Press Releases

Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) today announced $7.4 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to combat child hunger in Maine. Distributed through the nonprofit Full Plates Full Potential, seven organizations in Maine were awarded School Food System Innovation Grants to help schools overcome the barriers to purchasing Maine-based foods for their school meal programs and establish long-term solutions and best practices that can be replicated in other regions.

“One in five kids in Maine don’t have enough to eat, and for many children and families, school meal programs are an essential lifeline. Full Plates Full Potential is committed to enhancing local nutrition programs to end child hunger in Maine,” said Pingree. “I’m thrilled to see the subgrants awarded for these seven organizations across Maine. This federal funding will go a long way in helping to significantly support growth for local Maine food producers and provide a reliable food source to those in need. What we learn from these organizations can be used as a model for Maine, and nationally, to support innovation in our regional school food systems.”

"Maine continues to lead the way when it comes to addressing critical gaps in school meal programs," said Full Plates Full Potential Executive Director Justin Strasburger. "This significant investment of federal dollars will facilitate the kind of exciting food system-wide partnerships needed to transform our school food system and the health and wellbeing of Maine's young people through the power and potential of healthy, locally-produced Maine foods."

“USDA is committed to strengthening the nutritional quality of school meals and it starts with strengthening the K-12 school food marketplace, which serves as an important source of nutrition for many children,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “These grants will allow schools to purchase a wider variety of healthy, appealing products from local and regional producers, while building a more resilient and equitable food system.”

Awarded projects in Maine include:

Auburn Public Schools (Auburn, Maine)—$623,970

Auburn Public Schools seeks to develop a collaborative, regional, school food processing hub located within the combined school districts of Auburn, Lewiston, and Lisbon. This project will improve the quality of school meals in the region through culinary training opportunities and building capacity for local food processing and storage, as well as strengthen the school food marketplace for local growers and producers. In addition, this project will develop a streamlined regional ordering system to increase local food procurement and build upon existing partnerships with regional local farmers and producers. This project will engage students in multiple ways and through different partners.

Five Pillars Butchery (Unity, Maine)—$1,499,999

Five Pillars Butchery seeks to establish a halal meal program for K-12 students that will incorporate locally produced vegetables and locally raised halal meat products into cultural meals, starting with Auburn and Waterville school districts. This innovative project will address barriers to participation in Maine’s School Meals for All policy for Muslim students statewide, while simultaneously addressing the needs and challenges faced by under resourced, understaffed, and underequipped school kitchens. This project includes strong emerging partnerships with local food growers, producers, processors, distributors, and SFAs. Students will be engaged through taste testing as products are developed.

Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association (Brunswick, Maine)—$608,606

Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association has been providing frozen local fish fillets to Maine K-12 schools at no cost through the Fishermen Feeding Mainers (FFM) program, and through that process they have built relationships with Maine school food authorities (SFAs) and developed an understanding of the barriers and challenges K-12 schools face in sourcing and serving local seafood. This project will build upon FFM by expanding to more schools through the development of sustainable distribution channels, culinary skill building, and awareness raising. It also aims to develop local, value-added seafood products that would increase school capacity and ability to serve local fish. Students will be engaged through Sea to School curriculum and taste tests.

Maine Food Strategy/Maine Food Convergence (Lewiston, Maine)—$1,412,962

Maine Food Strategy and Maine Food Convergence together seek to develop The Local Food Switchboard to serve as a virtual central hub for coordinating logistics and services within Maine's local food system intended for school usage. The Switchboard will function as a central hub with an “operator” to connect and coordinate the local food system with food purchasing institutions, including K-12 schools, in Maine. This project responds to the significant challenges and gaps in connecting, communicating, and coordinating local food system infrastructure, businesses, and food buying institutions that hamper local food procurement, processing, storage, distribution, and consumption. Project partners represent local food system experts from across Maine’s food system, including school food authorities (SFAs), growers and producers, processors, distributors, and other food system stakeholders.

Peak Season (Freedom, Maine)—$1,490,432

This project seeks to make a greater variety of Maine-based products available to schools through Peak Season’s centralized online ordering system by sourcing from additional Maine growers, producers, and processors and expanding their distribution channels to reach more K-12 schools. This project will fill significant gaps in Maine’s K-12 food supply chain by addressing the need for aggregation of bulk and varied local products, providing a streamlined ordering system to meet school nutrition needs and ordering practices, growing the market for small local growers and producers to sell to schools and other large food buying institutions, and increasing storage and distribution capacity to more parts of the state.

RSU/MSAD 54 (Skowhegan, Maine)—$225,887

This project is an innovative collaboration between local school districts, Somerset Public Health, and the Somerset County Jail to increase local food being served in Somerset County K-12 schools. This project builds upon a partnership that began in 2019 to build raised beds at the Somerset County Jail to grow fruits and vegetable seeds planted by students at a local elementary school. This project responds to challenges faced by schools of sourcing local food in this region of the state, as well as the high price point for local produce. The collaboration between the schools and jail will ensure that schools are able to plan their menus ahead and receive the products and quantities they are counting on for their school menus. This project will support inmates to process the produce through peeling, chopping, and freezing and will store the minimally processed produce for schools, helping to boost the schools’ capacity to provide products throughout the school year outside of the growing season. This project aims to grow and scale to incorporate more schools in Somerset County and has the potential to be replicated in other counties as there are local schools, public health districts, and county jails across the state.

The Good Crust (Canaan, Maine)—$1,499,849

The Good Crust is a collaborative pilot project seeking to use convenient hand-held breakfast and lunch foods made with Maine-grown ingredients to inspire processing innovations, supplier collaborations, advance local grain value-added processing, and transform school nutrition menus back toward local procurement. This project responds to a challenge voiced by Maine school nutrition professionals that lack capacity for daily scratch cooking. It also replaces existing popular, but highly processed school menu items with healthier, minimally processed options made with local ingredients. This project will incorporate student voice and engagement through ongoing taste testing to gather student feedback, as well as the inclusion of educational and curriculum opportunities for students to learn where their food comes from.

As a senior member of the House Agriculture Committee and House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Pingree has made fighting hunger, reducing food waste, and expanding access to healthy and local food top priorities. Pingree led the Kids Eat Local Act to support local and regional food systems and encourage healthy meal choices among school-aged children. In April, the Biden-Harris Administration announced new school meal standards to promote the health of America’s children through school meals. Notably, the new standards allow schools to require fresh foods to be locally grown, raised, or caught when making purchases for school meals.

The 2018 Farm Bill included Pingree’s provisions to create the first full-time food loss and waste reduction liaison at USDA, a composting and food waste reduction pilot program, and the Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP) to enhance market access for local producers.

She has also written several bills to reduce food waste and address hunger, including the Food Date Labeling Act to ensure Americans do not feel it is necessary to throw out safe, consumable food, and the School Food Recovery Act to support school projects to prevent food waste. Pingree also cosponsors the Universal School Meals Program Act, which would permanently provide free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack to all school children regardless of income, eliminate school meal debt, and strengthen local economies by incentivizing local food procurement.

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