Scaling up 'Local' in School Food Farm-to-school Procurement In Ontario

In North America, farm-to-school (F2S) initiatives that link farms directly with schools have been cited to have the potential to provide a substantial boost to the agri-food sector, especially local and regional rural economies. Limited human resources, food processing and distribution infrastructure, however, have made these direct purchasing arrangements challenging. In Ontario, Canada, a similar decentralized school food procurement model predominates, where volunteers are responsible for purchasing, transporting, and preparing meals for schools individually. One alternative is intermediated F2S food procurement, a regional value chain approach to local food procurement that enrolls additional actors between farm and school. In attempting to quantify the economic activity associated with F2S, many analyses have focused on the direct F2S model or have not specified the delivery mechanism. This paper reports on an intermediated approach coordinated by non-profit organizations (NPOs) in Ontario, Canada, that seeks to model the desired benefits of F2S approaches, but at a regional scale. Attention is given to both the organizational or 'architectural' features of such programs and to the level of economic activity such programs produce. Primary purchasing data from two NPO-intermediated F2S programs (n=611 schools)-one in Southwestern Ontario and one in Northern Ontario-and three non-intermediated or 'decentralized' programs were used to examine the types, quantities, and provenance of fruit and vegetables purchased in 2019 (pre-pandemic) and identify possibilities for and the supports required to expand local procurement of fresh fruits and vegetables by Ontario schools. The intermediated F2S model procured an average of 37% of Ontario-grown food across all purchases in the study time period compared to the average of 19% by the comparator decentralized schools, providing preliminary evidence of the potential value of NPO-intermediated F2S models.