NW Michigan Food and Farming Network Report to the Community 2015 Report to the Community | Page 31

2015 Report to the community

10 Cents a Meal:
Turning On a Dime
Program puts local
produce on kids’ trays
By Diane Conners
Michigan Land Use Institute
What difference can a dime make?
When it comes to school lunches,
it can mean the difference between
canned peaches or fresh, juicy ones
for students. And because of a new
program called “10 Cents a Meal for
School Kids & Farms,” it also means
at least $200,000 for the local food
and farm economy.
In fall 2013, the Michigan Land
Use Institute and Traverse Bay
Area Intermediate School District
launched “10 Cents a Meal,” an
approximately two-year pilot project being watched statewide to
determine the impact of financially
supporting school food service in
purchasing locally grown fruits and
vegetables.
Schools typically have only about
20 to 30 cents a meal to spend on
fruits and vegetables. This provides
an extra dime per meal to buy local
produce up to three times a week in
fall, twice a week in winter and once
a week in spring.
We launched at three districts
initially: the Traverse City, Suttons
Bay and Glen Lake public schools.
The “10 Cent” fund reimbursed
them $20,095.59 the first year. As
required by the program, the districts matched those funds penny per
penny—and then some. Overall, the
three districts spent $84,621.14 on

27 different local fruits and vegetables grown by 17 area farms.
“All of this is helping us to do
more of what we want to do,” said
Tom Freitas, food service director
for Traverse City schools. “And it’s
helping our kids. One of our kitchen
leaders told me this year that some
kids saw the fresh peaches she was
serving and asked, ‘What is that?’
They’d only eaten canned cling
peaches before.
“We want our students to eat
more fresh food,” he said. “And once
they taste it in the real form, we
want it to taste good so they keep
coming back. We know the local
food brings them back because it has
more flavor—it hasn’t been shipped
2,000 miles.”
In spring 2014, MLUI and
TBAISD added five more districts
in the region, thanks to funding
from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Oleson Foundation, and
other donors. The goal is to have a
$100,000 fund. Because the districts must match each penny up to
10 cents, that means $200,000 for
the local economy. Spending so far
this year for all districts is still being
26

“One of our kitchen
leaders told me this
year that some
kids saw the fresh
peaches she
was serving and
asked, ‘What is
that?’ They’d only
eaten canned cling
peaches before.”
tabulated.
“10 Cents” is based on one of the
25 recommendatio