Midd leads local food initiative

Author: Cloe Shasha

Middlebury College's local food initiative is a couple steps ahead of other colleges and universities. The amount of local food in Middlebury's dining halls - 25 percent from Vermont alone - is a number higher than at most other institutions. Some other colleges and universities across the country, however, have also made enormous progress in recent years towards a sustainable food culture.

In 2000, an environmental health and policy class sparked interest in a group of Yale students to bring sustainable food to the University. As they learned more about the harmful effects of pesticides, they grew more driven to develop a sustainable food project and integrate local foods into the dining hall menus.

In 2003, the Yale Sustainable Food Project started the Yale Farm and a farmers' market and focused its first efforts on the dining system at Berkeley, one of the residential colleges at Yale, similar to a commons Middlebury's system. For two years, 100 percent of the food in Berkeley's dining hall was sustainable, according to the University's sustainability purchasing guidelines. These guidelines were established with the help of the students involved in the project. Local food is bought first, followed by certified fair trade and organic foods, followed by the next best alternatives, depending on the particular ingredient.

"Since 2005, all of the dining halls - including the one at Berkeley - serve sustainable food," said Sustainable Food Project Program Coordinator Hannah Burnett. "The amount of sustainable food available has increased each year, and now we're at 40 percent in every dining hall," said Sustainable Food "We've collaborated with Yale Dining to make this happen, and since they became self-operated last year, they're even more poised to make change and focus on issues of sustainability."

UC-Santa Cruz (UC-SC) started a local foods initiative in 2004. In the university's dining halls, 25 percent of the produce purchased is local and organic. They also buy organic rice and milk.

"The produce comes from a consortium that we helped form so a group of local organic farmers could bring all their produce to a central location and then only one truck would come to campus," explained Scott Berlin, the director for dining and hospitality services at UC-SC. "There is also a connection to our campus farm with all of these growers in that they work with each other to utilize the research and training that the campus provides on sustainable farming techniques."

By participating in the Real Food Challenge, UC Santa Cruz hopes to have 20 percent of all of their food purchases be sustainable, local or organic. This would almost double their current purchasing trends.

Berlin mentioned that with more local foods, the university will have to work on adjusting students' food expectations and foster willingness to eat seasonal food.

"We are blessed to live in one of the most fertile produce areas in the world," Berlin continued. "Sustainability is truly driven by region. With these resources available and with our year-round climate we have access to many food items for 12 months a year."

For many years, Williams College has been working on a sustainable food initiative. In the past four years, the college has replaced all of their conventional milk with local, hormone-free milk, and they have increased their overall consumption of local and organic foods by 30 percent. They buy almost all of their vegetables locally.

Williams' dining services have membership to Berkshire Grown, which is an organization that promotes sustainability in agricultural practices. The college has maintained a strong relationship with the farming community for several years, according to Chris Abayasinghe, assistant director of dining at Williams.

"In the last five years, we have accelerated our local food initiatives," Abayasinghe said. "We purchase $300,000 of local food per year, which comes out to about 10 percent of our budget."

One of Williams' sustainability goals includes developing more relationships with local farms and with the town, which they believe will expand their options for nearby food sources. But Abayasinghe said that purchasing only local food does not seem like a viable option for Williams, at least not in the near future.

"If we were to switch all of our food to local, the local farms would not be able to supply us with the amount that we would need," he said.

Williams students appreciate the sustainability efforts of the college, according to Abayasinghe. They value eating healthful, fresh and local foods, and a number of students are interested in helping the college achieve its sustainability goals.

More colleges and universities continue to express interest in incorporating sustainable food into their food budget plans. By consulting schools like Middlebury, Yale, UC-SC and Williams, other institutions can get a sense of how to initiate and deepen sustainability efforts in a time of economic instability.