Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the School Food Hub topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Auburn School Department expands local sourcing under USDA School Food Systems Innovation Grant
Summary
Staff updated the Auburn School Committee on a USDA-funded School-Based Food Hub project that aims to increase local sourcing for school meals, describing farm partnerships, taste tests, new processing equipment, forward contracting and a summer processing plan.
Lily, project coordinator for the School-Based Food Hub, told the Auburn School Committee on Feb. 5 that the district’s USDA School Food Systems Innovation Grant is supporting a project to increase local food sourcing, support farms and integrate farm foods into school cafeterias.
The update matters because it describes operational changes to school nutrition — shifting procurement toward local farms, installing processing equipment, and planning summer processing to supply meals in the school year.
Lily said the district has “indirectly ordered from 23 different farms within a 50-mile radius” for school year 2025 and has formed about six direct farm relationships within 30 miles. She named partner organizations and aggregators the district is using: Blackies Farm Fresh (grant partner), Peak Season (subgrantee), FarmDrop (supporter and online platform), and Native Maine. The six direct farm partners the coordinator listed are Blackies Farm, Willow Pond Farm, Spring Works Aquaponics Farm, Fairwind Farms, Liberation Farms, and Greenwood Orchards.
The coordinator described several menu tests and results: a buffalo cauliflower tasting at Washburn Elementary (135 students sampled, 76.4% positive), a potato-soup sampling that used local potatoes (135 students sampled, 95.42% positive), and a beet sampling at Fairview Elementary (204 students sampled, about 50.5% positive). She said the department plans monthly “harvest of the month” taste tests and will expand student engagement materials (signage, stickers) to increase buy-in.
Lily described forward contracting with three to four farms — farmers planting specifically for the district beginning in January and February — to support summer processing that will be done at Auburn Middle School. She said the district has installed a food processor and expects a potato peeler to be installed around Feb. 15; the district will also rely on a squash-peeling machine at Blackies Farm for certain produce.
The project team is collaborating with the Good Food Council, Farmdrop, FoodCorps, Healthy Atascoggin, Saint Mary’s Nutrition, and Blackies Farmstead for aggregation, online ordering, education and processing. Lily reported a visit from U.S. Rep. Jared Golden’s office and said staff intend to keep his local staffers apprised of grant progress.
On implementation, Lily said the team is collecting data on local-food purchases, student taste-test feedback, a farmer relationship management sheet and cost analyses comparing purchasing and in-house processing costs against distributor purchasing. She said staff are planning to hire summer workers to staff processing and to run trainings with a chef hired for summer sessions.
Committee members thanked the team; no formal action was taken. The coordinator said next steps include scaling processing capacity, finalizing forward-contracting details and continuing community outreach and educational programming.
