Honors student, Abby Snell, has been working with Ron Adams and the Maine Marinara Collaborative on establishing a supply chain for Maine-produced tomato sauce for Maine institutions, like schools, hospitals and prisons.
From Abby: “Maine Marinara Collaborative is working directly with 3 farms within the Somali Bantu community (Liberation, New Roots and Isuken Cooperative) in the Lewiston/Auburn area to grow the tomatoes, zucchini and onions for the sauce and also Spears Farm in Waldoboro for the carrots . The idea was to find a market for their produce at a higher volume as well as some of their 2nds. Forward contracts with schools, hospitals and correctional facilities around Maine allow us to pay the farmers sooner so they have working capital.
The produce goes to Maine Food Group in Brunswick who has the capacity to process all the veggies into sauce at a volume of as much as 400 gallons per day. From there the sauce gets picked up by Native Maine Foods and delivered to the institutions with forward contracts where they can incorporate it into their menus. Our goal for the end of this year is 3000 gallons of sauce which will consist of 7200 lbs tomatoes, 1200 lbs of zucchini/summer squash, 800 lbs carrots and 800 lbs onions. That’s 10,000 lbs of local produce going into sauce that will be eaten by (hopefully) up to 11,000 students, 12,000 hospital employees and around 2400 incarcerated people around the state!”
