Free kids’ tours of Sacramento farmers market to return after national grant win
Alchemist Community Development Corp. has won a $100,000 grant to fund free field trips for children from underprivileged schools to the Thursday Florin Farmers Market. The funding will help Alchemist cover the costs for teachers and chaperones to ride with students to the market.
The field trip program is not new. The previous management team behind Florin and other farmers markets ran a similar program until it was interrupted by COVID-19. The idea was to connect children to food and to help them understand how and where it’s grown.
“It had been very popular with all ages, and we’ve been dreaming about how we could find a way to bring that back,” said Alchemist CEO Sam Greenlee. “Given that this is a Thursday morning, the fact it’s located fairly centrally in South Sacramento, that it’s at a light rail station, makes it very accessible to many of the schools we’re already working with in our Community Food Connections program.”
The program is designed to get free groceries to food-insecure homes.
The field trips will begin in the fall. Applications open in the spring. Teachers can sign up to be notified when they are open at alchemistcdc.org/fieldtrips.
Each student will receive a tour from a market expert, a tote bag, $5 in “Kids Bucks” to spend at the market and information about the CalFresh and Market Match program at farmers markets to take home.
“We’re trying to really connect the kids primarily to understanding where food is grown, who grows it and where it comes from,” Greenlee said. “We will also have some of this available as kind of a self-serve field trip, which we want to make available to other schools, or 4H groups or Girl Scouts or whoever that may want a field trip.”
The grant comes from the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Each fall, they open applications for the Healthy and Sustainable Communities Grant Awards, which are designed to “support programs that aim to improve the health and wellness of the nation’s children, families, neighborhoods, and cities.” A total of $1 million was awarded across nine winners.
Alchemist’s program won second place in the “large city” category. Its application was championed by Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty.
He said in a statement, Alchemist’s work “is a model of how local governments and community-based organizations can collaborate to create healthier, more sustainable cities.”
Alchemist has incrementally taken over management of the farmers markets from founders Dan and Renae Best, who are retiring. It took over Florin in 2024, and this month began management of the “under the freeway” Sunday farmers market near Southside Park.
This story was originally published February 6, 2026 at 8:00 AM.
