Chef Ann Foundation’s PLANTS grant looks to strengthen local school food system

The Chef Ann Foundation (CAF) is hoping that a new grant program will make it easier for school nutrition programs to source local ingredients for scratch-made school meals. 

The grant, named the Partnership for Local Agricultural & Nutrition Transformation in Schools (PLANTS), is being funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as part of its Healthy School Meals Incentive initiative, which aims to to strengthen the supply chain for school foodservice programs. 

CAF is one of a handful of organizations the USDA has partnered with for the second phase of the incentive which focuses on finding ways to bring more high-quality foods to school nutrition programs. 

“Each of the cooperative agreement holders are kind of doing that in different ways,” says CAF Executive Director of Programs Laura Smith. “So CAF chose to build the PLANTS program out of that.”

PLANTS will fund projects submitted by teams of school nutrition professionals and local suppliers that seek to transform their local supply chain in order to bring more scratch-made meals using local products to schools. 

The program will award $500,000 and $600,000 in grants to eight projects, totaling up to $4.8 million. 

Focusing on partnerships

The PLANTS program is centered around collaboration. In order to be considered, projects must include a school food authority (SFA) as well as two local suppliers such as local farmers or distributors. 

CAF is placing such high importance on partnerships, Smith says because in order to prepare scratch-made meals with local products, school food service providers must be connected to their community. 

“They really need collaboration from the other steps in the food system,” says Smith. 

On the flip side, farmers and other local suppliers also need to work hand-in-hand with school nutrition programs in order to begin selling their products to schools. 

“A farmer or producer may see a huge opportunity to sell to school districts but doesn't know about Child Nutrition (CN) Labeling, or even what quantities a school district needs to buy," says Smith. "And so, they also can really benefit from getting at the same table and having those conversations of, ‘How do we even make this happen?’”

Smith says that CAF will also be placing a focus on projects that include small, minority-owned farmers and businesses to allow them to “really have a seat at the table where they may not in other venues because of the size and scope of school food processes.”

In it for the long haul 

Grant recipients will have help from a variety of organizations to make their projects a reality.

CAF partnered with the National Farm to School Network, Kitchen Sync Strategies Collaborative and the Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition to provide grantees with tools, resources and more to get their projects off the ground. 

The grant application is now open through the January 22, 2024. CAF hopes to announce the grant recipients in March. 

While the grant program will officially end in 2027, Smith says they are looking at funding projects that are built to last long after the program’s sunset. 

"At this point it is just a singular grant program, but we don't want something to just exist for the duration,” she says. “We want this to be a true solution for the benefit of all involved in the long term.”