Farm to Fork

Hi. My name is Steph Hill, and I am a junior at Princeton University. I came to Princeton from a very small town in rural British Columbia. Where we lived, eating healthy, organic food was very much the norm; everyone had, at least, a small garden in their backyard, and often quite a bit more than that. On our property, in addition to basic vegetables, we had raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, plums, apples, rhubarb, chickens. Making food out of the fewest, and best, ingredients available was the norm, and I never gave it much thought. When I arrived on campus there was a whole new world of food to consider, how healthy was the food in the dining hall? Where did it come from? How was it prepared? Soon, these questions were complicated by the beginning of my environmental education. While I had a basic ideas of environmental issues before my arrival on campus, it was my introductory environmental science course that brought the very complicated world of large scale agriculture to my attention. I promptly became a vegetarian (now vegan), and started looking for ways to get involved.

Fortunately for me, my sophomore year saw quite a few things happening on our campus, a campus garden had been started by Ruthie Schwab, and a farmers’ market was under way, started by Katy Anderson and Ruthie. I jumped on board that spring and was quickly introduced to a much more nuanced view of food than I had had before.

So, what does this have to do with campus food movements? My experience made me particularly aware of how much information students are ready to absorb in college. There is a saying, “strike while the iron is hot”, and that pretty much explains my reasoning on how important it is to bring sustainable food into the campus environment. Ethical, sustainable food is always important, but in a university setting there is a unique opportunity to educate students about fair trade, local, and organic produce. Actions as simple as labeling items that are sustainable in the dining hall make a difference in educating students, and it is a great time to make your efforts count. Of course, there is the inevitable question: what is the most important thing to do? Buy fair trade? Organic? Local? Personally, I think these questions miss the more important idea: sustainable food is a guiding principle, not a hierarchy of actions. Try to make your food good, clean, and fair in any, and every, way, and you are off to a good start. The organic movement already has appeal: it is healthy, it is much better for the environment, it is intuitively “right”. I think the work that needs to be done is addressing issues of price, and practicality. Organic farming can grow enough food to feed the nation, and the cheap food we see in the marketplace is the result of some unsustainable practices that are not yet widely understood. These messages deserve attention in campus initiatives.

There is quite a bit going on at Princeton. Our farmers’ market just wrapped up its second successful fall season, the campus garden expanded to about 2000 ft2, local purchasing by dining services has expanded dramatically over the last few years. The Greening Princeton environmental group is campaigning to reduce food waste, including initiatives to get rid of trays in the dining halls (trays have the same problems as large plates, people take way more food, and waste more of that food) and to address how eating options that are not under dining services purview can make their food systems more sustainable, and we are getting to work on a proposal for a digester to compost food waste (and some of our corn based cups and plates) into usable soil (most food waste is currently sent to a pig farm, which is most certainly better than a landfill, but can’t really account for certain items). There is momentum behind the food movement on campus these days; four students from the campus Slow Food chapter attended Terra Madre this year, attendance at several dinners in the garden was very encouraging. I feel that this is the time to name names so I will just go ahead and mention some of the people making these things happen on campus: Kelsey Stallings, Ruthie Schwab, Joe Vellone, Brooks Barron, and Carolyn Edelstein.

We are lucky here at Princeton, these projects have been made possible largely due to the incredible support we receive from our campus dining services (which does its ordering independently, and thus has a lot of flexibility in approaching sourcing of food items, and leaves us without much by way of supplier conflicts), and our Office of Sustainability (a wonderful conduit for student initiatives), and the High Meadows Sustainability Fund, created by a very generous donation from Carl and Judy Ferenbach, which makes so many of our campus initiatives possible.

If there was just one thing to remember when dealing with dining services, or any other campus organization, it would probably be that they each have their own mandate, and if you fail to recognize that and work with them, progress is going to be much more difficult to make, as you are going to be approaching each other from opposite sides of an ideological wall. For instance, the farmers’ market makes a point of not serving meals, so as to not detract from dining services job. We had a small conflict over a vendor who served pre-made salads. While it was not a huge problem, it did pose a slight problem for dining services. A great compromise was found when it was suggested that that vendors expand the items sold at the market to include items from local vendors who could not spare the staff to vend themselves, and reduce the sale of items in conflict with dining services. The vendor’s business improved, and dining services was pleased. If we are going to work within the campus community, we need to work with the campus community. This does not mean do not pursue your goals when things are difficult, but it does mean that one should think creatively to find solutions that can engage all of the parties involved.