By Blake Jackson
Getting locally produced food into school cafeterias requires more than interested farmers and willing schools. Strong supply chains capable of processing, packaging, and distributing local products are essential, yet those systems are often lacking in many communities.
Becca Jablonski, a visiting Associate Professor at Cornell University’s Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, contributed to a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service (USDA ERS) report examining farm-to-school food procurement.
During Climate Week NYC, she will also present an interactive dashboard designed to help policymakers, researchers, and school administrators better understand food purchasing decisions and their impacts.
The USDA report found that participating schools spent an estimated $1.8 billion on locally sourced food during 2022 and 2023.
More than half of U.S. schools now participate in farm-to-school programs, making them one of the nation’s most widely adopted regional food initiatives. These programs have generated economic benefits for farmers, schools, and local communities, although further research is still needed.
“We do have evidence that locally-owned businesses tend to reinvest more heavily in their regional economies,” Jablonski said. “So, when schools spend a larger portion of their inputs in the local economy by purchasing from those local farmers, those local farmers tend to spend money in the local economy. For example, they may hire local labor or purchase inputs locally. All of those things collectively have important spillover effects.”
Despite the benefits, barriers remain. School meal programs often operate under tight budgets, strict regulations, and limited kitchen capacity, making it difficult to prepare fresh local ingredients.
Processed, frozen, and prepackaged foods are frequently easier to store and serve. Without regional supply chains that can provide locally sourced products in convenient forms, schools may struggle to purchase from nearby farms.
“Many times, we think about the importance of supporting farmers, so we focus on policies that directly support farmers in some way,” Jablonski said. “Crop insurance is an example, and very important, but we also need the requisite supply chain infrastructure for farmers to take advantage of market opportunities.”
To address these challenges, Jablonski and partners from Colorado State University and the New York City Mayor’s Office of Food Policy developed an interactive dashboard that evaluates economic, environmental, and social tradeoffs across food systems.
The tool incorporates factors such as greenhouse gas emissions, water quality, and local sourcing considerations to support values-based food procurement.
“For example, New York City sells a product they call Jamaican beef patties, and they’re taking out some of the beef and putting in some beans,” Jablonski said. “So, it still has some meat, but it’s a combination of meat and beans.”
The dashboard is intended to support informed decision-making and advance long-term food policy goals. “We have very complex food systems, and the reality is that tradeoffs occur. So, before we decide to do these things, we really want to understand what ramifications of these different decisions will be,” Jablonski said.
“With this dashboard we’ve created — which I believe is the first of its kind — we can show policymakers and decisionmakers what some of these tradeoffs may be across the different areas that they want to achieve progress in.”
Photo Credit: gettyimages-fatcamera
Categories: New York, Education, Government & Policy