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The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

In a rare serving of positive financial news for Rhode Island farmers, food service giant Sodexho has agreed to greatly expand its local purchases.

The deal, brokered by the nonprofit group Kids First, involves agreements with at least three farms to supply apples, butternut squash and potatoes to Sodexho.

The food company supplies breakfast and lunch to 13 school districts. Their clients, including Woonsocket, Scituate and Cumberland, educate 58,600 students.

The agreement opens a lucrative market to local farmers. In the program’s first transaction, the company bought 100,000 apples in four days, Oct. 9-12, according to Mark Jeffrey, a Sodexho district manager who helps feed more than 30,000 Providence students every day.

“It is truly a turnaround point for Rhode Island farming and for improved diets for our children,” said Dorothy Brayley, executive director of Kids First.

Sodexho, based in Gaithersburg, Md., has long purchased some fruit and produce from local farms. But the bulk of its supplies have come from large, out-of-state farms that offered lower prices and could satisfy large orders.

Despite hundreds of acres of Rhode Island orchards, Sodexho has at times ordered Granny Smith and Red Delicious apples from Washington state, and it has regularly bought from farms in upstate New York and western Massachusetts.

Kids First says it took three years of negotiations to alter those buying patterns — a transition that required farms to lower their prices and work together to meet Sodexho’s demands.

Several farms were asked to obtain a Good Agricultural Practices certification, a requirement for all Sodexho suppliers.

“There were bad relationships in the past,” Brayley said. “Prices had to be negotiated that were fair to the farmers.”

The price, 14 cents per apple, is still lower than that paid by farmers market shoppers and the pick-your-own crowd. But given the volume, the farmers’ compromises appear to be paying off.

Hill Orchards, in Johnston, has been selling 50 bushels (about 140 apples per bushel) per week to Sodexho. Those sales generate nearly $1,000 — critical revenue during a season when most farmers markets have ended, cutting off a reliable revenue stream.

“A lot of growers have gone out of business,” the farm’s co-owner, Allan Hill, said recently, raising his voice above the hum of machinery pressing Cortland and Empire apples into cider. “It’s going to help the growers that are still around.”

In all, Sodexho’s local purchases are up at least 75 percent, according to Anthony F. Lombardo, vice president of Cranston-based Community Fruitland, Sodexho’s primary produce supplier.

The Sodexho orders are especially helpful, farmers say, because the company wants smaller apples that are ideal for young students but hard to sell to supermarkets.

This year, a drought has led to a bumper crop of petite produce. But every year, trees that produce a large number of fruit tend to yield smaller specimens.

“It is a good outlet for the smaller apples,” Jim Steere, owner of Steere Orchard, in Smithfield, said. The farm is selling Sodexho 60 bushels, about 8,400 apples, a week. “Sometimes we have trouble finding a home for them.”

In the past, Steere said, many orchards have been forced to bundle smaller apples in 3-pound bags for supermarkets. Given the low wholesale price and the expense of picking and packaging, he said, those sales produced little profit.

For Sodexho, the new arrangement is less of a bargain.

Although local farmers have lowered their prices, their produce is still 15 percent to 20 percent more expensive than many national suppliers, Jeffrey said. That price difference, he said, has stopped Sodexho from relying entirely on local growers.

“We have to be fiscally responsible,” Jeffrey said. “It is going to remain a mix.”

But company officials say there are no plans to end the experiment with local bulk purchasing. The local products, they say, support the company’s farm-to-school effort to promote education about agriculture. They also help Sodexho comply with new state laws mandating healthier foods in school cafeterias.

Last year, Rhode Island lawmakers approved legislation requiring elementary and middle schools to serve healthy beverages beginning Jan. 1. The switch to healthy food and snacks is scheduled for next January.

This past summer, Governor Carcieri signed an amended version of the bill that requires high schools to follow the same guidelines starting in January.

“There’s a big push for eating healthy and trying to get more fruit and vegetables added to these menus,” Lombardo, the Community Fruitland executive, said. “It benefits us, the farmers and the kids.”

In addition to fresh fruit, a variety of local ingredients have been sprouting on school menus this fall.

In Providence elementary schools, salads with locally grown green peppers and tomatoes are now a daily fixture. In Newport, Jamestown and Pawtucket schools, local potatoes, roasted and bathed in barbeque sauce or Italian dressing, recently debuted.

Later this month, students in several districts will celebrate Thanksgiving with butternut squash, harvested only miles from where they will be steamed, diced and buttered.

“The door opened wide for us this fall, and it’s been wonderful,” Solange Morrissette, a Sodexho general manager, said. “It all fell into place.”

bgedan@projo.com