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The Novato School Districts’ Farm to School program is headed by Food and Nutrition Services Director, Miguel Villarreal. The district serves approximately 4500 meals a day, all of which have some organic or locally produced ingredients. Through a partnership with local distributors, such as Marin Organics and Marin Produce, the district spends up to $2,000 a week on local organic and non-organic produce. The relationship with Marin Organics began in 2003 as a partnership between the two entities. The partnership has allowed Novato to incorporate tasty, organic food into student meals, and was Marin Organics first foray into an institutional market. Marin Organic runs a delivery truck that picks produce up from several dozen participating farms and makes delivers to the central kitchen preparing meals for the schools. The organic product is more expensive than purchases from traditional suppliers, but Marin Organics remains competitive in the bidding because of a special service it is willing to render. After each harvest, the cooperative sends volunteers to glean member fields, gathering up the leftover product (according to Marin Organics website, as much as a fifth of a crop's yield can be left unpicked because it fails to meet the aesthetic requirements of traditional customers, even though it is perfectly edible). Novato USD gets first choice of the gleaned product, and because it is free (without even a delivery fee), it helps defray the cost of the organic product he does purchase. To date, Villarreal's schools have received about 5,000 pounds of gleaned certified organic produce through the program, including potatoes, winter squash, spinach, leeks, beets, carrots, arugula and lettuces. When there is more gleaned product than the schools can use, the department has proposed to wash and sack the excess product, complete with a recipe and a note from Marin Organic describing where the product originated. These will then be given away at mini farmers markets’ set up in district schools as a community service and promotional event for both the nutrition services department and Marin Organic.
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