Ag policy wonks, school officials and farmers are celebrating the passage of legislation designed to smooth the way for greater purchasing of local farm products by school food-service managers.
 
Diane Connors of the Michigan Land Use Institute’s Entrepreneurial Agriculture Program called the three-bill package signed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm just before Christmas a “tasty end-of-the-year treat.”

Apples, grapes, strawberries, carrots, potatoes, beef, dairy, greens and eggs are all grown in Michigan, which ranks second in the nation when it comes to agricultural diversity. Yet the state’s public schools — which serve approximately 140 million meals each year — generally offer reheated processed foods that have been trucked in from great distances.

The newly enacted Farm-to-School Procurement Act directs the state Department of Agriculture, and Education to work with school food-service providers to help them locate and use local farm products.

Under the new legislation, these departments are to encourage new school construction projects to consider the creation of kitchens capable of producing fresh and healthy meals and opportunities for hands-on learning; promote development of Web tools to link school purchasers with area farmers; develop training materials for fresh food preparation, and involve the Department of Community Health in promotion of fresh foods in schools.

The package also changed the food purchasing protocol for schools, raising the “small purchase threshold” from $20,000 to $100,000. Previously all purchases over $20,000 required a lengthy formal bid process and required that the lowest bid be accepted. Food-service managers had identified this as an obstacle to buying local. Now schools that spend under $100,000 on local foods will be permitted to use a comparatively informal bidding process, which could be as simple as calling three farms for prices on an item.

The change has the potential to stimulate the state’s agricultural economy.

In testimony to the House committee on agriculture in September, Mike Hamm, a professor of agriculture at Michigan State University, said:

“We have the opportunity to directly link public health needs, agricultural production and economic development … If a small percent of the increased fruits and vegetables that we should be consuming for a healthy diet were consumed and grown in Michigan, with certain assumptions about seasonality and consumption patterns, it would result in 37,000 more acres in production and $200 million more in economic activity.”

A 2004 survey of food service directors conducted by MSU and the Dept. of Education, found that 73 percent would buy more local food if price and quality were competitive and a source was available, Hamm said.

The bulk of Michigan’s agricultural production goes into prepared foods, but selling produce directly to consumers benefits farmers because fresh foods command a higher price.

“I think that each piece that comes into play that helps move us toward being able to purchase locally is a piece that helps,“ said Suttons Bay Schools Superintendent Mike Murray, “[The package of bills] opens the legal restriction and helps move us toward facing some of the logistical issues we face.”

Relying on processed foods may not be as healthy for kids but it is convenient. The school can order all its food from a major national distributor and have a week’s worth of food delivered by semi and unloaded.

“If we are ordering from eight local farmers, that means going out picking it up, cutting eight checks, finding containers to store the produce,” Murray said.

Suttons Bay is a small town along the Grand Traverse Bay in Northwestern Michigan’s Leelanau County and is surrounded by orchards, vineyards and farms, and is home to the award-winning Leelanau Cheese Company. The town has four public schools — an elementary, a middle school, a high school and a Montessori school.

“Eventually I see this evolving into some kind of co-op with the farmers so we can centralize the movement of produce from farms to schools,” Murray said, adding that he believes the Farm-to-School bills can help.

“We tend right now to use some of the more durable, easier to store items like sweet potatoes, squashes, apples, and carrots,“ he said. “What we’ve done is replace our morning snack program where kids who had money would buy snacks. Now we supply fresh foods and milk to kids pre-K through fifth grade.”

Murray said the school system is trying to teach healthy eating habits and get kids to associate snacks with fresh fruits and vegetables. He said school officials have found that the healthy food effort has made a difference in student performance.

“We’ve hired two people part-time to pack fruits and vegetables in way that can be delivered to classrooms,” he said. “Our board of education has supported the idea that even though we don’t have much money, this is a good use of our funds.”

An analysis by the state Senate fiscal agency found that it is unclear what impact the Farm-to-School bills will have on school budgets. Depending on how schools exercise the new latitude for purchasing foods, it could be more or less expensive.