TUCSON — Lettuce leaves kids at Robinson Elementary School ate for lunch on a recent Wednesday morning were grown and harvested half a mile from the cafeteria. Radishes, fresh from the farm, got to them after a 2.5-hour drive. During the school year, they will also eat melons, potatoes, carrots, citrus and broccoli from farms within a 150-mile radius.
Local, fresh food benefits the children who eat it and the farmers who grow it, but schools face many challenges in buying local produce.
For Tucson Unified School District, serving Robinson Elementary and over 80 other schools, poses a challenge that affects 30,000 meals a day.
Most of the cafeteria veggies and grains, for Tucson Unified and other districts, are hauled across the country because institutions need to buy in large volumes, secure consistent supplies, select foods that match their kitchen capacity and often adhere to federal regulations that call for purchasing at the lowest price.
But local food is making a dent in that system, thanks to partnerships between the Tucson Unified School District, Community Food Bank of southern Arizona, a Tucson nonprofit called Pivot Produce, and a handful of small-scale vegetable growers from southern Arizona. They get together ahead of the school year and make purchase agreements that ensure schools get the volume they need, and that farmers get fair pay and a deal in advance of the growing season.
It’s a win-win for Tucson schools and farms that’s been in the making for 10 years.
The model, known as “farm to institution” or F2I, has been tested and improved year after year, and network partners will use the lessons gained to offer the same system in Maricopa County schools and other institutions, like hospitals.
Two federal funding opportunities from the U.S. Department of Agriculture created momentum to help F2I expand: a reimbursement program for schools buying local foods and a grant.
“We’re trying to roll them out together,” said Erik Stanford, founder of Pivot Produce. The farm-to-table food distributor serves schools, businesses and communities in the Tucson area and was awarded $740,000 to build up the model in central Arizona.
The attempt by the Trump administration to freeze and review federal funding has slowed the F2I process in Phoenix, Stanford added. The grant operates on reimbursement, and until the USDA receives clear information about the future of that money, it could be hard to get confidence from farmers and buyers.
“We recognize that the funding is not going to be forever,” Stanford said. “We’re not going to rest on that but we’re going to use it as a great opportunity to start this connection.”
Farms and schools’ shared success
At Merchant’s Garden greenhouse, schools of tilapia in large water tanks deposit nutrient-rich fertilizer to grow a bounty of leafy greens in shallow square ponds. Before starting the aquaponic food-producing business in 2015, co-founder Billy Shriver had no experience in farming — the 59-year-old grandfather had retired from distributing uniforms. He and his son, the founder, had some headaches getting the project off the ground.
“Pumps go bad, roof blows off, pests show up.” Shriver enumerated the troubles. But growing food that kids will eat makes him feel “amazing.” A teacher once handed him a hand-drawn thank you note from students to “farmer Billy.”
“Eating healthy is probably the most important thing that a kid should do,” Shriver added. “That and going to bed early.”
The business, across from Drachman Stadium on Tucson Boulevard, started taking orders from schools the same year the Community Food Bank began trials for the F2I model. Today they deliver 88 cases of lettuce weekly to TUSD and do wholesale to restaurants, Basha’s and Whole Foods.
A handful of other growers also entered F2I in 2015. The first year, growers secured some $32,000 in contracts; last year, the total was nearly half a million dollars.
The volume of local produce is still relatively small compared to the $9 million budget TUSD spends on food every year, but it has huge effects on the local economy and quality of food kids are eating, said Lindsay Aguilar, director of food services at the school district.
Audra Christophel, vice president of community development at the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, was at the birth, through baby steps and growing pains of the F2I model — something she says still brings her joy.
“Anything that could have gone wrong went wrong,” Christophel said about the early years, in which she acted as a coordinator among growers, schools and hospitals. “The institutional barriers were enormous and we kind of chipped away at them over time.”
Aguilar, who was involved with the model from inception, said the network is now “like a well-oiled machine.”
Its configuration has changed some. The number of growers has been in flux — Tucson Medical Center was a buyer but then dropped out — and new partners like Pivot Produce joined halfway through.
Just like the planned expansion to Maricopa County, F2I in Tucson started with a grant and grew into sustained relationships. It worked because stakeholders wanted it, Christophel said. “We were listening.”
TUSD committed to building a pipeline of local food to its schools because they thought it was important. At the same time, small-scale growers needed a wholesale customer base because their farms wouldn’t be sustainable on direct-to-consumer sales alone. The food bank made a bridge.
“People are going to come to the table from self-interest,” Christophel said. “Over time you build shared values.”
One thing was clear. Even if food procurement is demand-driven, without farmers at the table, the model was going to be “a house of cards,” she said. “If it wasn’t going to work for farmers, it wasn’t going to work.”
Growers have equal footing, regardless of size
Sarah Brown grows collard greens, chard, kale, Tokyo Becana, mustards, turnips, beets, fennel, lettuce heads, kohlrabi and garlic on a three-quarter acre plot east of Tucson.
By herself, the owner of Westover Farms could never complete a full, year-round order for TUSD’s schools. But with several other small local farms, she can.
In the fall, program coordinators from Pivot Produce and the Community Food Bank meet with farmers to get a list of crops they plan to grow seasons ahead. Then they meet with TUSD’s food services and other local buyers to present that list and hear what kind of produce schools want, in pounds per week, and how they want it — pre-bagged, bunched or in bulk, for example. Farmers then review demand and discuss how much of it they can cover, which standards they can meet, and at what cost. They negotiate.
“A one-acre farm like mine can try to fill a larger contract in collaboration,” said Brown. A teamwork approach.
Her production goes from September to May and consists mainly of greens; growers in Cochise County can also cover summer orders with produce like melons and squash.
“If there is an overlap, if there are at least two farmers who are growing the same product, we have a week to call each other and chat about what price we want to do and how we want to divvy up the demand,” she explained. That flexibility allows her to do wholesale, which streamlines operations and lets her focus on farming.
The goal is that farms of all scales join F2I, said Stanford, of Pivot Produce.
All growers have a seat at the table to discuss pricing and how to split the demand, so no one can drive another producer out of the market. Currently, there are only about a dozen small and micro-scale growers in the program.
“They both have equal footing and don’t get to take any more power in how decisions are made. That’s inherent to the program,” Stanford said.
Scaling up would be an expected move to serve school districts in Maricopa County, simply due to demand. Pivot Produce would continue to serve as a bridge, contracts would be served by more growers, and Sun Produce Co-op, an online marketplace offering products from over 30 different farms, would serve as the distributor.
Increasing a community connection to local food could also help protect shrinking farmland in the metro area, Stanford added.
“The values-based component of ‘Farm to Institution’ is making sure that farmers can make a living,” said Cindy Gentry, Sun Produce Co-op president.
“You are not only putting food on a plate,” she said, “You are looking to be the future by educating the kids, through supporting the farm, and putting money back in the Arizona economy.”
The future of federal funding is uncertain
Some Phoenix schools are already buying local foods for their menu: fresh pasta, yogurt, dried apples, cheese and local-grains bread, on top of produce, said Gentry.
Demand boomed last year when in late 2023, USDA gave the Arizona Department of Education $4.3 million to reimburse schools for all purchases of local, minimally processed foods through the “Try it Local” program.
Espiritu School in south Phoenix, serving breakfast and lunch to 600 kids, nearly doubled or tripled its orders for local food last winter, said Cesar Ruiz, a consultant for the Farm to School program who is contracted by the school to procure food.
The missing piece is creating purchase agreements, like in F2I, that will secure growers a paid harvest and ensure the school’s local food supply ahead of time, allowing some planning.
Ad-hoc local sales and changing menus on the go have been “tricky,” Ruiz said — even if it saves a buck.
“We feel the stress of trying to make this successful and knowing that logistically it’s hard,” Ruiz said. “What keeps us motivated is that we see that the students are being pretty receptive to a lot of new foods and a lot of higher quality foods.”
The future of “Try it Local” money is uncertain under the Trump administration’s federal funds review. Local sales will shrink if and when reimbursements go away. But F2I partners and school district employees are confident they won’t disappear.
“I don’t know that the program will dwindle if relations have been built and stabilized, and enough (produce sales) volume has been garnered,” Gentry said.
TUSD had purchase agreements with growers before there was any federal money, said Aguilar, who has provided peer support for other school districts interested in replicating the model.
Besides, “it’s hard to go back from having Joe’s tomato,” said Stanford, with Pivot Produce. “The quality and the story that goes along with it holds value beyond the reimbursement.”
Clara Migoya covers agriculture and water issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Send tips or questions to [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Local food movement finds its way to school lunch trays in Arizona
