Why Your Child’s School Lunch Doesn’t Match the Farms You Drive By

If you are a parent with children in school, you have probably wondered why your child’s

meals do not reflect the abundance of farms you pass every day. According to Heather

Nieto-Friga, H for short, founder and CEO of SupplyChange, the answer is simple. The

system that feeds our schools was built for national distributors, not local farms. And

changing that system is exactly what she is doing.

Spend even a few minutes talking with H and it becomes clear why she is able to

change the system. She sees the food world from every angle. Farmer, distributor, chef,

institution, and eater. And she knows how to navigate that maze in ways that actually

change what students are served in cafeterias every single day.

SupplyChange describes itself as a Swiss army knife for getting local food where it

needs to go. The organization exists to do something that sounds simple but is

incredibly intricate and difficult. Shift school purchasing away from giant distributors and

toward local growers. Their work connects small, sustainable, often underserved

farmers to school cafeterias, and then goes a step further by helping those cafeterias

learn how to cook with whole, fresh, seasonal food.

It sounds simple. It is not.

H’s career spans food justice organizing, farmers markets, grocery stores, nonprofit

farmtoschool work, government roles, and private sector supply chain leadership.

During the COVID lockdown, she finally had the space to revisit an idea she had carried

for years. She saw well intentioned institutions trying to buy more locally and sustainably,

but things kept going wrong. She realized she knew enough about the system to put the

pieces together. That idea became SupplyChange.

According to H, the food served in most cafeterias is tightly controlled by a handful of

massive food service management companies. “These companies often require

institutions to spend nearly all of their food budgets with giant distributors like US Foods

or Sysco,” she told me. “That leaves only a sliver of room for local farms to participate.”

As H explained, three quarters of cafeterias have sweetheart deals with the big

broadliners. “If SupplyChange only has ten percent of a school’s food budget to work

with, we are swimming upstream.”

H’s solution tackles both sides of the equation. Inside the house, SupplyChange trains

chefs and kitchen teams to work confidently with whole, fresh, seasonal ingredients so

cafeterias can actually cook with the local food coming in. Outside the house, they

tackle the barriers small farmers face, from food safety certifications to pricing to

delivery logistics, and help distributors adjust their rigid, corporate built systems so those

farmers can finally access school supply chains. They offer free tools, calculators,

recorded trainings, and a producer network newsletter. Once a farmer is in their

network, there is no cost to join. If a project appears in that farmer’s region, Supply

Change can connect them directly to institutional buyers.

One of the most striking parts of my conversation with H was how her identity shapes

SupplyChange’s mission. As a Mexican American, LGBT leader who has lived and

worked across every part of the food system, H sees herself as a bridge, and that

metaphor is literally built into the company’s logo. She can speak corporate language,

walk with a farmer in the field and talk to distributors. Being that bridge is central to her

identity and to the business. That ability to connect people who do not normally

understand each other is exactly what our food system needs.

Today, SupplyChange operates in thirteen states with a small but mighty team of five

core staff. They advise cities, governments, nonprofits, and universities on how to

unlock demand for regional food. As H says, the biggest myth in food systems is that we

simply need more farms. “The problem isn’t a lack of farms,” H told me. “It’s that

schools, hospitals, and universities are locked into contracts that prevent them from

buying locally. Until those rules change, the demand for regional food stays trapped.”

But according to H, consumers have more power than they think. The more people

know, the more they can influence it. When parents become organized and start asking

questions, it is highly effective. Parents can begin by asking schools about their local

sourcing goals, requesting a meeting with the Child Nutrition Services Director or Food

Service Director, and checking whether local sourcing is written into the district’s

wellness policy. They can also ask whether the district has considered the Good Food

Purchasing Program, a national values-based framework that helps schools shift their

food buying toward healthier, more sustainable, and more community focused choices.

COVID showed us how quickly global supply chains can fracture. Regionalizing food is

not just a feelgood idea. It is a resilience strategy.

SupplyChange is growing its reach and advising universities, hospitals, and public

agencies. They are speaking at national conferences. They are helping chefs rediscover

their creativity. They are supporting farmers who want to grow for their communities.

And here in the Hudson Valley, we have the opportunity to bring this work home and

make local food the norm, not the exception, in our schools. It is becoming a movement,

one that invites all of us to pay attention, ask questions, and help shape a food system

that reflects the place we call home.