The passage of State Bill in 2022 established the Colorado Local School Food Program which provides healthy meals for all Colorado public school students. The program provides up to 90 million dollars to purchase Colorado grown, raised, processed and value added products.
“With healthy school meals for all coming on board, this is a great time because that means that with all students having access to a meal in school that’s more opportunity and quantity of food that producers from Colorado have to sell their product to school districts,” said Nicole Didero, CSU Extension.
Didero says the state has set aside a rate for participating school districts at atleast .25 cents per lunch or at least five thousand dollars for school districts that have opted into the local school food program.
“And that’s every type of school district. You don’t have to already be sourcing local school food if you have no experience with that. Colorado State Extension or Nourish Colorado are happy to speak to them.”
With no set date for funding to expire, schools and ag producers can move forward with confidence.
“That’s really, truly such an amazing feat for the state of Colorado and that we are perpetually funding the opportunity for schools to buy locally grown, raised, processed and value added products,” Didero said.
With any state funded program, there’s a bit of paperwork for area producers wanting to participate. Producers should fill out a survey to get their names added to a local producer list or speak directly with any school food service director in their district and show their standard operating procedures for safety reasons. In addition, producers should also consider distribution options that already provide food to local schools.
More information can be found at:
VISIT THE CO DEPT OF EDUCATION WEBSITE
www.cde.state.co.us/nutrition/source-local-food
FOR PRODUCERS:
Samantha Wynne - Local Food Promotion Program
Manager with Valley Food Partnership
Samantha@valleyfoodpartnership.org
Libby Christensen - Statewide Food & Agriculture
Specialist with Colorado State University Extension
Libby.Christensen@colostate.edu
FOR SCHOOL DISTRICTS/COMMUNITY MEMBERS
Jess Wright - Director of Healthy Food in Institutions
with Nourish Colorado
jessica@nourishcolorado.org
