About a million times a day, children eat meals prepared in
Georgia school cafeterias. And they find a lot of fresh fruits
and veggies on their lunch trays.

“We sell a lot of fresh fruits and a lot of salads,” said
Licia Nicholson, a school nutrition director in Tifton, Ga.

Nicholson said locally grown produce has its advantages.
“It’s better for the taste and the nutritional value,” she
said.

Nicholson and her food service workers prepare 900 meals
every school day for hungry children at a Tifton, Ga., middle
school. “The cafeteria needs a lot of tomatoes, carrots
and other fruits and vegetables,” Nicholson said.

Local Crops, Local
Markets

Local farmers could influence the price they get for their
crops if they’d look at local schools as markets, said Mark
Risse, a University of Georgia scientist.

“There have been some successful operations down in
Florida, where farmers have cooperatively worked together to
supply most of the school lunch menus,” Risse said.

Among other things, Risse works with a number of UGA programs
designed to encourage farmers to find local markets. Local school
systems can be promising: they have money to spend and hundreds
of mouths to feed.

“The farmers benefit,” he said, “and they’ve got a market
that’s readily available to meet the demand locally.”

Connections Not Being
Made

Risse said he’s not aware of any school systems in Georgia
that use locally grown produce.

“That doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” he said. “A lot of
people could work together to see this happen anywhere in
Georgia, I think. It’s an emerging opportunity we should take
advantage of. It’s one type of direct marketing, and I think
the future of agriculture holds this. Direct marketing is the
key to it, really.”

Farmers would have to do a lot of marketing first, he said,
and then focus on growing their crops once they’ve established
the markets.

Farming
‘Backwards’

“That seems a little backwards for a farmer,” he
said. “A farmer wants to produce and then worry about the market.
And really, we should be doing it the other way around.”

Before anything could work, farmers would need to get to know
their local schools and the procedures for bidding and securing
food-service contracts.

“Some school systems do a weekly produce bid. Others do a
yearly bid,” Nicholson said. But she likes the idea of making the
connection. “I think there would be good nutrition there and a
good economy lesson as well,” she said.