An Analysis of Organic Farms Proximity to Schools in Maine by Olivia Avidan (‘15) Abstract: This analysis identifies the number of organic farms within a 10 mile driving distance of schools in Maine. The analysis is meant to estimate which schools could source food from local farms for school lunches. Both public and private schools are included in the study, but all higher education institutions are omitted. The farms are certified organic by MOFGA. The analysis was conducted in a GIS environment using ArcGIS software and its Network Analyst extension. Methods: GIS data for school locations and the Maine road network were acquired from the Maine Office of GIS. Higher education institutions were manually omitted from the school data. The data for the 2011 organic farm locations were acquired from the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA) as list of addresses. These lists were geocoded to create a point layer for use in this analysis. Spatial analysis steps for this study included: Using ArcGIS’ Network Analyst tool to identify all 10 mile driving distances from each school location Identifying the farms within the 10 mile driving distance road cluster for each school Tallying the number of farms within each school’s 10 mile driving distance Figure 1 Number of Organic Farms in Proximity to Schools in Maine Results and Discussion: Figure 1 shows the location of all schools and organic farms used in this analysis. The point size of each school is proportional to the number of nearby farms, ranging from 0-17 farms. Figure 2 shows a histogram of the number of schools having a certain number of farms within a 10 mile driving radius. The x-axis represents the number of farms within a 10 mile driving distance. The y-axis represents the number of schools sharing a value of the number of farms nearby. Figure 2 Distribution of Schools Grouped by Number of Nearby Farms Inset A more detailed example of the analysis methods. The shaded road represents the 10 mile radius around the school. In this example, the count value for the school is 3. Analysis shows that the majority of schools in Maine have between 1 – 6 farms within a 10 mile driving distance. This study included 730 schools in total. Implications of these results expose the viability of a relationship between farms and schools in Maine. There is a high potential of locally sourced food in schools due to the high density of farms surrounding schools. Limitations of this study reduce the robustness of this analysis. The analysis does not reflect the quantity of output or product type of each farm. These may impact the ability of the farm to provide local schools with food for school lunches. Subsequent analyses should take these factors into account. Farm Count Schools18%63%19% References 1. Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. Unity, ME. MOFGA.net, Available: m=1 (April 2014) 2. Maine Office of GIS. Augusta, ME. Maine.gov, Available: (April 2014) 3. ESRI ArcGIS Redlands, CA: Environmental Systems Research Institute. Table 1 Histogram analysis results.