By james art 
Fairgrounds at Fremont County – Bobby Lane has moved with easy familiar cabins of invasive weeds and animal feed at a farm and ranch in early February. As the ranch greeting him and talking, it was clear that this was his environment.
Lane, who wore crispy blue jeans and a baseball cap over her black hair, has grown his own acres of 1000 acres west of River for decades, growing dry beans, corn, barley and alfalfa hay. He understands the challenges of irrigation and drought, the science of soil and yield. He knows how difficult it is to earn a living as a manufacturer.
Unlike many others, however, agriculture was only the beginning of Lane’s career. It turns out that his bigger passions are hidden in orchestrating projects, creating connections and creating infrastructure for more people to have access and enjoy local food. It took him a few years to take advantage of these strengths, but now that he is, he is in the tear.
As a coordinator of the Wyoming Farm since late 2023, he controls a stunning achievement. The number of school dishes served, including Wyoming products, broke out in 2024 to 40,000, compared to under 2,000 in 2023, according to the Wyoming Ministry of Education.
“So we had a 2000% increase in local food in schools,” Lane said. With the achievement, Wyoming won the regulation of the Mountain Plains region in 2024 – which honors the condition that can serve the most cultivated local nutritional bites per capita in the lunch rooms. Wyoming defeated seven countries to win, including previous champion Nebraska.
The championship is the result of a storm of organizing, connecting and effort Lane in the program in her first year, said Carla Bank with the Wyoming Education Division, which controls it.
“I think I just click on him it’s like his call almost,” Bank said. “He is so real and just so excited to do this job. He is very passionate about this because he was a producer in the state. “
When Lane took the job, he ran with her. Or more accurate, driven. So the owner of every greenhouse he notices along the way to see if they also want to help feed the students from Wyoming. He has put many thousands of miles on his car. And he loves him.
After 35 years working in agriculture and government, Lane said: “This is my most favorite” role.
“My passion for this is to make it very successful and I want every country in the Union to view Vayoming as an example,” he said.
Neighborhood
Lane moved to River with his family as a teenager and spent the bigger part of his life there. He was involved as he and his wife raised their three children and took additional jobs.
He went to work for the state in the 1980s and 90s, both as a water rights specialist and as an employee of water regulation, before returning to the only agriculture. In 2018, he mixed his experience at the State Agriculture Agency when he became a agricultural manager at Wyoming’s Farm honor. The Ministry of Correction with a minimal obstacle on the outskirts of River is intended to give prisoners with work skills that can enter the civilian world.
One of these skills sets is agriculture. Under the guidance of Lane, the production of the farm is mushrooms. The team of approximately 30 prisoners he runs has passed from agriculture one hectare to approximately nine. They were growing sweet corn, pumpkin, green beans, cucumbers and tomatoes. “We had more [produce] We knew what to do, ”Lane said.
This has led to partnership with the initiative of Jenny Gordon Wyoming Hunger – a happy attack of excess vegetables. The Honorary Farm has been aimed at about 18,000 pounds of the program for three years.
While the program was created to teach prisoners skills, “it was a learning experience for me too,” Lane said. Among the things he gathered was that he enjoyed the orchestration of food production to provide more access to food. So turning the school’s farm – work – work that began at the end of 2023 – was a natural step.
Lane, who is a former competitive bodybuilder, has always been interested in health and well -being. But he found a new font of enthusiasm when it comes to fresh, local food for children.
Where did the corn come from?
In his role as a farm coordinator, Lane said it did not take much time to realize a disturbing fact for many students of the state: they know too little about what is needed to produce food.
For example, he was surprised to learn that some children had no idea corn kernels were packaged by the nature of cobs and on scales-and they were not ready in the can.
“There are so many children in the country who do not know where the food comes from,” Lane said. “You ask this question and they say the” grocery store “or” canning box “. And we want to change that. “In the end, Wyoming is a country with deep agricultural roots.
This time he is littered with challenges. Start with the raw wyoming climate and the northern width, which make a wide range of products that are difficult to grow – especially during the monthly school is a session. Obtaining production to lunch trays is also not easy. School districts prepare thousands of meals daily, so they have to order items in advance and in huge quantities.
“We started planning the menu for next year earlier this month,” said the headmaster of school services of the Natron County Desire McAdams, illustrating the challenge. Mcadams monitors 26 schools that serve nearly 5,000 daily lunches and approximately 2000 daily snacks.
Not every gardener can provide thousands of carrots, and not every food director can pay the premium for local food for a small scale.
However, with low levels of state participation, Lane saw a lot of space for growth.
During his first few months, he went on the road – posing to farmers, meeting with staff for the service of food and networks of local food events. And he found buying-as with manufacturers and in school.
McAdams from the Natron County participates in a farm next to school. This is something she did before Lane began, she said, but she has increased ever since.
“He called me one day and asked me if I would be in the office the next day,” she remembered, “and then he went very excited about the program. He informed us all the things he would try to happen to him. “
Lane helped them learn about the available grants that Mcadams bought products such as mushrooms, corn and beans.
Does local food convert children into vegetable lovers? Maybe not. But that helps, McAdams said.
“For example, when I have a lettuce that is local in the salad … I just tell them that Wyoming makes them try it out,” she said.
The education department asked governor Mark Gordon to announce a farm until the school day. This offered an organizational anchor and fulfilled speed.
On the opening farm until the school day, October 2, 2024, WDE employees helped to serve beef burgers in Wyoming in burns and sweet corn in Apahoe. Students eat lettuce and potatoes, tomatoes, oats and apples grown in the state. Kelly Bean of Torrington and Ratality State Farms of Gillette donated £ 1,500 dried beans for effort.
“Schools and childcare centers are simply proceeding to the plate on this issue,” Lane said.
Infectious energy
Those who know it claim that Lane’s contagious energy is the one that feeds growth.
“His energy is contagious,” McAdams said.
WDE banks echoed this. “He makes you want to participate,” she said. “I think this is his personality, his true love and truth.”
It helps that Lane himself was a farmer, Bank said. “He is super connected to the producers. And then the directors of food service just adore him because he takes the time to go to these areas. ”
He is not afraid to go anywhere in the state, she said, or to apply an apron to get involved in the work on processing or cooking.
“He is very, very focused on getting food for our children’s farm throughout Wyoming, which is quite cool,” says farmer Lindsay Anderson. She and her husband are raising sweet corn on their farm since 1890 north of River. Through the farm to school, they sent trucks with corn to Wyoming schools this fall.
“For some of these children, it was the first chance to have to shake the corn,” she said. “Some of them, for the first time, should actually enjoy the sweet corn directly from the cob, which I think is quite cool because it provides this unique, authentic, farmer to a table for children.”
A farm to a school, funded by the Federal Farm Patrick Lehs to a school grant, aims to help children’s feeding operators such as schools or childcare centers to participate in a number of programs.
Line’s work is funded until 2026. Although many federal subsidies are currently in question because of the efforts of President Donald Trump to reduce costs, the Ministry of Education in Wyoming has confirmed that he has provided all funds.
Day in life
On Friday morning in February, Lane climbed into his gray F-150 truck and struck north north to Powell. The truck has antennas attached to it. This is good because it serves many ways as Lane’s secondary office.
Previously, he was in Tetan County, talking about local beef, and after that he would go to Sheridan for a local food conference. Lane stores a pair of binoculars near her feet to scan the greenhouse landscape that can lead to his next manufacturer.
On this day he climbed to a small building to extend the county wrapped in new snow. Inside, he gathered with a handful of farmers at Park County, school representatives and tourism people to talk about the farm to school.
The participants discussed the school budgets, contracts and schedules for planting. They examined the impact of prices on local food orders and talked about how farmers could be so busy that they could barely manage sleep, let alone additional documentation. They have heard from the director of food service about how he believes that community’s interest is the key to a successful school for the school.
Lane told the participants that his job was mainly to start conversations.
“I am like the Coordinator of Couples,” he said. “I just continue this relationship.”
It was a little smaller, said Andrea Alma, USDA farm as a regional specialist at school.
“Bobby works hard to fill this medium space … Because in Wyoming we know it’s so huge,” Alma said.
Alma asked the group to guess how many school lunches were served in Wyoming annually. Participants roughly undervalued.
“Six million lunches in just one school year,” she said. “So the scale, the scale of what these nutritionists do, is many, but also, this is a very significant market for all of you.”
Lane is confident that he will help bring more food into Wyoming in schools in 2025.
“I do not plan to give [Crunch Off] A trophy back in Nebraska soon, “he said.