09.02.25
Originally published on Food Service Director
On a cold morning in Chicago earlier this year, the nutrition team at the Academy for Global Citizenship (AGC) was busy cooking tofu and peeling ginger to get ready for the day’s lunch, which included crispy ginger tofu and rice.
The tofu comes from Phoenix Bean, a Chicago business, and is one of many local ingredients used in students’ meals.
“It's all really based on seasonality,” says AGC Head Chef Angel Chaidez when discussing what local products wind up on students’ plates.
Along with local tofu, students can also expect to find local tomatoes, apples and other produce when they sit down in the cafeteria for lunch.
“We try to buy within our 200-mile radius first,” says Chaidez. “That's our goal.”
Over in the western suburbs of Chicago, students at Indian Prairie School District are also enjoying farm-fresh ingredients. Director of Support Operations Ron Johnson says that the district has been working to incorporate more local produce to offer students higher-end meals.
“We're trying to keep meals for students still at a reasonable price, while kind of pushing the envelope and offering a more quality product that students will want to eat,” he says.
Like at AGC, the produce offered on the menu at Indian Prairie depends on the season. So far, the district has been able to source local broccoli, bell peppers, onions, apples and more.
The fresh ingredients find their way onto menus via the salad bar as well as certain entrees like a stir fry or veggie pizza.
Students’ response to the local additions has been positive.
“Our meal participation has increased year over year,” says Johnson. “We were in the low 30% participation rate for lunches, and now, we're almost at 36% for our participation rate.”
Incorporating local food into the menu can be a daunting task, but schools and districts like AGC and Indian Prairie are able to rely on distributors and other organizations dedicated to helping school nutrition programs go local.
“We're not trying to do it all on our own,” says Johnson. One resource that has been essential to connecting with local suppliers, Johnson says, has been Common Market, a regional wholesale food distributer that opened a Great Lakes chapter, to connect schools, hospitals and other onsite foodservice locations in the Chicagoland area with local farmers and suppliers.
School nutrition teams in Illinois also have access to resources from the Illinois Farm to School Network (IFSN) which launched in 2015 as a part of the nonprofit Seven Generations Ahead.
IFSN Program Manager Diane Chapeta has been with the organization for several years and her role is to “help everyone connect to everyone else,” she says.
With previous background as a chef and as a school nutrition director, she helps both parties learn to “speak the same language” and understand each other’s needs, she says.
“It's just a matter of figuring out what they need and what the other folks need, and then we put them together in a room or online,” she says. “We train both sides and it really helps to bridge that gap and divide between them. And pretty soon, before you know it, they're both speaking the same language, because now they understand the other.”
Alongside trainings, farmers and school nutrition directors also have access to farmer and buyer profiles for each other which provide “all the information they need” to work together, Chapeta says. IFSN has been offering the profiles for about three years now and is “seeing some really nice results from it,” she adds.
Still, one of the biggest hurdles Chapeta hears from school nutrition operators about purchasing local, she says, is cost.
Chapeta instructs school nutrition operators on best practices to keep costs in check. One of those ways is by combining local ingredients with commodity products.
For example, a school could source local microgreens and mix those in with commodity lettuce to make salads that don’t break the bank.
In addition, Chapeta spends time showing school nutrition operators the non-monetary value of offering local ingredients, such as the educational opportunities it provides to students.
The challenge of rising costs is only going to get harder due to recent changes made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Earlier this year, the USDA terminated funding for its Local Food for Schools (LFS) program and its Patrick Leahy Farm to School Program. Both programs offered school districts federal funding to go toward their farm-to-school efforts.
Established under the Biden Administration, LFS offered federal funding to schools and early childcare centers so they could purchase local ingredients to use in their meals. It was created to help strengthen school food systems and offer school nutrition operators a way to get more local products into their programs as the industry emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Patrick Leahy Farm to School Program was launched in 2014 and provides school nutrition operators and other organizations funding to go toward their farm-to-school efforts, like establishing school gardens and sourcing local produce for salad bars. Last summer, the department awarded a record-breaking $14.3 million in farm-to-school grant funding through the program.
Johnson has been using the LFS program to purchase the local produce that ends up on the Prairie Lake’s menus. The funds will still be available through the end of next January, but the team will no longer be able to rely on that funding after that.
The Common Market and other organizations, including the School Nutrition Association, have come out in support of LFS and warned that the loss of funding will hurt both schools and farmers.
“Federal programs like Local Food for Schools (LFS) demonstrate win-win outcomes,” The Common Market said in a statement to FoodService Director. “We have seen small and mid-scale family farms gain new and steady market access within schools, allowing them to sell their products at a larger scale and reinvest in their operations. At the same time, these programs have enhanced student nutrition and expanded access to high-quality, locally grown food.”
Still, farms, school nutrition teams and other organizations will continue to try to bring more local food to students’ plates. While Chapeta spoke to Foodservice Director just before the cuts to LFS were announced, she shared that farm-to-school programming in Illinois is resilient, and she expects it has a bright future ahead.
“I’m seeing that there is a future for farm-to-school in Illinois,” she says. “It seems like, no matter what you throw at it, COVID or, you know, issues with funding, things like grants, it doesn't seem to stop folks anymore.”
Learn more about AGC's food program and commitment to wellness.