BY SARAH ROSS
Oregon Capital News
SALEM- Lawmakers heard a $22.6 million proposal this week to bring local food to Oregon schools.
The law would provide for schools to be reimbursed 15 cents for every lunch and seven cents for every breakfast when the school buys food that was processed, packaged, or produced in Oregon.
State Representative Brian Clem said he was sitting on a tractor at his wife’s family farm just outside Hood River when he wondered if the school next to the farm was getting locally grown produce.
This thought, nearly a decade old, came to him long before running for office and didn’t become a passion of his until he was deciding on the first speech of his campaign for state representative.
The Salem Democrat started working on the bill in 2007 after his election. A similar proposal had been created by the Department of Agriculture, but it was Clem who threw his support behind it in the legislature.
In 2007 he got one position at the Department of Agriculture dedicated to working with schools to obtain locally grown food and another in the Department of Education in 2008. That same year, Clem passed a bill to make Oregon’s official policy to use local food in government institutions like school districts.
While the policy currently does not have a penalty for schools that do not use local food, a few districts purchase locally grown food anyway.
Mel Rader, director of Upstream Public Health, said Clem’s proposal is meant to be a “win, win” for local schools and agriculture.
Rader said schools currently receive $1.10 per student for lunch from the federal government and no state funding. This proposal would provide additional money to the schools and “tie it” to local foods.
“This would be an opportunity for schools to provide a higher quality food and more variety food on that salad bar,” he said, noting that half of schools have salad bars.
The current fiscal request amounts to $22.6 million which would come from the Economic Development Fund.
Clem said because of the current fiscal state in Salem, the program likely will be amended to be a pilot project rather than covering all Oregon schools.
Despite the large fiscal impact of the bill, however, Rader said bringing local food to schools is “absolutely” worth the cost.
“Unlike many of the other things within that Economic Development Fund, there are so many other positive impacts on community health, kids’ health, and the environment,” said Rader.
A study done by Bruce Sorte, an agricultural economist at Oregon State University, showed the proposal could create as many as 806 jobs, split between direct agricultural employees and indirect farm suppliers. These jobs would lead to more local jobs since employees would circulate their paychecks into local economies.
The Oregon Rural Action project has been working in Union County to encourage their local schools to create school gardens and buy locally.
The schools that do buy locally use their federal funding to do so. Powder Elementary School, however, received a grant from the Oregon Department of Agriculture to create their own school garden, the produce of which they serve in their lunches.
Mellisa Free, an active member of the Oregon Rural Action project in Union County, said that the La Grande School District was buying potatoes from a local farmer, fruit from Washington, and other food from the more western part of the state.
“Most of it is the prepackaged, delivered food, though,” said Free, adding that their group has been talking with the district about local spinach and greens.
The La Grande mother said schools still face barriers, such as their budget and that not all schools have full-sized kitchens. This affects their ability to bring local food into cafeterias.
Free said she supports Clem’s bill, which she thinks could break through one of the barriers organizations and parents face when presenting schools with the idea of buying locally.
The proposal had a public hearing on Wednesday in the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. It would need to be approved by the committee, pass both chambers of the legislature and be signed by the governor.
“It’s time to put Oregon first,” said Clem. “Let’s reconnect two of our greatest assets: Our kids and our farms.”
