Finding a Market for Local Food

Finding a Market for Local Food. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

Oregon school districts are looking at farmers' markets as a place to find fresh local food for students this spring. With the start of this year's farmers' market season, some school districts are looking to locate local food items and the farms that produce them. Cory Schreiber, farm-to-school program manager with the Oregon Department of Agriculture, says the farmers' market is a great place to make the connection.

SCHREIBER:  You get a face, you get a place, you get a farm name. Even sometimes you can bring the farmer back in mid-week to talk about their product when they deliver it. So if its strawberries picked in the morning and delivered for lunch that afternoon.

Already, this time of year, markets and their vendor growers offer asparagus, radishes, snow peas, and other fresh produce. As the school year moves on, more items will become available for schools and their students

SCHREIBER:  Food service administrators do express some disappointment with large broad line distributors because they can't always track the product, and they can't always get it when it's fully ripe. That's the other key thing with farm-to-school in conjunction with farmers' market is  you know you are buying product- produce, fruit- at the peak of its ripeness.

In his role, Schreiber is advocating the farmers' market as a platform for schools to find fresh and local food. With more than 90 markets statewide and about 280 school districts, there should be a great opportunity to establish or strengthen the connection. Schreiber says the farmer does not have to make a special trip to the school to provide the produce. The school can pick it up at the local farmers' market. But schools are a viable market that can also be part of the distribution a local farmer makes.

SCHREIBER: In the ideal world, there is actually multiple drop offs that make it worth it, for the farm to go to a restaurant, go to a retail store, and then to include a school.

Schreiber says farmers' markets are a great place for schools to find local food and the local farms that produce it.

SCHREIBER: We should talk about farmers' markets as platforms, places to smell, taste, to identify the farms, to study whatever certification program a school may need. I think it's a great place to get information, make a transaction, and then build upon the relationship.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.