A Maine initiative is helping schools buy local food after federal cuts

Thirteen Maine school nutrition program directors are working with farmers to bring locally grown ingredients into school lunchrooms through an initiative called the Regional Local Foods Project.

It’s part of a larger effort to address food insecurity in Maine, given ongoing challenges to providing all kids with adequate nutrition, as well as recent funding cuts by the Trump administration that have made it harder to buy from local growers.

As part of the program, a workshop will be offered in Presque Isle on Monday to connect school nutrition directors and staff with farmers and regional food programs to help them keep putting local produce on kids plates despite the recent loss of funding.

“We are building the connections to grow the local food movement like spiders building a web,” said Roxanne Bruce, the project’s Aroostook County coordinator. “Once the connections are in place, we can all work together more smoothly and let our community grow.”

Sixteen percent of Aroostook County children are food insecure, according to the Maine Development Foundation. And many families in The County rely on school food programs to help feed their children.

Bruce pulled Monday’s event together in response to the decision by the U.S. Department of Agriculture last month to end a program that provided subsidies to schools to offset the higher cost of buying produce from local farms. She said that it’s critical to connect schools to local farmers and offer innovative ways to bring fresh nutritional options to students.

According to the Maine Department of Education, more than 100 Maine food producers and more than 160 school districts have participated in the federally funded Local Foods for Schools program, which helped the schools to buy from those producers.

“As prices continue to grow for food nationwide, getting more direct channels can only help,” said Hannah Semler of FarmDrop, an online Maine farmers market.

Monday’s training is sponsored by the Elks Lodge of Presque Isle, FarmDrop, and Bruce, who is bringing seedlings and planters for schools. Many nutrition and farm food programs are helping to put on the free day-long training, which aims not only to teach innovative culinary skills with Maine grown products, but also to facilitate direct selling from local farms to area schools.

Participants will learn how to do many things, including create fun vegetables and fruits for kids, order food through the FarmDrop program, plant edible landscapes, start school gardens, network with area farmers and sample pizza doughs and breads from Maine producers.

As part of the training, Semler will explain a newly launched part of FarmDrop that caters to schools.

“We already have a few farmers in Aroostook County on FarmDrop and are hoping to continue to grow that program,” Bruce said.

At the Monday event, Semler will begin setting up a network of pickup locations throughout Aroostook County for schools that would like to participate.

Community members can also directly help schools to purchase local farm produce by donating gift certificates that can be used for that purpose, Bruce said.

The event begins at 9 a.m. and runs until 4 p.m. at the Elks Lodge, 508 Maine St., Presque Isle. Register online at Aroostook County Local Foods Training.