Farm-to-school Program Spillovers on Retail Markets

Subin Poudel

No 404369, 2026 Annual Meeting, July 26 - 28, 2026, Kansas City, Missouri from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Farm to School (FTS) programs generate two competing e!ects on household food demand: school meal provisioning substitutes for home purchasing in the short run, while repeated exposure builds taste capital that complements demand over time. Linking Nielsen Home Scan and USDA FTS Census data (2012–2023), we estimate household demand for different food categories via the Exact Affine Stone Index (EASI) system and exploit staggered FTS adoption with differential exposure by child age to identify both mechanisms. In the short run, households with school-age children in FTS districts exhibit substitution in school-provided food categories. In mature programs (8+ years), this reverses: household spending on fruits and vegetables increases by 22 percent, with the crossover at approximately 11–12 years. FTS programs also generate community spillovers of 0.42 percentage points for childless households, and offset 80 percent of the child-driven fresh produce deficit in households with children. The main takeaways are: short-run evaluations substantially understate program benefits; programduration, not intensity, is the key impact parameter.

Keywords: Agricultural; and; Food; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/404369/files/1 ... subinp_aaea_2026.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea26:404369

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.404369

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2026 Annual Meeting, July 26 - 28, 2026, Kansas City, Missouri from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().