Connecting Colleges with New England Farms

Throughout the past year, Mass. Farm to School Program Director Simca Horwitz has been working with partners from New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine to increase local foods procurement on college campuses and conduct research on barriers and opportunities for college food services in purchasing local foods. This regional project is being coordinated by our partner, Farm to Institution New England.

In MA we have been working with a small group of Boston-area campuses including Harvard, Tufts, Northeastern, Boston College, and Boston University. The group convened in April to discuss common issues they are facing around local procurement, and opportunities to collaborate to grow their local programs. Each campus is actively sourcing, serving and promoting a large amount of local foods already, but there is consensus that there is significant room for growth, particularly in product categories beyond produce.

In recent months we have been working with campuses to identify the current volume usage of items that could potentially be sourced locally. For example, a large university can use more than 50,000 pounds of tofu annually in its dining halls, and New England has multiple producers of organic tofu made with GMO-free, New England-grown soy beans. The opportunity is clear.

This fall, we piloted a project to bring a locally grown tomato sauce to the colleges. The dining representatives met with Karl Dias of Boston Salsa to discuss a marinara sauce that would use 100% locally grown tomatoes. Working with Bars Farm in Deerfield and Long Plain Farm in Whately, the tomatoes were purchased and then processed into a marinara recipe developed to the colleges’ specifications. This year two universities purchased approximately 750 gallons of the sauce. This winter, the colleges will be working with a number of area farms to line up the supply of tomatoes for a larger production run in the 2015 season.

Whether you’re a college student eating in a dining hall or eating at home with your family, take a look at your plate and think about all the different items that might be able to be produced in our region. Local food in institutions isn’t just about apples and butternut squash anymore and at Mass. Farm to School we’re eager to help dining directors shrink the distance that many of their ingredients travel before reaching your plate.