School-Supported Agriculture for Downeast Maine

School-Supported Agriculture for Downeast Maine

Summary

Healthy Acadia’s Farm to School Coordinators brought together twenty-three schools and fifteen farms in Hancock and Washington Counties this spring to enter into advance purchase School Supported Agriculture (SSA) Agreements. The Coordinators updated a directory of producers to assist school cooks in finding farmers in their vicinity and conducted media outreach to raise awareness of the program. We have begun evaluating this year’s program through written surveys and phone interviews of participating school cooks and farmers.

Objectives/Performance Targets

Objective 1: Prepare farms and schools with information.
• March – May 2010: Project leader will prepare a guide for farmers with purchasing, delivery and payment requirements for school food service.
o This was not completed due to staff turnover. We will publish this guide in the spring 2011 to be given to farmers in preparation for the second year of SSAs. It will include lessons learned from year one.

• April – June 2010: A print version of the farmer directory will be updated and distributed to sixty schools. Project leader will also prepare recipes and seasonal menus that spotlight and maximize local vegetable use in school lunches.
o We updated the Downeast Maine Directory of Producers and added Washington County producers, providing 80 schools and ten institutions with direct access to more than 70 local producers in Hancock and Washington counties in February 2010.
o Washington County’s Farm to School coordinator provided food service staff with technical support that included menu selection and sourcing of local ingredients, to the 14 participating Maine Harvest Lunch schools impacting 2000 students in 2010.

Objective 2: Solidify strong partnerships between schools and farms.
• March – October 2010: The project leader and Washington County Farm to School Coordinator will convene meetings between farmers and school cooks to introduce and solidify SSA agreements. Ten schools will agree to enter into SSA agreements with farms in the first stage. Over the course of the agreement, the project leader and coordinator will provide technical assistance to participating schools and farms.
o We significantly exceeded our expectations with 23 schools entering into agreements with 15 farms. The Farm to School Coordinators convened meetings between school cooks and farmers to develop SSA agreements that were specifically tailored to meet their individual needs. We provided technical assistance as needed on an ongoing basis to both parties.

• December – March 2011: After an evaluation of the pilot project, the project leader will write a best practices guide for farmers and school cooks. Then she will hold a farmer workshop to generate more support for the program and expand the number of schools and farms participating in SSA agreements. In the second stage of SSA agreements, the goal is for twenty schools to enter into contracts with local farmers.
o Plans are in the works for this workshop and subsequent best practices guide. We have already sent a survey to participating farmers to gather their feedback, and plan to invite them to a workshop this winter to get more detailed input and share successes and setbacks in a peer learning setting.
o We anticipate that the number of participating schools could increase to over 30 in the second year.

Objective 3: Build community awareness and disseminate program progress.
• May – September 2010: Prepare and distribute outreach materials for school staff to provide parents (i.e., a flier about the SSA program and the farmer selling to the school); (Regina Yes) create a media advocacy campaign that will reach across the two-county region (i.e., regional and area press releases
o We facilitated media outreach resulting in numerous articles in weekly papers and a one-hour farm to school radio broadcast on WERU Community Radio; raising awareness among parents, school officials and the community at large about farm to school and the SSA program.
o Posters were designed and distributed to each participating SSA school introducing the local farm, farmer and farm specialties provided.

• May – September 2011: Write a guide to using SSA contract agreements and distribute it through the Northeast and the National Farm to School network and Maine Local Foods Coalition.
o We have already begun sharing our model with diverse partners including at a workshop on marketing to schools at MOFGA’s Farmer to Farmer Conference and through the Maine Farm to School Workgroup. Presentation outlines and audience questions and feedback are providing the basis from which to publish a guide this summer. We will complete the guide and distribute it next summer.

Accomplishments/Milestones

We began by updating and reprinting our Downeast Maine Directory of Producers in February. This involved contacting regional farmers to assess interest and product availability first by survey and then by phone, and to ensure accurate contact information. This 15 page guide was distributed to the region’s 80 schools, providing easy access to over 70 local producers. In March, we began the process of connecting schools and farms to develop SSA agreements. This was done through phone calls and visits to school cooks, inquiring whether they had interest in an SSA, and if they had an existing relationship with a farm that they would like to strengthen through a formal agreement. In some cases we suggested interested farmers in the area. We then brought school cooks and farmers together for face-to-face meetings to determine agreement details such as number of deliveries, products and approximate quantities. It was stressed that they were entering into a good faith, non-binding agreement which could be altered by either party at any time. We had originally set out to engage ten schools and were pleasantly surprised when twenty-three ended up signing agreements, including two entire school districts. Over the summer we conducted media outreach including writing press releases, creating posters for each school featuring their SSA farmer, and being interviewed on WERU Community Radio. Beginning in August we provided technical assistance to schools and farms as needed as they executed their SSA agreements. We are currently using written surveys and phone interviews with school cooks and farmers to get deeper insights into the successes and challenges of the SSAs, as well as amounts spent on the farm products.

The only major change we experienced was that our Hancock County Farm to School Coordinator relocated in early summer. We filled her position with an existing Healthy Acadia staff person, Katie Freedman, who has been working in the area of community food security and access for several years.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

Our impact on both school and farm audiences is significant. We had stronger participation than anticipated from both parties, and based on our initial evaluation, both were extremely satisfied by the arrangement. Most school cooks who were interviewed stated that they would be willing to do another SSA next year, even those that had some kinks to work out with their farmer early on. We estimate that over $3,000 was spent on the SSAs, which does not include money spent on other local purchases such as Maine Harvest Lunch. Additionally, there were several schools that were unable to give us exact figures that were limited to the SSAs, so we are confident this is a conservative estimate.

Collaborators: