Goodbye trans fats, hello broccoli: Farm to School project brings local edibles into cafeterias

By Mary Carey
Staff Writer

Published on September 28, 2007

Gone are the days when schoolchildren in the lunch line cast a cold eye on broccoli.

Chicken nuggets may always be first in at least the youngest students' hearts, but there has been a clear trend in favor of fruit and vegetables, according to cafeteria employees.

Their growing affection for produce should be one half of a beautiful marriage with area farms, but it hasn't been traditionally, as schools - just like the average consumers - more often buy produce grown thousands of miles away.

It's a frustrating reality. But it's changing, thanks to a "buy local" movement whose time has come and a lot of perseverance on the part of farmers, food service managers and local foods boosters.

In recognition of the first annual Massachusetts Harvest for Students Week, Sept. 24 to 30, Amherst elementary schools students could choose locally grown tomatoes, squash, carrots, green beans, watermelon and cantaloupe along with their main course. On Tuesday, they could be seen opting for the vegetables and fruit without the least bit of prodding.

The statewide initiative was coordinated by The Massachusetts Farm to School Project, an organization founded and run by Wildwood Elementary School parent Kelly Erwin, and sponsored by the state's Department of Agricultural Resources, the Massachusetts Farm Bureau Agricultural Preservation Corporation, MassDevelopment and Project Bread.

More than 100 public schools, 14 colleges and nine private schools participated in Massachusetts Harvest for Students Week, Erwin said.

"We already had about 75 public school districts that we've gotten to buy directly," Erwin said. "We started out with five," three years ago.

Several food service managers statewide have told Erwin they see a dramatic increase in children opting for school lunches in districts that buy locally, she said.

The other half of the equation, of course, is that buying locally helps Massachusetts farms and the state economy. Fifty Massachusetts family farms provided produce to the school, generating more than $700,000 in total additional revenues for the farmer each year, according to Erwin.

MassDevelopment is trying to help the process along by introducing a new farm to school online purchasing Web site at www.farmfresh.org, aimed at giving food service managers a one-stop shopping place for locally grown produce.

The Department of Agriculture has published a cookbook, available online, called "Fresh from the Farm: A Massachusetts Farm to School Cookbook." Sample recipes include "butternut mashed potatoes" and "crusty mac and cheese with broccoli."

Like a short order cook

Getting the local foods into the cafeteria isn't as easy it might appear on first glance, though.

Hadley grower Joe Czajkowski is the only local farmer who has done the paperwork, bought the insurance and done everything it takes to meet the standards schools must abide by when purchasing food.

"It's a lot harder than it seems," Czajkowski said. "It's like being a short order cook. There are so many small service orders, so many different places to deliver to." In Chicopee, alone, there are 13 stops at 13 cafeterias. Czajkowski delivers to 23 different schools and institutions, including the University of Massachusetts, which buys 20 percent of its produce locally, and all the deliveries have to be made by 1 p.m., he said.

Czajkowski also worries about liability. "You bring in produce from farmers who may not be covered themselves. You have to make sure it is safe," he said. "There's actually quite a bit to it."

Food service managers, for their part, have to worry about the cost - and how to keep the fruits and vegetables coming in the dead of winter.

Some "buy local" advocates in Amherst were disappointed when the Amherst Regional School Committee recently voted to continue using a private company to run its food services rather than manage them in-house as was done five years ago. National food services providers like Chartwells, the company that has run school food services in the Amherst Regional School District for the past five years, have preferred vendors in place, making it harder to buy locally.

"It's not just a decision that I can make as food services director," said Rebecca Trietley, food services manager for the schools. "I have to go through the district manager, the buyers and all that kind of stuff because they do have contracts in place with the preferred vendors."

Trietley orders carrots and apples from Czajkowski.

"They're something that kids like and pretty much a staple as far as what we have on the menu, and as the winter months get on, obviously there is not much available locally. I have to be careful of the food costs just as anyone running a business would."

Chartwells vendors also meet very specific insurance requirements, so managers know the food is safe, Trietley said. "When we get to the small ones, we have to be careful. It can be lengthy process."

Amherst was named a test site for Chartwells to buy local produce last year and is one of only a few school districts in the Northeast that use Chartwells where buying locally has been approved by the company.

"We want to continue to buy the local produce. As long as it fits under the food costs, we will certainly continue to do that," Trietley said. "It's our desire to give the kids healthy food."

"In a nutshell," Erwin said, "in any of the school systems there can be difficulties related to delivery schedules and seasonality of the produce. But it's also true that in any school system where they have decided it's a priority to serve locally grown food, they have found ways to be very successful with that."

Mary Carey can be reached at mary.carey@att.net.