School Rules: Farmers Face the Supply Side Issues
By Laurie Ten Eyck
Selling directly to schools and other institutions may help farmers to be more profitable, and many farmers think that working directly with schools is the right thing to do. But first there are obstacles to be overcome.
Lunch ladies beware: A new school day is dawning. The era of canned hamburgers and powdered mashed potatoes is coming to an end. An integral part of the local foods movement sweeping the country, farm-to-school programs are a package deal intended to feed kids with locally grown food, preserve farmland and educate children about nutrition and agriculture. But where do farms fit into the equation?
“We are very interested in changing the food system,” says Judith Redmond of Full Belly Farm in Guinda, California. “We want to get real good local food available to kids.” Having local farms sell to local schools seems like a no-brainer. But instead of settling back to enjoy a vision of their future customers munching fresh vegetables at the cafeteria’s salad bar, farmers must first focus on the potential trouble spots, such as low prices, small orders and costly delivery runs. Selling produce to schools may be the right thing to do, but is it profitable? After all, keeping farmers in business is one of the goals. “Philosophically I am in favor of schools buying their produce from local farms, but there are a few hurdles,” says Richard Ball of Schoharie Valley Farms in Schoharie, New York. “Most of them are on their side.”
School lunches generally cost students between $1.50 and $2.00 per meal. Discounted and free meals are available to children from households living at the poverty line, which is mostly made up for by state and federal subsidies. In addition, the federal government provides a certain amount of “commodity foods”—food set aside from agricultural surpluses—to schools depending on the number of meals they serve. Most school lunch programs are self-supporting, meaning the money they take in through lunch sales is the amount of money they have to spend. The $2 or less from the sale of each meal has to cover not only the cost of the food, but also the food service department labor and the expenses associated with running the kitchen and cafeteria. Even farmers, renowned for their thrift, would be hard-pressed to make a business venture like that succeed.
(The federal government does make an effort to help schools access fresh produce through the Department of Defense’s Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program. The Defense Supply Center in Philadelphia runs a nationwide system to purchase produce for military institutions, federal prisons and veteran’s hospitals. In 1995, this system was opened up to schools, and school food service buyers are able to allocate a percentage of their commodity dollars to the DoD Fresh program for the purchasing of fresh produce.)
Once they are on board, schools order regularly from their farm suppliers, but the orders tend to be small. Full Belly Farm sells to both the Berkeley school system and the Davis school system. The schools took the initiative to contact Full Belly Farm, and Redmond was glad to do business with them. However, there were drawbacks. “The biggest problem is that the orders are too small,” says Redmond. “Most farms have a volume requirement in order to make a drop. We have to charge more to make a small delivery.” The cost of transporting products can be an even bigger problem in states such as Montana where communities are far apart.
“We deliver,” says Charles Swanson of Mountain View Orchard in Corvallis, Montana, who sells apples directly to the Missoula County public school system, the University of Montana and the prison system. Swanson charges for delivery because of the distances he must travel. His charge is based on the size of the order and the distance it has to go. Swanson gained his institutional accounts by deciding to cut out the middleman. “Years ago we used to sell to a wholesaler who then sold our product to the schools,” he says. “We said, ‘Why not go direct?’ It saves the schools money and they get a fresher product because they have a direct line to the grower.”
Getting produce directly from the farm is not something most food service departments are used to. “School food buyers often don’t understand the produce business,” says Ball. “They’ve never been to a market or a warehouse.” In the kitchen, many school cafeterias are ill-prepared to work with food fresh from the field. In an effort to cope with budget limitations, food service departments have cut their labor forces down to bare-bones, centralizing their kitchens and relying heavily on prepared foods. “It’s a lot more work for them to clean, process and cook all that produce,” says Redmond. “Farmers and food service people need to cooperate to overcome these challenges.”
Additional funding for school lunches would solve a lot of the problems. “They’ve been on such a low budget for so many years,” says Ball. “They’ve got to feed all those kids and break even at $2.00 a plate.” Roughly half the purchase price of a school lunch goes to pay for labor. That leaves only $1.00 to pay for the required two ounces of protein, one serving of grain or bread, two servings of fruit or vegetable plus milk. “The school system is so price sensitive they don’t have the money to provide good food,” agrees Redmond. “We have to change our approach to funding school lunches. Right now it’s just pennies. We’ve got to change the equation.”
In many cases, it is unrealistic to expect food service personnel to put together fresh nutritional meals with the money currently available. More funding would allow food service buyers to spend more on fruits and vegetables, which could be purchased from local farmers. More resources also are needed for the training and compensation of food service personnel. In the future, the DoD Fresh Fruits and Vegetables program could make it a priority to match schools with local farms to minimize transportation costs. On the farmer’s side, many farmers have been able to approach bigger institutions and achieve higher sales by forming grower cooperatives.
“Farm-to-school is a cooperative effort between parents, food service workers, non profit organizations and the farming community,” says Redmond. Any answers to be found will result from the collective efforts of these interested parties. It will take time for things to fall into place, but the goal of feeding children fresh, locally grown food and educating them about where their food comes from couldn’t be more far-reaching and worthwhile.
This fall, ask your members of Congress to support a farm and food bill that allows schools, low-income communities and all Americans to eat healthier foods. Learn more!
