Factors influencing ‘Sea to School’ purchases of local seafood products

Abstract

Local seafood marketing is intended to improve livelihoods in coastal communities and the sustainability of fisheries practices. While local seafood procurement aligns with the objectives of “farm to school” (F2S) programming in the United States (U.S.), local seafood purchases by schools are infrequent. Understanding the impediments to local seafood procurement can inform strategies to support such practices. This research employs Farm to School Census data to identify attributes that influence school purchases of local seafood at both the school-level and regional-level in the U.S. At the school-level, outreach strategies and promotional efforts employed by schools are important in influencing local seafood sourcing decisions, while the percentage of students on free/reduced-price lunch and school size are not. These findings suggest that technical assistance to practitioners is impactful in supporting the development of local seafood markets. Schools that are close to commercial fishing ports are also more likely to procure seafood locally. At the regional-level, North Pacific and New England schools had a greater propensity to procure local seafood than elsewhere. In the North Pacific this could be occurring because the commercial fishery is economically prominent. In New England this phenomenon may be occurring to develop new markets for alternative seafood species, since historically-important groundfish stocks are depleted. Local agricultural marketing is also relatively important in New England. Thus, there could be spillover benefits to local fishers from technical assistance resources developed to support the local marketing of agricultural products.