Christopher Seufert photo
By John Pappalardo
Northampton and Smith College’s classic campus is a long way, with a much different vibe, from the Cape’s ports and piers, well worth a visit March 18 to join the annual “Massachusetts Farm & Sea to School Conference.”
People from all over the state gathered to talk about how we can provide better, healthier, local food to public school cafeterias feeding kids K-12. School nutritionists and dieticians rubbed elbows with farmers, public officials, and the likes of the Fishermen’s Alliance, because we had come to offer our Small Boats, Big Taste chowders and stew as part of this noble, healthy and nutritious goal.
One piece of good news is that this no longer is known as the “farm to sea” conference. The historic, vibrant, muscular Massachusetts fishing industry is now acknowledged not just in a revised name but with working sessions that highlighted the great benefits of seafood, and smart strategies to get more fish and shellfish into cafeteria settings.
From the Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s education and school outreach overview back home to Nauset Public School’s creative presentation in tandem with Chatham Seafood Harvesters, the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries offering support and networking to our working the crowd with Small Boats, Big Taste opportunities, there was a lot of creative shoreside energy surfacing in Massachusetts farm country.
Promoting fresh local produce coming out of the dirt still held sway, but the days of fish and fishermen being mostly ignored are long gone.
Our hope is that our chowders and stew can join the mix in public schools everywhere. But there are hurtles to clear:
Federal nutrition standards must be met to prove school lunches meet criteria for “healthy” and “complete” meals, but those boilerplate formulas have a hard time quantifying a great chowder or stew containing a bunch of ingredients; we aren’t a six-ounce hamburger patty or a cheese stick.
And so we hired a nationally respected school nutrition expert to prepare a report that quantifies how our chowders and stew fit into federal requirements, sharing that with many school dieticians at the conference.
Other challenges remain. Cafeteria chefs are not always comfortable preparing seafood (though in our case all they have to do is heat up a great product ready to go). People also fret that students are less likely to eat fish, preferring old standbys like hamburger and pizza.
Case study successes were offered to dispel that idea, along with smart marketing ideas like inviting fishermen into the schools to share their experiences and perspectives as well as their harvest.
Our chowders and stew continue to offer superb meals to people across the Cape and Commonwealth facing food insecurity; we’ve passed two million servings to food banks and pantries, community groups like Cape Wellness and Cape Cod Veterans, and many others.
Our big hope now is that we can support schools and families directly, through cafeterias. This conference could be a big step in that direction; we’ll keep you posted on progress.
We figure that as young people get more opportunities to appreciate great fish, they are more likely to keep on eating on in the years ahead. We intend to keep on offering them opportunities to do so.
John Pappalardo is CEO of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance