Just a quarter of Maine's 280 school districts are participating, underscoring the challenge of getting locally grown food into cafeterias even for a day. But the number of districts getting involved in the program grows each year, according to the state, and those who do, say the effort is worth it.
At the Cape Elizabeth Middle School cafeteria, 80 percent of today's menu is local. The calzone is stuffed with locally grown vegetables. The salad bar is brimming with root vegetables and corn that students helped to pick at a local farm.
"I think I saw some of the broccoli we picked yesterday. " Barrett Hess is a 7th grader who is sold on the "Know Your Food, Know Your Farmer" movement. "I think it's a good idea. Because it also sustains Cape's economy. It makes our town self- sustainable. I've read some books about sustainable economy and that's one of the most important things is to generate your food own food supply."
Raising children's awareness of locally-grown food is one of the GOALS OF? Maine Harvest lunch. And it's no surprise that Cape Elizabeth has embraced the program. Joan Daly works with the Cape Elizabeth Farm Alliance, which formed two years ago to generate support for the town's farms through partnerships with the schools and businesses. "What tends to happen in this community we could have a mother here that's also also a worker in the cafeteria, or a mother at the farm and everybody kind of gets together with a common goal to say how can we make it happen?"
Local products now make it into the salad bar and into sauces throughout the year. But it's logistically and financially difficult to have local foods dominate the menu every day.
Local produce can be more expensive, partly because there is not the volume that large food suppliers traffic in. Using fresh produce from town often means having to cook from scratch -- a major feat when you're making hundreds of meals a day.
"It's a lot of preparation so your labor costs go up." Robin Taylor is food services manager for the middle and elementary schools. She says it's easier to use canned salsa from the districts' major food supplier, Sysco. "It would only take you maybe half an hour to cup up canned salsa but it would take you two hours to do a mass amount of homemade but it would probably take you two hours to do a mass amount of home made. Here, we had to wash everything chop everything mix it all together cup it."
Walter Beesley oversees school lunch program for the state Department of Education. He says that going local can be a challenge for school districts, who have fixed costs on how much they spend per meal. "Last year, it was about $2.78 per meal for every school lunch and labor doesn't change that much. But when they do Harvest lunch , and put Maine products on during the school, partipcating increases, so your cost for meal increseaes..and you're serving more meals." The cost may still be higher, he says, but schools should consider that they're getting a higher-quality product for their students.
Over at Jordan Farms in Cape Elizabeth, Penny Jordan is working the farm stand, where fresh strawberries, squash and onions are for sale. Just yesterday, students from the middle school were at her farm picking vegetables. At this point, though, the schools are not ordering enough to be a big part of the farm's business. It cost me money to do smaller orders." But what she isn't getting in volume orders, Penny Jordan says, she's getting in the satisfaction in knowing that students are learning about the source of their food. "If young people dont get acces to food then they're not going to know what's right here in their community and what good healthy food really is." Seems like small farmers like Jordan who sell locally could be getting a big boost.
This week, officials at U.S.D.A. announced they would be distributing nearly $65 million to help small farmers better market themselves to large organizations interested in buying local food such as schools.