The state Department of Education invited local farmers to offer feedback on its food plan for the next school year as it seeks to make progress toward a legally mandated goal of increasing local ingredients in school meals. Farm-to-school advocates called it a promising development but said many obstacles remain.

The DOE’s request for information, which was open from late November to early December, garnered responses from over 20 farmers and food distributors across the state, who provided estimates on what types and quantities of food they could contribute to school meals next year. The RFI, which also includes estimates of the department’s demand for produce and packaged products, is the first of its kind for the DOE’s meal program, said school food program administrator Lindsay Rodrigues.

In the past, it was difficult to gather data on the availability of locally produced food, said Dennis Chase, program manager of the Hawaii Farm to School Hui. He added that, while the RFI will provide an important baseline of data for the DOE, Hawaii farmers want to see a sustained commitment from the department to purchase local produce for school meals moving forward. 

“It’s an important document,” Chase said about the RFI. “It’s a big first step.” 

In October 2022, approximately 6% of the food DOE purchased was locally grown or produced, according to the department’s annual report to the Legislature. But the department is still falling short of the requirements outlined in Act 175, which mandates that DOE must purchase 30% of its food from local sources by 2030.

‘Cautiously Optimistic’

From 2018 to early 2020, the Hawaii Ulu Cooperative regularly provided DOE schools with breadfruit, banana, green papaya and other produce for meals, said Dana Shapiro, general manager of the cooperative, which consists of over 150 farmers across four islands. 

But the cooperative’s partnership with the DOE ended amid the Covid-19 pandemic, although farmers are still eager to see their produce back in schools, Shapiro said.

DOE has long faced delays and challenges in its efforts to increase local ingredients in school meals. A pilot program on Hawaii island and Oahu introduced more local produce into select school cafeterias beginning in 2015, but the program was cut short by the pandemic.

Earlier this year, the department also instructed schools not to apply for $500,000 in federal funds that would help them purchase more locally sourced foods. 

But Shapiro said recent developments have her feeling “cautiously optimistic” about the department’s efforts to increase local food in school meals. 

The RFI provides necessary transparency around the department’s food needs, which hasn’t always been available to farmers, Shapiro said. In the past, Shapiro added, the department has waited until the summer to finalize its produce plans for the school year, which gave farmers limited time to respond to DOE’s requests.

Chase said he hopes the RFI will eventually lead to long-term contracts between the department and local vendors. These contracts can offer local farmers more stability and may help them receive loans to expand their operations, Chase added.

“It’s a lot of investment,” Chase said. “So having a contract that shows that you have this commitment from the DOE to buy a certain amount of your product is a great help.”

Megan Fox, executive director of the food hub Malama Kauai, said she was pleased to see that the RFI broke down DOE’s requests for food products by island. Each island has different agricultural strengths, Fox said, adding that school menus should be tailored to what produce is most abundant in the region.

Currently, all Hawaii schools serve the same meal on a given day, Rodrigues said, adding that the RFI will inform the department’s consideration of potentially regionalizing menus moving forward. 

Implementation Challenges

The RFI’s impact on farmers and schools largely depends on the department’s food procurement process for next year.

The department currently uses a bid system that awards contracts based on which vendors offer the lowest price for the requested food, Rodrigues said. 

Rep. Amy Perruso criticized this procurement approach as the “simplest, most rudimentary” process the DOE could undertake. During the last legislative session, Perruso introduced a bill that would have required DOE to incorporate a geographic preference rule into its bidding process, which could give local farmers an advantage over their mainland counterparts.

“They’re not going to be winning bids unless we change our criteria,” Perruso said. 

The bill failed to pass, but Perruso said she hopes the measure highlighted shortcomings in the department’s current bidding practices. 

In the spring, DOE will develop a request of proposals to procure food for the 2024-25 school year, said Weston Yap, the department’s farm-to-school program coordinator. He added the department is still determining what factors, like geographic preference, could be considered in the process of awarding contracts.  

Even if the department adjusts its procurement process, other barriers may prevent local farmers from entering into partnerships with the DOE, said Saleh Azizi, director of the Hawaii Food Hub Hui. 

DOE currently requires a food safety certification that many Hawaii farmers lack, Azizi said. While the certification is meant to protect against food-borne illnesses that often come from large farms on the mainland, small farms in Hawaii don’t pose the same dangers, Azizi said. Local restaurants and hotels usually don’t require the certification from farmers, he added.

“Applying those industrial standards is really hard for farms to adhere to,” Azizi said. “I would also argue that it’s not quite needed. The dangers are not the same.”

Moving forward, building relationships with local farmers and food hubs will be key, Perruso said, adding that issuing the RFI alone would be a “shallow approach” to increasing local ingredients in schools. Some farmers will likely pivot from producing food for hotels and restaurants to the DOE, and they’ll need adequate time and information from the department to respond to school needs, she said.

Natalie McKinney, chief program officer at Kokua Hawaii Foundation, said she’s hopeful the RFI has encouraged more farmers to respond to the DOE’s upcoming request of proposals. But there’s more work to be done. 

“I think this is a really good first step,” McKinney said. “And I don’t want it to end here.”

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.

“Hawaii Grown” is funded in part by grants from the Stupski Foundation, Ulupono Fund at the Hawaii Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.