State-led farm to school interventions target multiple leverage points for sustainability transformation

Farm to school (FTS) initiatives have, in recent decades, witnessed a surge in popularity across the US as one response to the unjust and unsustainable trajectory of corporate consolidation in industrial food systems. Bounded by the US school food system, this case study applies the leverage points framework to the work of a within-state actor group tasked primarily with supporting the grantees of a state administered FTS grant program, which funded 375 grassroots FTS projects across California between 2021 and 2024 with an unprecedented $86.8 million public investment. Using theory-driven thematic analysis of in-depth interviews (n = 13), the study examined how interventions implemented by these actors fostered transformation within the US school food system. We find that while their work was most concentrated at two leverage points, tightly knit interdependencies between interventions reached almost all levers of transformation across the leverage points spectrum. The findings demonstrate the effectiveness of within-state FTS positions as a lever of change within the context of other, complementary, interventions. The study also constructs a catalogue of 61 concrete elements of the US school food system, serving as a practical tool for a range of FTS actors seeking to design more effective future research, policy, and practitioner strategies for accelerating sustainability transformation within the US school food system.