Incorporating Local Preference Language in School Food Contracts

Does your Educational Collaborative facilitate food purchasing on behalf of your member districts? Is your school district interested in using contracts and RFPs as tools for purchasing more locally grown food?

If so, Massachusetts Farm to School can help your districts incorporate more locally grown foods into school meals through innovative and effective food procurement practices. Incorporating more of these foods can help grow meal program participation and promotes greater consumption of healthy foods, all while supporting the local economy.

Mass. Farm to School can work with educational collaboratives to craft effective food purchasing solicitations (RFPs and/or IFBs) that target local foods. We’ve created this new resource  to share best practices for targeting local foods and our staff are available to provide technical assistance to your collaborative. Together we can harness the power of collaborative purchasing to expand access to healthy, local foods for students across the Commonwealth.