Know Where Your Food Comes From with USDA Foods
Do you know where your food comes from? If you can pinpoint where your food was grown and produced, you can make more informed decisions to maximize quality, freshness, and nutritional value. You can also help support local economies through your purchases. The USDA Foods program takes this mantra to heart and publishes state of origin reports with procurement information on all USDA Foods every year. As we like to say at FNS, “All USDA Foods are local to someone.”
A recent report on the state of origin of USDA Foods found that USDA Foods procures food from more than three-quarters of all states. California, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Illinois are the five states with the highest dollar amounts of USDA Foods purchases. A number of items available through USDA Foods are sourced solely from one state. For example, 100 percent of the strawberries purchased by USDA Foods in FY 2014 came from the state of California. During this time, California schools received approximately 3.3 million pounds of this locally produced product through the USDA Foods program. All of the wild blueberries came from Maine and all the catfish were purchased from Mississippi.
States and schools can use this sourcing information and other purchasing trends available on our website to tailor their USDA Foods purchases accordingly, or they can simply purchase with confidence, knowing that all USDA Foods purchases help strengthen the American economy by supporting a local community somewhere across the country.