Mississippi’s Statewide Purchasing Cooperative helped the state negotiate lower prices for nutritious foods, avoiding the struggle other states have gone through serving meals that meet new federal standards, Scott Clements, child nutrition director for the Mississippi Department of Education, told members of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee.
“We’ve been very fortunate in Mississippi,” Clements said. “We have a Legislature and state board of education (that) are both very cognizant of the challenges we have with nutrition in particular.”
The new regulations were created under the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which established stringent and potentially costly nutrition standards for school lunches and set quotas on serving sizes of fruit, vegetables, whole grains and other food groups.
School systems around the country have struggled to meet the regulations while grappling with reduced revenue from declining participation in school lunch programs.
In the 2012-13 school year, 47 percent of school meal programs lost money and 90 percent reported higher food costs, according to the 2013 Back to School Trends Survey.
Julia Bauscher, president of the School Nutrition Association, complained at the hearing about the cost of fruits and vegetables, which are subject to price variations depending on growing-season weather. The standards require bread products to be 50 percent whole-grain, but Bauscher told senators products such as whole-grain tortillas and biscuits can be hard to find.
Created in 1992, Mississippi’s Statewide Purchasing Cooperative was the nation’s first statewide child nutrition purchasing organization.
By pooling buying power, Mississippi can easily negotiate cheap prices and find respected sellers of fresh, locally grown produce and whole-grain products, Clements said.
The co-op also coordinates low delivery fees to benefit state public schools, most of which are located in rural areas.
