College Students Learn Where Their Food Comes From (and Goes To)

by Terra Madre 2008 delegate Annie Myers

Some projects are inspired by enthusiasm, some by curiosity, or morality, ambition, passion, friendship, or obligation.  The inspiration for Radishes and Rubbish was born out of such a combination of these emotions that Carla and I never doubted our ability to draw others into our work.  We are both novices and experts, both endlessly enthusiastic and quite stunningly naive.  We had no idea what times were in store.

Radishes and Rubbish is (in elevator speak) a series of field trips to food production and processing sites and waste management locations within the New York City region.  The Green Grant program of NYU’s Sustainability Task Force provides the funding for these trips, during which my friend Carla Fernandez and I offer participants an adventure, education, transportation, and a meal, all for free.  The transportation may be by foot, by subway, or by boat, by the occasional rented van, or the rare and appreciated large comfy bus.  The meal is always made with ingredients sourced as locally as can be, grown organically if possible, and always made or sold by people or shops that we know and support.  The participants are ideally freshmen in college, though they have ranged from librarians to chemistry professors, from film students to food distributors to the curious and unemployed.  The destinations are up to us.

Carla and I came at the idea of our trips from slightly different perspectives.  I study regional food systems; she studies socially responsible supply chains.  She wanted to learn about the large-scale waste management centers where our trash so misleadingly seems to disappear; I wanted to share my friendship with and knowledge of several innovative and small food producers and processors in the region.  As students at NYU’s Gallatin School, we both proposed parallel “field trip” projects in April 2008, without knowing of each other’s propositions.  The Green Grant committee told us we would receive funding if we combined forces.  And thus Radishes and Rubbish was born.

We have led our fellow students (and students at heart) to one recycling center, one artisan baker, two urban farms, two slaughterhouses, three cheese shops, three farms upstate (of which one composts NYU’s organic matter), one importer’s warehouse, and the second largest wholesale fish market in the world.  We’ve just finished up the school year with two trips in one weekend: to a commercial rooftop greenhouse on the Upper East Side, and to the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island.

More after the jump

Slow Food Emory on CNN

Allison Archer, an Emory student, did her thesis project on sustainability initiatives at her school—CNN saw it, liked it and condensed it into a 4.5 minute piece, all about how integrating sustainable food into the equation is an essential component of greening a campus.   This is just one example of how Slow Food on Campus chapters are beginning to take the nation by storm.  There are currently 20 Slow Food on Campus chapters, around the country, all working to address the need for a good, clean and fair food system in the United States and abroad.  Students who participate in Slow Food on Campus are passionately organizing their peers, faculty and greater campus community to organize around a fairer food system. 

Slow Food Emory is one of the newest Slow Food on Campus chapters, which makes it all the more impressive that they already gaining national attention for their initiatives.  As they explain, “Slow Food Emory hopes to heal ties severed by industrial fare and the campus meal plan.Ԡ The chapter has held potluck picnics, developed an edible school garden for the Captain Planet Foundation, and hosted a restaurant raffle that has introduced students to local, sustainable restaurants in the community. 

For more information about what other Slow Food on Campus chapters are doing around the country and how to start a chapter at your college or university, check out the Slow Food on Campus page on our website.

Economic Downturn?  Source Locally for School Food

Farm fresh food often gets a bad rap for being more expensive.  Better school food?  “More expensive,” think most. Think again: in Oregon state lawmakers are looking for ways to stimulate the local economy, and it turns out that locally produced food in 91 school lunchrooms may be one way to do it.  Kaiser Permanente Community Fund at the Northwest Health Foundation has analyzed investing in the local food economy and discovered that:
1. A small amount of money can leverage much greater investment in local purchasing.

2. For every food dollar spent locally by two school districts, an additional 87 cents was spent in Oregon.

3. The economic investments in the Oregon agricultural community trigger successive spending in almost every part of the Oregon economy.
Deborah Kane the Vice President of the Food and Farms program for Ecotrust says, “This research confirms that the farm-to-school programs are a viable investment that can make an immediate impact on nearly every sector of our state’s economy.”
And that’s not all. The study noted other benefits including a greater variety of fresh fruits and vegetables and an increased demand for local products.  For example, apples, beef, chili, cheese and corn are now sourced locally. As a result of these positive benefits, two Oregon legislators are now proposing a bill to expand from the current two school districts to a statewide farm to school effort.

To read more about the study, click here.

Profile in Regional Seeds

by Slow Food USA intern Laura Kate Morris

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need” – Cicero

Perhaps you’ve grown your own vegetables in a community garden, infusing them with the terroir of your soil, eating them at your kitchen table.  But that is only part of the circle – what about the seeds?  Nearly all seeds available today have been shipped from states (if not countries) away, and at the end of the season are lost back to the soil.  What if, in the spirit of sustainability, we closed that circle of seed, plant, table… and back to seed?

The Hudson Valley Seed Library in Accord, NY, is trying to do just that.  It brings together rare and regional open-pollinated seeds, a sustainable business model, local artists, the conservation of traditional skills, and … your local library?  I spoke with the founder of HVSL for further insight into how anyone could possibly fit so many ideas into a tiny packet of seeds.

Co-created by Ken Greene and Doug Muller to support their homesteading habit, the company is committed to staying small and growing food without fossil fuels.  Choosing to raise their seeds by hand, HVSL shies away from a bigger size that would require specialized seed-cleaning equipment, tractors, and machinery.  They look toward a sustainable, community-focused model and away from the nationalized corporation.  (To start finding out more about the corporate seed world, check out this post on Civil Eats.) The Seed Library operates in part like your local library, substituting seeds for books.  You can become a member, “check out” the items of your choice, enjoy and learn from them (in this case, grow them and save them), and return them at the end of the season. 

More after the jump

University Dining Halls are Getting a Makeover

This past weekend I, along with a Slow Food USA national office colleague and 300+ college students, ventured to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for the Northeast Real Food Summit, organized by the Real Food Challenge.

What’s the Real Food Challenge, you ask?

First, it’s a campaign that is seeking to make concrete and lasting change in university dining halls, with a target to redirect 20% of all food purchased by colleges and universities (currently 4 billion dollars) towards real food by 2020.  Second, it is a network of students around the country that shares information and resources about how to achieve this goal, as well as the larger goals of reforming the food system at large.

Slow Food works closely with the Real Food Challenge and its student activists so when we were asked to present a workshop during the Summit, there was no hesitation.  While we discussed Slow Food, focusing on Slow Food on Campus, the youth experience at Terra Madre and Slow Food Nation and the youth movement as a whole, students in other workshops learned about procuring local, organic, seasonal and sustainable food for their campus dining services.  They heard about strategies for approaching university presidents and dining service directors, with an emphasis on universities’ and colleges’ present desire to improve their sustainability ratings.

The dining service providers that supplied our meals for the weekend pulled out all the stops to impress the collection of food activists and left no empty bellies.  Overall, the weekend inspired conversations, connections, education, networking, and inspiration for all participants and left everyone with a renewed excitement for the youth movement.

To get involved in the Real Food Challenge (and find out information on the 4 other regional summits happening in the next few weeks), click here.

To read about efforts in sustainable dining on the University of Montana campus, read our post from a few days ago.

Farm to College

All around the country, there is a revolution occurring in University Dining Halls.  In some cases, universities and colleges are realizing the importance of sustainability/green initiatives in attracting students to their campuses; in other cases, these changes to a more sustainable and delicious food supply are happening as the result of student efforts.  At the University of Montana, Dining Services is working with a local community-based food coalition.  In today’s post, Lianna Bishop, a recent college grad and Terra Madre 2008 youth delegate writes to us from Missoula Montana about her role in helping the University’s dining services go local.

Greetings from Big Sky Country – Missoula, Montana!  After graduating from Marquette University in May of 2008, I continued on the next step of my journey in strengthening local food communities at the University of Montana.  In July, I began work as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer working in conjunction with The University of Montana Dining Services and the nonprofit organization Grow Montana, a broad-based coalition that works to support policies that promote community based food production.  The AmeriCorps VISTA program is specifically designed to fight poverty and address food insecurity issues.  As the Farm to College Coordinator at the University of Montana, I join four other “FoodCorps” volunteers around the state to promote community economic development policies that improve citizen access, particularly in schools and universities, to local Montana foods. 

More after the jump

Upcoming Youth Food Movement Conferences

Do you know about all the upcoming conferences for young people involved in the food movement?  Below you can find information about a few that caught our attention—some of them will have panels or workshops on Slow Food and the Youth Food Movement.  If you know of other events that we should be aware of, fill us in!

Real Food Summits - gatherings for the Real Food Challenge

2nd Annual Strengthening the Roots Food & Justice Convergence:
February 13 – 15, 2009
Santa Cruz, California
Click here for website
The Convergence hopes to develop and strengthen networks and encourage collaboration to grow and enhance the sustainable food and fair trade movements.  Join the Real Food community and the energized students involved with United Students for Fair Trade in Santa Cruz for an exciting and inspirational weekend of real work and planning for the future of the movement.

Southeast Youth Food Activist Summit
February 13 – 15, 2009
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Click here for website
The Southeast Youth Food Activist Summit is the first of its kind in the region, bringing together students and youth activists from throughout the Southeast to strategize and strengthen the youth network in the region for greater accessibility and use in growing movement.

More after the jump

College Students: Become a (funded!) Social Entrepeneur

by Slow Food USA staffer Julia Middleton

Sparkseed (formerly Conscious Lifestyle) is offering an exciting opportunity to get your great idea turned into a real social venture with financial backing, guidance from a team of mentors and webspace to display your accomplishments and inspire others.  Sparkseed has partnered with Slow Food on Campus for the second year in a row and reserved one of their 10 new venture spots specifically for a project from one of our chapters.  And, even if you are not involved with Slow Food on Campus—and you really should be—but you have an awesome idea for a social venture, you are eligible to participate in Sparkseed’s program.

Sparkseed is currently accepting applications; the deadline is March 1, 2009.  Go to their website and check it out.  You must be a college student in your first or second year of school so that Sparkseed can work with you for two years, helping you to spread your project to other campuses across the country.  However, if you are a part of an organization—such as Slow Food on Campus—that collectively comes up with a really great idea for a venture, nominate a representative or two to take on the leadership of the project as a facet of your greater work as a group.

If you:

 
• have got an amazing, one of a kind, going-to-change-the-world idea
 
• need some money and/or guidance from someone who has been there and done that
   
• have the webspace to advertise your great idea

check out Sparkseed!

Growing Project Sprout

by Sam Levin, one of three coordinators of Project Sprout. Project Sprout is a student led and inspired onsite garden that supplements food served in the Monument Mountain High School (in Great Barrington, MA).

The best part of the beginning of a new year is when everyone makes their resolution. Every New Year’s Eve, sitting around the table, my family and I set our goals for the coming year. Tasting roast leg of lamb and swallowing bites of chocolate cake, we throw out suggestions like trying to do something that scares us once a month or doing something special for one of our neighbors every two weeks. Most of the time one of my brothers suggests something that cripples us with laughter, and someone else tosses out a hallmark card suggestion that gets dismissed with a little disgust. Usually after dinner, in honor of an old Latin American tradition, each of us eats twelve grapes to bring good luck to every month of the coming year. However, it’s not just that I love setting goals for myself, or hearing Will tell me with a grin that his goal is to cover his clothes with duct tape every day. That piece of it is great, but this year, I discovered something even better. That piece of it is great, but this year, I discovered something even better.

On New Year’s Eve I decided that I would resolve to get garden projects initiated in six other high schools. And as I thought about what that meant, I have to admit, I started to get a little excited. As I sat at the table listening to my family members laugh and eat and talk, I began to think about all of the other people in the world sitting at their own tables, counting down to 2009, and resolving to accomplish their own goals.

More after the jump

2008 Highlights

We thought we’d get in on the year-end roundup action by posting our Top Ten 2008 highlights.

  If it helps, please insert
a) a drumroll
b) a celebrity reading the list straight to camera
c) a lot of enthusiasm, as indicated by the proliferation of exclamation points (!)

10)  A New Office: The SFUSA staff enjoyed a move down two flights into a space double the size of our old one.  Although we miss tripping over each other, we’re sure happy about having more room. Stop by and say hello if you’re ever in Brooklyn.

9) A New Baby: Finance Manager Kehinde Yeku welcomed the birth of her baby girl Ebu last May!

8) New States in the Union: Our first ever chapter in West Virginia.

7) Two Staff Weddings: Deena Goldman in June and Erika Lesser in November!

6) A New National Statute: This year, with the help of chapter leaders from around the country, we revised our national statute.  It’s leaner, cleaner, and clearer.

5) Terra Madre: For the third biennial small-scale sustainable food producers conference, we brought over 700 US delegates with us, including a huge number under the age of 30.

4) A New Book: The publication of here for an article about in in the New York Times.

3) Can’t stop growing: 8,000 new members!

2) A New President: Nope, we’re not talking about Obama, we’re talking about Josh Viertel, Slow Food USA’s first ever President!

and the number 1 highlight of 2008…...

1) Slow Food Nation: Slow Food’s first US-based national scale event.  With everything from sustainable street food to a victory garden on San Francisco’s Civic Center steps to star-studded discussion panels, Slow Food Nation brought San Franciscans—and the country—together in a conversation about the future of our food system.  The event, our first annual, attracted over 85,000 people over the course of three days.