Buying locally is business as usual if you live in Vermont, says Matthew Biette, director of dining services at Middlebury College, a liberal arts school with 2,667 students. "This is the culture of Vermont." Middlebury depends on local sources for about a quarter of its food, not only produce but sausage, venison, turkey, pasta, bread, ice cream and chocolate. The dining service grows its own salad greens in a greenhouse heated both by the sun and by radiant heat tubes that are warmed by rotting compost.
Hormone-free milk comes from Monument Farms Dairy down the road, which Middlebury has patronized for more than 50 years. "What they milk this afternoon hits our tables in the morning," says Biette.
While buying food locally does not cost Biette extra, fair trade coffee does. The requisite 10,000 pounds of beans cost him a third more for fair trade, or an extra $20,000 annually. So Biette made a deal with students who requested the coffee: Reduce waste in the dining hall and the money saved can go toward coffee. So far, says Biette, it's working.
Stanford University dining services director Nadeem Siddiqui is developing his sustainable dining program cautiously. "I've seen organic programs fail because financially they can't support themselves," he says.
The university buys two to five percent of its food from regional farms, including the Agricultural and Land-Based Training Association, a 110-acre organic teaching farm about two hours south in Salinas. Marketing director Dina Izzo sends e-mails to seven Stanford chefs telling them which fruits and vegetables are ready for harvest, takes orders, then delivers them the next day.
Saddiqui has already told the university's big supplier, U.S. Foods, that he won't buy chicken from Tyson Foods because of its labor record. Having grown up in Pakistan, where meals provided occasions for leisurely conversation, he sees good food as a means of recapturing societal integrity.
A slower pace is already apparent at Yale, says English lecturer Margaret Spillane. "The difference is in the atmosphere. There is a much more focused, settled feeling to the dining hall. People are actually dining rather than just chowing down." Sophomore Laura Hess appreciates the chance to eat sustainably. "The fact that I can go and eat really good food with my friends has really changed my life and made me feel more grounded."
++++
Learn how to bring sustainable food to your college!
Sustainable Table
FoodRoutes
Farm to School
FROM E Magazine, a SustainableBusiness.com Content Partner.
