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Events & Funding Opportunities​

 Food Safety

​Food safety must be a top priority when purchasing and serving local foods to Illinois children. When it comes to knowing the requirements, there can be federal requirements, state requirements, county requirements and your own local requirements, which can seem overwhelming. Due to the possibility of county and local requirements varying across the state, that presents challenges for providing a one size fits all answer. Therefore, in order to best assist SFAs, below you will find some helpful resources and we always suggest that your first call be to your local county health department​.​

 For Producers (Farmers, Ranchers, Processors, and Distributors

 Local Food for Schools (LFS)

Local Foods for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program (LFS)

The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) is excited to announce that Illinois will be participating in the USDA's Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program (LFS). This new program will provide 7.3 million dollars to ISBE, that will be distributed to eligible schools to purchase local unprocessed and minimally processed food. ISBE plans to issue non-competitive sub-awards of these funds to School Food Authorities (SFAs) that participate in the National School Lunch and/or School Breakfast Program for use during next school year (2023-2024).

The goal of LFS is to increase purchases of domestic, locally grown foods from local producers, small businesses, and socially disadvantaged farmers/producers for distribution to schools in order to build a more resilient local food chain by expanding and strengthening local and regional markets.

ISBE is currently working on guidance and resources and plans to share more information on this funding opportunity, how it will work and how to apply in the coming months.

 Websites/Links


 Scratch Cooking


 Success Stories

Share community success stories on implementation of Farm to CNP by emailing them to lblough@isbe.net.​

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