Growing Local: Strengthening School Food Programs with Ontario Food
Posted: April 28, 2026
Categories: Conversations / economic development / Edible Education Network / GoodFoodBites / Local Procurement / Research / School Food News / Schools / Sustain Ontario Publications / Webinars
In light of increasing government investment in a National School Food Program for Canada, there is a significant emerging potential to bring more local food into Ontario’s education system.
Sustain Ontario is pleased to share a new report exploring this opportunity: Growing Local: Strengthening School Food Programs with Ontario Food (download it here). The report, which shares that local procurement could unlock an estimated $200 million annual market for Ontario-grown and produced foods, was facilitated by Sustain Ontario and written by Wilton Consulting Group, thanks to the support of the Greenbelt Foundation and The Schad Foundation.
The project sought to understand opportunities to improve local food procurement in Ontario’s school food programs with a particular focus on fruits and vegetables. The study focused on interviews with Student Nutrition Ontario representatives in two regions of Ontario, specifically the southwest and central west regions, as well as a small selection of producer groups and food distributors that serve them. These regions were selected to help enable a more focused and detailed examination of local food supply chains and the practical opportunities and challenges associated with integrating more Ontario-grown food into school food programs.
The report provided the following seven recommendations (click to expand):
In early March, Sustain held a discussion with school food program representatives, specifically 40 members of the Ontario Chapter of the Coalition for School Food, to discuss the findings of the report and to hear their reflections. Participants shared their thoughts about the research and raised many future considerations for how this work moves forward including the need to:
- Support hyper-local community-based purchasing and food system development while initiating provincial-level bulk purchasing and large-scale distribution.
- Enable schools to access cultural foods, which can often be more costly than mainstream foods.
- Explore how school food purchases can support newcomer farmers in Canada.
- Work together, including with researchers, on integrated mapping of farms, food producers, and schools.
- Better understand the roles of policies, legislation, and incentive programs to move local procurement in schools forward.
- Build the capacity for more school staff or volunteers to focus on food purchasing, food preparation, and associated student learning opportunities, as well as the need for more employment skills development.
We look forward to using this research and dialogue to seize the opportunity in front of us: to strengthen and increase Ontario food procurement in schools.
Access the final report, the webinar recording and the webinar slide deck. For more information about the project, please contact Heather Thoma at heather@sustainontario.com.