Upcoming School Food Procurement Webinar

Hi Friends,

On March 19th, the School Food Procurement Community of Practice Kicks off with our first webinar in a series (that will take place every 2 months). The March date is a little last minute, but here it is (REALLY EXITING)! Just FYI, these webinars ARE pertinent to ECE providers too!

For your reference the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable program is similar to DOD Fresh, but not... so if you have a DOD Fresh program in your state, I highly recommend this. This whole series is geared to bring low cost and no-cost solution to local food procurement in schools and early care centers. 

Enjoy!

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Creating a Cost Neutral, Program-Funded Local Food Purchasing Incentive within the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program
March 19, 2026 | 2:00 PM ET
Learn how the New Jersey Department of Agriculture developed a first-of-its-kind, cost-neutral local food purchasing incentive within the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP). Flexibility within the program's allocation structure allowed the state to create a simple model that financially incentivizes schools serving New Jersey-grown produce at least twelve times per year. This innovative approach stretches program dollars, has resulted in more purchases from local farms, and connects classroom nutrition education with farm to school learning through the "Jersey Tastes" campaign. An added advantage is that state agency administration for this program is already covered by the USDA. Join us to hear how this replicable strategy can strengthen local farming economies without additional state funding. Register here.

*This is the first of a State Procurement Innovation Spotlight webinar series that is part of a larger Community of Practice. This project is co-facilitated by National Farm to School Network, Cornell Cooperative Extension Harvest New York, and Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems. 

May Tsupros  (they/them)

Director, Farm to Institution Programs 

Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems 

College of Agriculture and Natural Resources

Natural Resources Building, Room 312A

480 Wilson Rd., East Lansing MI

Michigan State University occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary Lands of the Anishinaabeg–Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples. The University resides on Land ceded in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw. Read here by land acknowledgements are not enough.