The Food Trust recently completed facilitating a two-year local food purchasing incentive project called Quarter Back for Local. This pilot project provided Philadelphia Early Care and Education (ECE) sites with $0.25 for each meal that includes Pennsylvania-grown fruits and/or vegetables and aims to get more locally grown food into school meals and to support Pennsylvania local farmers.

The Food Trust launched the project in 2022 with two ECE programs – The Caring Center and Children’s Village – and welcomed an additional ECE program – Somerset Academy Early Learning Center – in 2023. Over the course of 2 years, the program distributed over $40,000 to the three ECEs to reimburse $0.25 per meal that included local produce. Over 150,000 meals that included local produce were served to approximately 681 children at the participating ECE programs.

As a result of participating in the program, all three ECE sites reported that they were able to increase the amount of local food they were able to purchase and serve in meals, connect with more local farmers and producers, increase their student’s willingness to try new fruits and vegetables, and increase families exposure to fruits and vegetables. The three sites also shared that they plan to continue serving locally sourced meals after completing the program.

“Kids learned to identify fruits and vegetables by color and name, and they started asking questions about how foods grow.” 

– Luz Rodriguez Williams, Compliance & Facilities Administrator, Somerset Academy Early Learning Center, Inc.

Check out the evaluation report to learn more about the results of the Quarter Back for Local pilot program. We hope this report helps stakeholders across Pennsylvania apply learnings to their own local food procurement efforts!