Farmer Foodshare, a 14-year old nonprofit food hub, is ramping up its partnership with Durham Public Schools to bring more locally-sourced produce from farm-to-cafeteria table.
DPS has worked with the foodshare dating back to 2016, but in recent years, the school district has reimagined its cafeteria menus to feature more nutritious meals, which required procuring a greater volume of locally-sourced products. At the start of the 2024-2025 school year, DPS signed a new five-year procurement agreement with Farmer Foodshare to provide DPS schools with access to an assortment of fresh goods, mostly fruits and vegetables like apples, collard greens and sweet potatoes, sourced from farms across the state. The school system is still working with a larger distributor to meet the majority of its food needs, including meat.
Farmer Foodshare works directly with 70 NC farmers plus other vendors, making up a network of hundreds of producers. The foodshare prioritizes sourcing from historically marginalized farmers: farmers of color, women, and new farmers. They also support filling in the gaps for larger farm operations. Kelly Crane, executive director at Farmer Foodshare, says the “magic” of North Carolina’s climate makes it possible to have what she calls a “four season local food diet” so they can source food year-round.
Sourcing locally doesn’t come at a tremendous expense, contrary to prevailing opinions about buying local. The route from farm to table has less intermediaries, Crane says, which allows Farmer Foodshare to weed out unnecessary costs in the supply chain, especially when they’re working at scale to provide products for larger institutions like Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill and DPS. The farmers benefit from the cost savings, too. Farmers working with the foodshare make 70 cents on the dollar on average compared to 14-cent returns from traditional mainline distributors.
As an added benefit, Farmer Foodshare also takes on much of the administrative responsibilities like contracts and invoicing. Instead of the farmers developing an individual relationship with each school or business, and all the paperwork that comes with it, the foodshare is able to aggregate those relationships into larger bulk orders and pay farmers upfront, which Crane says allows the farmers to stick to what they do best: growing delicious produce.
“We make it possible for farmers to enter the bigger leagues with a very low risk on their part,” Crane says.
But for DPS, keeping costs in-check, even for a worthy cause like healthier school lunches, is important for a school district already facing tough questions about its budget. With federal funding more uncertain by the day, the school district will have to lean into its other partnerships in the community to give the school nutrition services program the resources it needs to be successful.
“Not being able to have the financial resources to do those things in the future is alarming, but we’re Durham,” says DPS School Board Chair Millicent Rogers. “We have to make a request of the Chamber and local businesses to continue to invest in our students in this way, because it’s better for the overall benefit of the community.”
The partnership with Farmer Foodshare builds on previous efforts to ensure students are well-fed in Durham, and statewide.
In 2022, DPS hired Dr. Linden Thayer to lead its new vision for school nutrition services. Thayer served as the Assistant Director of Food Systems Planning from 2022 until early this year, and was instrumental in cultivating the healthy food operation.
Then, in October 2023, former Governor Roy Cooper announced (at Glenn Elementary School in Durham) $1.4 million in grant funding to support expanding opportunities for school breakfast programs in North Carolina. The following year, DPS began its School Meals for All initiative which provides free daily breakfast and lunch to all students, regardless of family income or school assignment.
But the next step—creating a more nutritious menu for DPS cafeteria staff to offer students—would take more creativity with a limited budget. After schools reopened following the COVID-19 pandemic, DPS reconnected with Farmer Foodshare and expanded its partnership as part of the district’s effort to reshape student nutrition.
“What DPS has been doing is radically re-envisioning their menu,” Crane says. “And they’re creating this market with their general budget, not federal funds. This is a systems-level change, not a one-off project.”
During the 2023-2024 school year, DPS spent roughly $150,000 with Farmer Foodshare. The next year, DPS more than doubled its commitment to about half a million dollars, according to Thayer. Selling the public on buying fresh produce was the easiest part, she says. Changing the minds of parents and students who are less inclined to give up certain foods, or adopt new menu offerings, would prove to be more challenging because of the cultural relevance of certain foods.
“It’s very hard to argue because people are just visceral about what their kids eat and don’t eat,” Thayer says. “And in theory, my doctor might have told me to eat less meat and more plants, but actionizing that at the school level—we got all sorts of things.”
Thayer established the School Food Policy Council to give high school and middle school students a voice during the menu-making process, and built relationships in the community to get a better understanding of the ways that food culture is important to Durham families.
The program now serves delicious, locally-sourced produce to Durham’s 30,000-plus student population, but it’s not without its challenges. Many schools in the district have kitchen equipment built primarily to house pre-packaged, processed meals, not fresh foods that lack preservatives. Even if there is an appetite for kitchen remodeling in DPS schools, industrial-size kitchen equipment is not cheap; For Durham’s culinary business community, equipment is the most significant hurdle to growth. DPS will have to crunch the numbers on how to finance those needs in the school district’s forthcoming 10-year capital improvement plan, Rogers says.
“Even when you’re building a home, a kitchen is one of the biggest investments,” Rogers says. “But in schools, that’s pretty much the last thing on the list.”
Education funding at the federal level seems to be on the chopping block as the Trump Administration looks to eliminate the Department of Education altogether, but healthy food advocates have a strange bedfellow in Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new secretary of Health and Human Services, who has taken aim at over-processed foods as part of his Make America Healthy Again campaign. Kennedy has created fertile ground for a nationwide discussion about healthier student meals. But Crane says scientists and health advocates were ahead of the curve before RFK Jr. reintroduced the idea into the public discourse.
“I think the rising public awareness around the importance of nutrition has put public pressure on a lot of school feeding programs around the country, and there’s been a lot of growing pains with that,” Crane says. “But still, I think there’s been a lot of joy in people seeing their kids get to eat fresher and more like culturally relevant foods in their school system.”
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