Oklahoma Secretary of Agriculture, Blayne Arthur

For Blayne Arthur, Oklahoma's first female Secretary of Agriculture, the most important person in the food system isn't on a tractor or in a boardroom. She's standing in front of the meat counter, trying to make a decision.

Blayne Arthur drives in from Stillwater most mornings. Not a hard drive, she says, just a lot of miles. She’s got a lot to think about on those drives down I-35. She thinks about her two kids, her husband and his show cattle business, the state agency she runs and all those moms at the grocery store.

When Arthur first walked into the Department of Ag back in 2009, the agency's job was mostly regulatory with lots of inspections and enforcement to keep ag in Oklahoma running. Consumers, for the most part, weren't asking many questions.

Then came 2020, when the world shut down and supply chain shortages made grocery store shelves look different. That’s when she says she saw an uptick in consumers asking more questions about their food. Where's the bacon? Who grew that apple? What’s in that sack of flour? The questions didn't stop when the supply chain recovered after Covid.

Since then, the questions haven’t stopped from consumers.

She names that consumer specifically. The mom in the grocery store working to make things work with the limited budget that doesn’t stretch quite as far as it used to. Arthur says that mom is also weighing nutrition against shelf life and wanting to trust what she's putting on the table for her family.

Arthur knows that mom at the grocery store believes Oklahoma-grown food is fresher and more trustworthy and as the ag Secretary, she feels pride in that. Arthur says Oklahoma consumers trust farmers and ranchers and that they want to support them. But the gap between trusting farmers and ranchers and trusting the food that is getting onto the table is wider than it used to be.

Closing that gap has become the quiet second job of the Department of Ag. Nowhere has it moved faster than in Oklahoma schools through school lunches that are serving Oklahoma grown food to students from Idabel to Guymon and everywhere in between.

When Arthur joined as Secretary of Ag, the agency didn't have a single full-time farm-to-school staff person. There had been iterations of the role over the years, but nobody was really dedicated to it.

That changed almost immediately under Arthur’s tenure. The goal she had was simple: Get more Oklahoma-grown food onto school lunch trays and in the process help Oklahoma producers find a steady in-state customer. The byproduct of this work has been helping schools serve food kids would actually eat.

What started as a federal program became, with backing from the legislature and the governor, a state-supported effort routed directly through the Department of Ag. Today, 320 Oklahoma school districts participate in the farm-to-school program. That means schools across the state are buying directly from Oklahoma farmers and ranchers.

"That says this is a need," Blayne says. "And it's working."

The proof, she says, is in the testimonials. Teachers, parents, cafeteria staff all reporting that kids are eating what's on the tray unlike anything they’ve ever seen before. The food isn't going in the trash, local farmers gain a customer and the dollars are staying in Oklahoma. The best part of all? Well-fed students make stronger learners.

The Ag in the Classroom team works the other end of it. They build curriculum that drops into a teacher's existing science or math lesson and bring the hands-on moments that provide a connection to the food the students are eating. That looks like students planting tomatoes in newspaper pots and ensuring schools have access to garden grants. Oklahoma Ag in the Classroom reaches more than 12,100 teachers and 247,400 students each year.

Kids who garden go home and ask if they can plant something in the backyard. Kids who eat Oklahoma beef in the cafeteria grow up recognizing Oklahoma beef in the grocery store. The mom in the grocery store of 2040 is sitting in a third-grade classroom right now, learning what asparagus tastes like.

There’s another thing that’s keeping Secretary Arthur up at night.

Fewer than 2% of Oklahomans are actively involved in production agriculture. The average farmer is in his late fifties and land prices keep climbing. A young person graduating fromOklahoma State University, she says plainly, basically cannot walk into a bank and get a loan to start an ag operation. Not without help.

Inside the agency, she sees a quieter version of the same problem. The Department of Ag is full of people who understand that a decision at a desk in Oklahoma City lands on a fence line in Beaver County or a feedlot in Texas County. But ag kids don't usually grow up dreaming about working at the Department of Ag. It's not on their radar.

"This agency can have a really positive impact on farmers and ranchers," Arthur says, "or a really negative impact on farmers and ranchers."

She wants more young Oklahomans to see public service in agriculture as a real path. Under Secretary Arthur’s leadership, the Department of Ag. has created the Agriculture Youth Council. The program is designed to help future agriculture leaders in Oklahoma through professional development, industry exposure and experiential learning. Arthur says public service doesn’t stop at the Department of Agriculture but highlights the need for agriculture backgrounds in the Legislature.

“Having a strong ag presence in the capitol is vital for Oklahoma’s ranchers and producers,” Arthur said. “From creating laws at the legislative level to regulating them at the department level, we all work together to help the future of Oklahoma agriculture.”

"Somebody's got to feed everybody and someone’s got to make sure farmers and ranchers have the support they need" she says. "We have the natural resources to do it. We've got the research and technology. Oklahoma can continue to be a leader."

That's the bet Oklahoma All for Food is making too. The more visible Oklahoma food becomes on Oklahoma plates, the more young Oklahomans will see a future in growing it, processing it, regulating it, and championing it. The mom in the grocery store is already asking the right questions. The work now is making sure there's still somebody around to answer them.