario down under, but are all schools equally funded in terms of food budgets? Otherwise we might be adding a burden to them in cases where non-local=cheap.

Hm... I like the idea but I guess wouldn't that largely depend on where in Australia you are and how close to farms your place might be located? Also, in terms of another constraint (and I'm totally playing devil's advocate here) but doesn't that local 50% easily evaporate if there is a massive flood (e.g. Queensland) or drought/fires (e.g. Victoria) that destroy swathes of farmland? These seem to becoming unfortunately more common, so I wonder if that might disrupt the logic of this, as much as I love it.