Purchase local food targeting purchases from small businesses and socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, for distribution to schools

New england food for schools is a program the massachusetts department of elementary and secondary education in partnership with massachusetts farm to school has proposed to increase the capacity for school food authorities administering the national school lunch program to procure local unprocessed or minimally processed foods for service in school meals and snacks. The department of elementary and secondary education's office for food and nutrition programs will utilize the local food for schools program funds to incentivize school food authorities with required administrative capacity who are interested in beginning or increasing their local procurement to contract with providers of local unprocessed foods. Through both the expansion and the creation of new business relationships, the department of elementary and secondary education's office for food and nutrition programs will look to create a sustainable model to address food insecurity, improve meal quality and increase the engagement of socially disadvantaged farmers and small businesses' supplies of school food through this opportunity. Through this program, funds will be awarded to school food authorities to purchase from producers, including but not limited to farmers, food hubs, and fishermen, within a 400-mile radius. Concerted efforts will be made to highlight the opportunities made available through non-traditional prov iders of locally grown products like food hubs to create new procurement relationships with socially disadvantaged farmers and small businesses. Technical assistance will be made available to school food authorities and local producers to better understand how to identify interested purchasers and suppliers of local foods, the steps involved in issuing and responding to a compliant massachusetts procurement process and highlighting the value of local food in school meals. The goal of this initiative is to expand the capacity for procuring and providing local foods to schools, strengthening local food systems, and improving meal quality for children of the commonwealth. Quarterly performance reports will be submitted to capture the number of producers, small businesses and socially disadvantaged farmers and producers, dollar value of purchases, and type of food purchased. Annual reports will provide percentages of new marketing opportunities established by purchasing from local and regional farmers and producers, socially disadvantaged farmers and producers, and small businesses. The local food for schools project will benefit two audiences - massachusetts and regional farmers and fishermen who will see increased sales and massachusetts students who will have greater access to healthy, locally grown foods in their school meals. This proposal will support schools to both buy directly from farmers and utilize awarded funds to purchase from regional food hubs that aggregate from a number of local producers. We anticipate funds will support purchases from at least 30 regional farms. Purchases of locally caught seafood will be directed to aggregators that purchase from over 200 local boats. The recipient plans to subaward funds to school food authorities.