Farm To School Testimony
3-13-2015
I wrote this letter to support Oregon’s Farm To School program. Increases in Funding are needed for stability moving forward. This program gives many producers in our home state the opportunity to share their premium products with an incredibly large local market. Our premium albacore tuna in institutional 4 pound foil retort pouches is perfect for school districts. It is shelf stable with Best By dates of 3 years from production. We supply the schools with 4 easy to use recipes from our own personal household. It only took one year to get our albacore tuna into 6 nearby school districts. Our goal is to serve this albacore into all the school districts within the State of Oregon.
We will be attending the Oregon Farm To School Showcase this weekend. All of Oregon’s school Districts will have representatives attending this showcase to see what is available to them for purchasing. We are hoping to come away from this Showcase with a better understanding of the overall interest in our Premium Oregon Albacore. We intend to hand out over 300 pouches each containing a full pound of shelf stable albacore. We will be including our pricing and company information, and the beautiful Oregon Albacore Brochure put out by the Oregon Albacore Commission. The total investment by me is over $6000. I believe it will be our most important promotion we have ever done and feel confident that these dollars are well spent.
Here is the copy of the letter to the Committee which is a request for increased funding to Oregon’s own non Federally financed Farm To School Program.
Fishpatrick’s Specialty Canned Tuna
818 Otter Slough Road, Reedsport, OR 97467
Patrick Roelle 541-707-0662, Kristi Roelle 541-662-0038
Email patrick@fishpatrick.com
Joint Committee On Ways and Means Subcommittee On Education
Oregon State Capitol
900 Court Street NE
Salem, Oregon 97301
3-12-2025
Co-Chairs Senator Sollman and Representative Ruiz and members of the Committee
I am writing today to support the funding of the Farm to School Grant Program included in the Oregon Department of Education’s budget at $12 million dollars. This is a 9% increase from the current service level. This Grant program provides funding for the schools and early childhood education programs to purchase Oregon foods, hands on farm and garden education programs and technical assistance for the farm to school community. This past biennium, there were over $15 million dollars of requests for this funding. With increases in the costs of food, supplies and staffing over the past few years, this modest increase is needed simply to maintain the current level of programming.
Fishpatrick’s Specialty Canned Tuna currently serves Reedsport, Roseburg, Glide, Riddle, and South Umpqua Douglas County School Districts, and also the Eugene 4 J school district in Lane County. We are expanding our efforts to get Oregon’s world class quality albacore tuna into additional districts throughout this entire state. Farm to School dollars give us continued hope to find a market for our Oregon landed Albacore. This program offers hope to many of Oregon’s farmers, ranchers and fishers to find local markets for their premium products. The close relationships between producers and school districts continue to expand. This grant program needs these additional dollars to maintain the momentum going forward.
Please support the inclusion of this grant program in the Oregon Department of Education’s budget at $12 million.
Thank you for taking the time to consider this request.
Patrick Roelle
Fishpatrick’s Specialty Canned Tuna
Reedsport, Oregon