FNS Documents & Resources

This fact sheet features the various paths a school can take to bring local foods into the cafeteria with your next food purchase. 

Third webinar in the 2022 Seeding Success webinar series.

Second webinar in the 2022 Seeding Success webinar series.  

This fact sheet explores how schools and tribes are integrating traditional foods into child nutrition programs.

This Geographic Preference fact sheet reviews the topic of geographic preference and how it can be used to purchase local foods.

In this third webinar, USDA Farm to School local food procurement guru, Christina Conell, breaks down the how-tos of finding and buying local food.

In this webinar, the first of the series, Christina Conell and Maggie Gosselin from USDA's Food and Nutrition Service, covered basic procurement fundamentals relevant to the federal child nutrition programs. Topics include informal and formal procurement methods and maintaining competition.

The Department of Defense Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program allows schools to use their USDA Foods entitlement dollars to buy fresh produce. The program, operated by DoD’s Defense Logistics Agency, began in SY 1994-95 as a pilot in eight states. As of 2013, schools in 46 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Guam participate; schools are anticipated to receive more than $100 million worth of produce through the program during SY 2012-13.