Planting the seed (local produce for schools)

[jpak]

http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/news/local/3548502.html

Local farmers salivating over the prospect of selling goods to schools that serve thousands of lunches a day -- and school food service directors hoping to get students salivating over fresh, locally produced food -- connected Wednesday.

Both groups meeting together in Gardiner at the forum "Farm to School: Let's Plant the Seed" seemed to agree they have something to offer the other. They exchanged phone numbers and talked about prices for tomatoes, broccoli, hamburgers and other items food service directors said they didn't know they could get locally.

"I'm ready to jump in with this," said Barbara Raymond, director of school nutrition programs for Augusta schools. "We'll deal with you directly. If anybody has something they want to sell, call."

Several of the dozen farmers at the gathering expressed interest in getting their produce, beef and other locally produced foods into schools.

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[donco6]

1. The produce we get from the Dept of Def. is terrible.

In our food service program we participate in a commodities deal with the Dept of Defense - we order from their bid list and they send us the produce. When if first started with great fanfare about 8 years ago, it was great - good quality fruit, fresh, delivered regularly. Since then they've cut the program so badly we end up throwing everything away. We're going off on our own bids again after this year. We'll pay more, but we'll actually USE the food.

If we could get a regular supply from local growers without the distribution center, we'd jump on it, too.

[KT2000]

2. This is happening here too

the great thing is that there are several organic farms - NW Washington state.