[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13718]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     BUYING LOCAL FOOD FOR SCHOOLS

  (Ms. PINGREE of Maine asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. PINGREE of Maine. Mr. Speaker, today I introduced a bill that 
will make it easier for schools to buy local food. In America, we have 
slowly moved further and further away from feeding our children 
healthy, nutritious food in school. At the same time we have watched 
while thousands of family-run farms have literally disappeared.
  In Maine, many of our schools go out of their way to purchase food 
from local farms. But dwindling school budgets and competing priorities 
have resulted in less money for local food options in cafeterias.
  My bill frees up money for schools to buy locally produced food by 
giving them the option to spend 10 percent of what they receive for 
government commodities on food from local farmers. This will not only 
bring healthy, high-quality food into our schools, it will also pump 
more money into our local economies.
  On average, an apple travels 1,500 miles from farm to school. This 
bill gives schools the freedom to buy apples from their neighbors and 
keep every dollar spent in the community instead of traveling across 
the country and back again.
  I look forward to working on this bill with my colleagues, and I 
thank those who have already supported it.

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