E2CCB Food Services Seeks to Bring Local Beef to Student Meals
For almost 2 years, Susan Bates, Associate Director of Food Services for E2CCB, has been overseeing food operations, planning meal preparation, and providing high-quality, nutritious food to students and staff.
Starting next school year, Bates would like to procure ½ steer twice.
“We want to introduce local foods to the kids, because it is beneficial not only to our local farmers, but it is of better quality,” she says. “You build that relationship with the farmer so you know what you are getting — it’s a little greener, because the beef is not traveling.”
Bates believes in supporting local farmers in our school community and advocates for the agriculture department. It is an opportunity for students to learn about where their food is coming from.
“We are in a food desert,” she says. “These kids need to know that the food doesn’t start at Dollar General or the grocery store. It starts here.”
The impact for students is they will further benefit from educational and nutritional purposes.
“It’s educational, we can do Harvest of the Month,” she says. “– it is exciting to see and they will be like oh that’s the farm we bought our cow from!”
This is not Bates’s first time pursuing this agricultural mission. She has successfully rallied for a similar cause at a previous school.
“It worked great, it was cost-effective,” she says. “Sometimes school lunch gets a bad rap — they got local beef from our local farmer. It was a two-mile drive as opposed to coming from Wyoming on a truck.”
Susan Bates reminds us that we are helping with food footprints, relationship building, and costs. This initiative aims to teach students in our BOCES community the importance of supporting local goods and educating ourselves about where our food exactly comes from.
Interested farmers should reach out to Susan at sbates@e2ccb.org and include cut, wrap, delivery, and W9 information.
