Bananas could soon vanish from school lunch menus across the United States due to proposed changes in the Farm Bill. The legislation places strict caps on non-American foods, potentially limiting access to healthy meals for children.
Concerns Over Bananas in Schools
School nutrition workers and advocates have “lots of concerns about bananas,” said Erin Ogden, policy associate for federal child nutrition programs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). Bananas are nutrient-dense and popular among children, making them a staple in school cafeterias. Any healthy food that a child will eat reduces waste and ensures they are not eating nothing or less wholesome alternatives.
“For little kids, they can peel a banana. They can eat a banana if they have braces. Football teams need bananas for the potassium,” said Donna Martin, a school nutrition consultant from Georgia. “But now, school districts are saying, ‘I can’t get you bananas because they’re not American.’”
The United States is the world’s largest importer of bananas, which only grow in tropical climates. Almost all bananas sold in the country come from Central and South America.
Impact of the Farm Bill
Jessica Shelley, director of student dining services for Cincinnati public schools, said that next year she will have to remove bananas from her lunch program and limit breakfast servings to twice a week. The Farm Bill, if passed in its current form, would compel these changes. The latest version, passed by the House of Representatives and awaiting Senate response, seeks to further restrict purchases of foreign-produced foods.
Restrictions on non-US food purchases for school meals are not new. A Buy American mandate was added to the National School Lunch Act in 1998. Originally, school food administrators had to buy US products “to the maximum extent possible,” which went undefined for years. Exceptions were made for foods federally listed as “nonavailable,” including bananas, mandarin oranges, canned pineapple, coconut, and bulk spices. Other exceptions include foreign-sourced foods that cost less than domestic counterparts, such as fruit juices supplied through the USDA commodities program.
In 2024, the Buy American provision was amended to initiate a phase-in, with a 10% cap on non-US foods through 2026, reducing to 8% through mid-2031, and eventually to 5% by the 2031-32 school year. However, the House version of the Farm Bill abolishes the phase-in, dropping the cap directly to 5% as soon as the next full school year after enactment, possibly 2026-27.
Karen Spangler, policy director at the National Farm to School Network, called this “nuts,” since school food professionals plan meals and order ingredients up to a year in advance.
Broader Implications
These changes affect the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs, which serve billions of meals to US children annually. School nutrition directors emphasize that these are the healthiest meals many kids eat daily, essential for academic success.
Although schools can still source items from the nonavailable list, they count towards the cap. The House Farm Bill requires the USDA to create its own list of unavailable products that would not count, but Spangler fears this creates a confusing two-tiered system that risks schools unwittingly violating the rule.
It’s not just bananas at risk. “We have to serve kids a dark green vegetable, and broccoli is one of the great vegetables we can do,” said Martin. “But you can’t get American frozen broccoli. A lot of the fish we get is not American. Diced peaches are from China.”
In some cases, the problem is cost. American-sourced broccoli, fish, and peaches are often prohibitively expensive. Distributors selling to schools try to keep costs low and supply constant, sometimes relying on affordable foreign imports.
Changes to the Buy American mandate could endanger decades-long efforts to ensure school meals provide adequate, delicious nutrition. Some school systems now offer dishes like overnight oats with shredded carrots and coconut, scratch-cooked salmon burgers, and local roasted root vegetables, replacing less appealing options like canned green beans, fish fingers, or bland mac and cheese.
A changed mandate also increases workload for school nutrition directors, who must document compliance. “Introducing a new, different system of what ‘counts’ and an immediately tighter cap, without additional resources, creates an unnecessary burden,” Spangler said, especially given the “lack of transparency in the food system.”
Additional Hurdles
The Trump administration has created other obstacles to fresh, nutritious, and affordable school meals. New dietary guidelines center animal protein, potentially affecting what directors serve. Meat is expensive, and there is no federal plan to increase meal funding. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for “real” foods, but many schools lack kitchens for scratch cooking, and USDA equipment grants are insufficient.
In March 2025, the USDA terminated the Local Food for Schools (LFS) program, which allocated $660 million to help schools source fresh products from local farmers. This has impacted children who looked forward to fresh local strawberries in May. Switching to frozen berries is “a palate change,” said Spangler, and school nutrition directors are “at the mercy of what kids like and don’t like.” Abolishing LFS also strained farmers who lost a reliable market.
All these changes, combined with the potential 5% cap, make it harder for school food professionals to serve wholesome meals. “School nutrition directors completely, 100% support American and local growers – in fact, we invest almost $6 million into purchasing local produce and items from Ohio Proud manufacturers,” said Cincinnati’s Shelley. “At a time where policy is rightly focused on reducing ultra-processed foods, setting policy that will reduce a school’s ability to procure and serve a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables seems counterintuitive.”
As the Senate prepares to mark up its version of the Farm Bill this month, “there’s definitely an opportunity for them to think meaningfully and critically about what would need to happen to actually reach the goal of, with a few exceptions, sourcing fully domestically,” said Spangler. “We know for a fact that that includes more support for local purchasing and more support for local producers.” Whether that support will be forthcoming remains to be seen.
