Bringing Nutrition Education to Schools Near Fresh Del Monte Farms

Fresh Del Monte has long understood that farming communities and school communities share a common thread: what children eat shapes their future. Near our Australian operations in Queensland and New South Wales, the company has been investing in nutrition education programs that link local classrooms to the fields where bananas, pineapples, and leafy greens are grown.

In towns such as Mareeba, Yeppoon, and the Lockyer Valley, families have relied on agriculture for generations. Yet school canteens still fill up with heavily processed snacks, and teachers tell us that students often struggle to connect the food on their plate with the landscape beyond the school gate. Our programs aim to close that distance, turning abstract food pyramids into practical lessons rooted in the paddocks next door.

By weaving nutrition learning into the school week and inviting growers into classrooms, we hope to give children a real understanding of healthy food choices while strengthening the social fabric of the communities our farms call home.

Why Schools Near Our Farms Matter Most

Children learn best when lessons feel close to home. A student walking out of a classroom and seeing a banana plantation, a row of papaya trees, or a hydroponic lettuce tunnel has a different relationship with food than one who only meets it in a wrapper. Around our farms in tropical North Queensland and the coastal hinterland of New South Wales, schools sit within a short bus ride of harvest crews. That proximity is the foundation of the program.

When nutrition education happens beside working farms, teachers can talk about seasonality in real time. A lesson on vitamin C delivered in March, when pineapples are peaking, feels more vivid than the same lesson in July. Students can taste a fruit pulled from the plant that morning, watch it move through a packing line, and ask questions that no textbook can answer. The same place-based approach is visible in this coastal initiative, which strengthens small-scale fishing communities by rooting learning in local waters, and our Australian school work draws on that same philosophy.

Building a Curriculum That Speaks Australian

Australia already has a strong tradition of garden-based learning, and our programs build on rather than replace that work. We collaborate with educators familiar with the Australian Curriculum's Health and Physical Education strand, the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation resources, and state-level frameworks such as the NSW Healthy School Canteen Strategy.

Rather than dropping in a packaged overseas module, we co-design lessons with teachers who know their students. The result is a curriculum that reflects the produce growing in the district, the cultural backgrounds of the families, and the rhythms of the local school year.

Core elements of the in-class component include:

• Harvest-of-the-month tastings featuring fruit and vegetables grown within a short drive of the school
• Story-led lessons on how food travels from a seedling to a school lunchbox
• Simple cooking activities that work in a standard classroom without specialist kitchens
• Take-home worksheets translated into the main community languages spoken by families

Working with Teachers and Canteens

Teachers are the heart of any lasting school program. We run short professional development sessions during term breaks, often held at agricultural colleges or community halls, where educators meet the growers supplying their region. These sessions double as networking opportunities, and many schools end up trading recipes and garden ideas long after the formal training ends.

The canteen, or tuckshop as it is known in many parts of Australia, is where nutrition theory meets daily reality. We support volunteer canteen committees to refresh their menus, introduce fresh fruit salads and vegetable-based snacks, and reduce reliance on items high in added sugar and salt. In New South Wales, this aligns naturally with the Fresh Tastes @ School canteen criteria, while in Queensland schools we work alongside the Smart Choices voluntary guidelines.

Bringing the Farm into the Classroom

A working farm can be a powerful classroom, and we treat it as one. Where transport and safety allow, classes visit our operations during quieter harvest days. Students see workers wearing high-visibility vests, follow strict hygiene protocols, and come away with a more nuanced picture of what modern horticulture looks like.

When a visit is not practical, our agronomists join classrooms through video calls, walking students through a planting cycle or demonstrating how soil health affects sweetness in a pineapple. We also lend small growing kits to schools without much outdoor space, so even inner-suburb classrooms in places like outer Brisbane or western Sydney can grow herbs and salad leaves in reused containers.

Engaging Families Through Local Events

Nutrition habits do not stop at the school gate. We join agricultural shows, school fetes, and weekend markets in communities such as Cairns, Townsville, and Toowoomba to share tastings, recipe cards, and seedlings. These events are familiar fixtures of rural and regional life, and they offer a relaxed setting for parents and grandparents to ask questions about seasonality, food storage, and budget-friendly meal planning.

In several districts we have partnered with local Indigenous community organisations to adapt recipes using bush foods alongside Del Monte produce. These collaborations have produced memorable shared lunches, where kangaroo grass, lemon myrtle, or finger lime appear next to sliced banana and fresh pineapple.

Tracking What Children Learn and Eat

A program without measurement is just good intentions. Each participating school agrees on a small set of indicators that teachers can track without adding to their workload. We collect this data once a term and share it back with the school community in plain language, so parents can see what is changing and teachers can adjust their lessons.

The indicators are deliberately simple and rely on what schools already observe every day:

• The number of fresh fruit or vegetable items on the canteen menu each term
• Student recall of where common fruits are grown in their region
• The variety of vegetables children report eating in a short lunchtime survey
• Participation rates in school garden activities across the year

This keeps the focus on habits rather than test scores, and it gives us a way to refine the program year on year without turning classrooms into research projects.

A Model Designed for Different Regions

Australia stretches across climates that range from wet tropics to cool temperate, and a one-size approach would not serve our farms or the communities around them. The nutrition education framework is intentionally modular, so schools in the Atherton Tablelands, the Wide Bay, and the Northern Rivers can each pick the elements that suit their context.

We are also exploring how the model can extend to our operations beyond Australia. The principles of pairing local growers with local classrooms translate well to other regions where Fresh Del Monte works, and lessons from Australian schools feed back into our global approach to community development.

To read about a related partnership that supports small producers in another region, visit the Fresh Del Monte CSR homepage and follow the link to recent program reviews.