Local Food for Schools
Try It Local Office Hours
Try it Local Office Hours are free, virtual drop-in sessions held every other Thursday throughout the 2025–26 school year (through June 2026) – designed to support school nutrition professionals, farmers, food hubs, and farm to school advocates in bringing more local food to student plates. Whether you’re navigating sourcing, menu planning, food safety, or just figuring out where to start, these sessions meet you where you are. Students are at the heart of every conversation, and every question brought to the table gets us one step closer to a meal they’ll love.
Try It Local Guidebook
School meals are one of the most powerful levers in our local food system — but turning that potential into practice isn’t simple. Nutrition directors navigate tight budgets, federal meal requirements, and complex procurement rules. Farmers try to understand how to break into institutional markets. Food system advocates and stakeholders need a common foundation to build from.
The Try It Local guidebook was built to bridge that gap.
Grounded in real experiences from school nutrition programs that have made local purchasing work, this resource translates field-tested lessons into practical, compliance-ready guidance – for the director figuring out where to start, the advocate supporting districts, and the farmer trying to understand what schools need.
Consider this a seed – one that takes root in new purchasing relationships, informs generative policy, and grows alongside schools willing to try it local.
Review the guidebook here.
Try it Local
The USDA’s Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program (LFS) is designed to help states deal with the challenges of supply chain disruptions brought on by the pandemic. The Arizona Department of Education is using LFS funds to launch a new campaign called Try it Local.
Through Try it Local, schools operating the National School Lunch Program can be reimbursed for purchasing unprocessed or minimally processed local or regional produced food purchased and used in school meal programs. Funds aim to support socially disadvantaged food producers and/or small businesses. ADE memo, HNS 09-2023, provides program guidance.
The purpose of this form is to collect stories from you- the farmers, people, and organizations participating in Purchase Local Arizona- and to spread awareness of this program and how it is making a positive impact in our communities.
Please complete this submission form and share it with a partner. While the story you share can take many different forms, we hope to capture any pictures, videos, captions, or standalone narratives about your experiences with Purchase Local AZ and Friends of the Farm.
Contact:
Arizona Department of Education
Health and Nutrition Services
602-542-8700
[email protected]
[use Subject line: “LFS Inquiry”]
New[July 2024] Resources available from “Try It Local”
For Farmers and Food Producers
For School Food Authorities [SFAs]
Additional Resources for schools locating local food and food producers
