Posted: | March 12, 2018 10:19 AM |
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From: | Senator Judith L. Schwank and Sen. Vincent J. Hughes, Sen. Art Haywood |
To: | All Senate members |
Subject: | Locally sourced food |
In the near future, we plan to introduce legislation to amend Title 62 to promote the use of locally sourced food. Agriculture provides $136 billion in total economic impact and one in seven jobs in the Commonwealth are related to agriculture. Pennsylvania has the third highest direct farm sales. According to the Department of Agriculture, 93% of Pennsylvanians want to purchase locally produced items. Pennsylvania is home to more than 58,000 farms and approximately 7.7 million acres of the commonwealth are devoted to agricultural production. This bill allows for a deviance from the lowest bidder requirement in the procurement process for a qualified bidder for the purchase of food or food products that agrees to use locally sourced food. The cost of the bid cannot exceed more than 10% of the cost of the lowest bidder. Please join us in cosponsoring this legislation to help Pennsylvania farms. |
Introduced as SB1075