Farm to Early Childhood Education Opportunity for Kansas Licensed Early Child Care Providers

The Kansas Department of Agriculture, in partnership with the Kansas Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom, is accepting applications for Kansas licensed early child care providers to participate in a project to increase child nutrition knowledge and consumption of local fruits and vegetables.

The project titled “Our Earliest Eaters: Bringing the Farm to Kansas Licensed Early Child Care” will provide selected child care providers with age-appropriate agriculture education curriculum about Kansas fruit and vegetable production and resource kits developed by the Kansas Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom at no cost. While teaching the curriculum, early child care providers and organizations administering the project on behalf of child care providers in a community or region will be eligible to receive reimbursement for purchases of locally grown fruits and vegetables used in the lessons.

The reimbursements offered through this project are a way to incentivize local food purchases to benefit our state’s specialty crop producers. By building relationships between licensed early child care providers and local farmers and producers, this project will increase nutrition knowledge and consumption of specialty crops in our earliest eaters, while creating new market outlets for Kansas specialty crop producers.

This is the second round of this project; in early 2025 the program was open to licensed early child care facilities. The 2026 round of the project is intended for family child care homes. Individual family child care home providers and organizations who intend to administer the project on behalf of a group of family child care homes in their community or region are eligible to apply.

Applications are due to KDA no later than 5:00 p.m. on April 30, 2026. Applicants should demonstrate their passion for agriculture education in early childhood development and capacity for purchasing local fruits and vegetables. Recipients will be notified in May if they have been selected to participate in the project. For more information, please visit: agriculture.ks.gov/grants or contact Brittney Grother, KDA ag marketing grants coordinator, at 785-564-6797 or Brittney.Grother@ks.gov.

Funding for this project was made possible by the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service.

The vision of the Kansas Department of Agriculture is to provide an ideal environment for long-term, sustainable agricultural prosperity and statewide economic growth. The agency will achieve this by advocating for sectors at all levels and providing industry outreach.