College Cafeterias: Working Toward Sustainability

COLLEGE DINING SERVICES AND SUSTAINABILITY? Beet the System!

Sustainability is not a destination at which we will arrive; it is a process, a mystery, and an adventure. There will be obstacles, but these should not derail us, for our journey toward sustainability, like the journey toward human equality, is forever evolving (R. Warren Flint and W.L. Houser).

Sustainable College Dining Services: Local or Organic?

"What should our priority be (in general and at Hampshire specifically), local or organic products?" This is one of the biggest questions that I have grappled with over the past couple of years. I started out knowing more about organic food (the importance of supporting organic farmers for the well-being of the earth as well as our bodies) than I knew about the importance of supporting local farmers through buying local food. Buying locally grown food made sense to me on an instinctual level; of course I should buy fresh vegetables grown by farmers down the road. Not to mention I found it to be quite an enjoyable experience because I got to interact with the people that grew the food. It also made me feel more connected to the cycles of the natural world to be eating food that was fresh and in season. Plus I liked the idea of buying directly from the source (the farmers themselves) as opposed to supporting lots of middle people (like the processor and the advertisers and the grocery stores). There was also the factor that I knew that most local farmers used a lot of the organic farming methods but weren't able to go through the process of getting certified, a process that takes a lot of time and money. As much as I was aware of all of these significant aspects of buying local food, I still prioritized the purchasing of organic food in my life.

So initially, when I thought that I would really like to work to make Hampshire's cafeteria more sustainable, a lot of my frustrations with the current situation came from the fact that there were very few choices for people who wanted to eat organic. I saw this choice as a diet choice, similar to people who choose to eat a vegetarian diet, or the Atkins diet, or a macrobiotic diet- there should be alternatives available for people who eat all sorts of diets.

Organic Food = Healthier Food

The food that we choose to put in our bodies is a very intimate, personal experience, and people make different decisions about the food they eat based on their own awareness of the affect their choices have on their bodies. Part of why I choose to eat organic food is because it's healthier. One statistic suggests that "[f]resh organic vegetables are on average ten times more nutritious than conventional supermarket vegetables" (Norberg-Hodge, "Case"). Although this might be a bit of an exaggeration, I am under the impression that the premise is true.

I do not want my body to hold onto the chemicals used to produce non-organic food (chemicals that can make people very sick- "The EPA considers 60 percent of all herbicides, 90 percent of all fungicides, and 30 percent of all insecticides carcinogenic: cancer-causing") and then pass them on to the children I may someday have (Barstow 13). It was hard for me to know that I (one among many) was required to eat food from the cafeteria my first year at Hampshire that based on my understanding, was putting just as much poison in my body as it was nutrition. Not to mention I knew that in supporting non-organic agriculture I was poisoning my larger body, the body of the earth and all beings that inhabit her.

Localizing Our Cafeteria

At the same time that I went into this project with hopes of purchasing more organic food at Hampshire due to the environmental and health benefits, I also went into the project with hopes of uprooting the grasp of corporate globalization and its negative associations from Hampshire using the notion of localization as a symbol. I thought about the notion of localization from two different angles- one, from the angle of the management system (Sodexho- a multinational corporation based in France, versus an in-house food service, run by the current manager employed by Hampshire College), and two, from the angle of buying local food (by purchasing local food we are stepping out of a complete dependence on the corporate globalized food system).

Organic- Beyond the Label

Somehow, I needed to reconcile my feelings about local versus organic food for myself as well as for my opinion on what would be best for Hampshire. In order to expand my knowledge, I researched the local food system and the organic food system. A general report on what I found is that the local food system incorporates a lot of what I would consider to be a part of the organic food system (things that aren't necessarily a guaranteed part of the 'organic' label). For instance, one would think that the organic food system would discourage large corporate monopolizations. But, unfortunately, this is not the case. Horizon, for example, a Colorado-based organic dairy company, "is a $127 million public corporation that has become the Microsoft of organic milk, controlling 70 percent of the retail market" (Pollan). That is certainly not a small-scale, independent business.

Basically what this means is that the term organic no longer means what it used to mean- "not just an alternative mode of production (the farms) but of distribution (the co-ops and health-food stores) and even consumption... Much more than just lunch, organic food was "an edible dynamic" that promised to raise consciousness about the economic order, draw critical lines of connections between the personal and the political" (Pollan). Today, organic is a term designated by the U.S.D.A. and is greatly influenced by big industry. For example, did you know that under the organic standards, a factory farm can be organic, a cow is not necessarily entitled to graze on open pasture, and certain food additives and synthetic chemicals are permitted (Pollan)? As much as I had thought that eating organic food was a foul-proof way for me to support the kinds of businesses I want to support who guide me in putting healthy foods into my body, I learned that this is not always the case. I still recognize that the organic label is one of the best guidelines for putting good things in my body and for supporting happy, healthy farms, but I think that as a consumer I have the responsibility to look deeper. So if 'organic' is not the ultimate solution, what does 'local' have to offer?

Best of Both Worlds

Although local does not inherently suggest organic, there are a lot of small, local farms that use organic techniques without having the official certification. For instance, "[l]ocal food systems encourage farmers to diversify their production, thereby making it easier to farm organically. Intercropping and rotations can replace dangerous pesticides, while on-farm waste like manure and crop residues can replace chemical fertilizers" (Norberg-Hodge, "Case"). What this suggests is that many small, local farmers are abiding by the guidelines that I attribute with organic, guidelines that are more reflective of the initial meaning of the word, without the guise of the organic label. Also, smaller farmers are more susceptible to the demands of their local communities when those communities are their consumers, so if the consumers demand less fertilizer use, the farmer has to respond or find another market.

Now when I think about my personal priorities for buying food, I immediately think of a fusion of local and organic, and once again, organic not referring directly to the government defined standards but to what the word means inherently. What's so amazing about buying from local farmers is that, chances are, you can go visit the farm to see how the vegetables are grown and how the animals are treated. You can talk with the farmer, person-to-person, to understand his/her perspective and encourage him/her, as a neighbor as well as a consumer, to explore a variety of alternatives.

Priority at Hampshire?

As for my opinion on what should be a priority at Hampshire College... Although ideally this opinion would be the same as my personal priority, I ultimately had to stifle some of my idealism in order to contribute to making a change actually happen. I have chosen to support the local food campaign here at Hampshire College, even though I know that some of the food we're looking at purchasing and are purchasing does not meet organic standards (for example, the milk we got is definitely local, but it comes from cows that I'm almost positive take hormones, which is unpleasant for both the cow as well as the milk consumer). In the situation here at Hampshire, we have prioritized purchasing local food (some of which is organic), and to me, this seems like a good solution for now in terms of the health of the earth, the benefit of communities, as well as a symbol for anti-corporate globalization.

Yale and Organic Food Prioritization

Other schools that have asked these same questions about local versus organic have come up with different solutions. For example, a group of students (and faculty/staff) at Yale initiated an effort to buy more organic food on their campus, and their efforts manifested in the creation of an all-organic foods cafeteria. The priority for purchasing food under the new initiative at Yale is local organic as a priority, then organic, then local. The Yale organic foods cafeteria became so popular that the trend is spreading into other cafeterias on their campus. One of the biggest issues about buying organic food, which most people know, is that it tends to be more expensive. Yale has a much larger endowment than Hampshire College (as well as wealthier alumni, family and friends), which gives them an advantage over us to pursue organic food as a priority.

Sustainable College Dining Services and Local Food

It has been a fairly recent phenomenon for people to be able to regularly consume non-locally grown food. Originally, the act of buying locally grown food was not so much a political statement as it was simply the way things were done. It was not until farms started to develop into agribusinesses and food distribution became centralized under corporate control that the global food system became what it is today.

Likewise, local food purchasing at colleges and universities has been going on as long as these institutions have existed. Some schools have been buying local food since their origins, since once again, this was just how people did things. Other schools that used to unquestionably purchase local food have started to buy from larger distributors that purchase food cheaply from many regions and centralize it at various distribution centers. This form of distribution is in many cases more convenient for customers because they only have to place orders with one distributor and they receive all of their food deliveries at once. It is also sometimes more cost-effective because the corporations that dominate this food system are able to purchase food for less than it's worth. Ultimately, the 'efficiency' that is gained through this centralized, corporate-controlled food distribution system is dependent on agribusiness, cheap labor, long-distance transportation, and other costs that tend to be hidden from the public's view.

There are many colleges and universities in this country (the U.S.) that have been involved with local food purchasing around these changes. Some schools transitioned away from local buying and have gradually been transitioning back. Other schools that never originally bought locally are now starting to do so. Some schools purchase local food with in-house (college-run) dining services, while some purchase with outsourced dining service companies.

The following schools are, in one way or another, purchasing locally grown food. There are many more schools involved in the campaign- these are just a few: Augsburg College, Bates College, Bethel College, Bowdoin College, Brown University, Carleton College, College of the Atlantic, College of Saint Catherine, Concordia University, Dartmouth College, Evergreen College, Georgetown College, Grinell College, Lewis and Clark College, Mayville State University, Middlebury College, Minnesota State University, Northland College, Oberlin University, Seattle University, Tufts University, University of Iowa, University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Valley City State University, Waldorf College, and Yale University.

To get a more detailed understanding of the local food purchasing at these schools, I sent a survey to the dining service mangers of schools that are generally located in the same area as Hampshire (plus University of Wisconsin-Madison). Bates, College of the Atlantic, Middlebury, and the University of Wisconsin (as well as Hampshire, which I included for comparison sake) responded with the following information (you will notice that I also asked a lot of questions about organic food purchasing, because of my interest in seeing what is prioritized in different places- to read more about local vs. organic, click here):

College Name: Bates

Location: Lewiston, Maine

College Name: College of the Atlantic

Location: Bar Harbor, Maine

College Name: Middlebury College

Location: Middlebury, Vermont

College Name: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Location: Madison, Wisconsin

UW - Madison is a self-operated food service with an annual budget of approximately $7 million. There are 45,000 students at the University here in Madison, and 6,500 of them live with us. Our Food Service consists of four cafeterias, 2 large carry-out stores, 3 coffee houses, a central commissary operation, and a catering department. All items served to our students are item-priced. We are open from 7:00 A.M. to Midnight (operational hours vary at individual units).

This type of Food Service operation does give us the flexibility to offer a wide variety of food and beverages. We also serve a large demographic population that we also are able to offer ethnic foods/recipes from numerous countries.

Approximately nine years ago, the "organic - local" food movement started here on campus. Our Food Director became very involved and supported this group on campus. We still have organic dinners in the fall and spring for our students and offer a wide variety of organic items in our carry-out stores. Our cafeterias use all organic baking potatoes, and offer organic fresh items on our salad bars. We have been using a "natural" hamburger and have just made the decision to offer just organic hamburgers now that we have a source for them. We also sell organic and locally grown whole fruit. We use fair trade organic coffee in all food units. The total dollars or percentage of the food budget spent is small - about 5-7%, but continues to grow each year. The size of our operation has made it difficult to obtain the supply we need of some items in order to offer them on a regular basis. Also, the growing season here in the Midwest is during the summer when we are not busy and this limits the availability of local items for us to purchase. The cost of the organic items tends to be higher, but with item-pricing, this has not been a problem for us. The students that want organic and locally grown items are willing to pay for them.

We currently purchase our organic items through distributors. We are fortunate to have several. Whole Foods also has a large store located close to campus and they are willing to supply us with items also. We have two local farmers that we purchase directly from. One supplies organic fresh potatoes and the other one supplies fresh apples (low spray) in the fall.

A student group on campus, FH King, does have a garden on campus. We have purchased some of their fresh vegetables and hope to work closely with them again this year. Their members also set up informational tables in our food units during the organic dinners and offer samples of their fresh produce for the students to taste.

A local co-op near campus has just finished building a small processing operation. We have worked with them and the local growers to determine the items they could prepare for us. This has helped them to decide equipment needs, delivery decisions, etc. We do support them and will purchase fresh processed produce from them - items that meet our specification and, food safety standards.

The items that we offer currently (not all of them in all units) are numerous. We offer organic rBGH free milk, organic fresh whole fruit (apples, bananas, and oranges), organic fresh spinach, tomatoes, carrots, etc. on salad bars, organic pasta and pasta sauce, organic frozen retail entrees, soups, ice cream items, cookies, bars, chips, etc.. We feature organic turkey breast, chicken breast, and beef tenderloin at our special organic dinners. We also buy organic ingredients for recipes for these dinners.

College Name: Hampshire College

Location: Amherst, Massachusetts

As you can see, different schools are able to prioritize local and organic food purchasing to different degrees depending on a lot of varying factors, including the size of the school, the location, the school's financial situation, the ability of the dining service to respond to demands for local and organic food, etc. From this data, you can see that Hampshire is up there with the other schools in terms of the amount of local food purchasing we are doing. Our hope is that with continued pressure from students, we will continue to expand our local food purchasing and inspire other schools to do so as well.

Sustainable College Dining Services and Responsible Management

Just as many of the food distributors within the global food system have become more 'efficiency' oriented and less locally-grown and produced oriented under growing corporate control, the management of the dining services themselves have gradually become more concentrated into the hands of corporations. As colleges have grown and expanded over the years, an option that has become available to them is outsourcing the management of different divisions, including dining service companies, which means that companies outside of the college provide regular services for the college.

Outsourcing the management of a college dining service may be easier for some colleges because it eliminates some of the management responsibilities of the college, and it can be cost-effective, but once again, there are unseen costs that coincide with this decision. Some of these costs include:

Students in colleges all over the U.S. have addressed this issue of the unseen costs behind outsourced management in various ways. Some schools have maintained their in-house (college-run) management throughout the college's history. Some have worked with their dining service companies to make changes on their college campuses unique to them, and other schools have worked to make more systemic corporate accountability changes. Some schools have collaborated and threatened (some actually followed through) to drop a particular dining service company (specifically Sodexho) if it didn't make some changes toward corporate responsibility. The following are examples of these different situations.

In-House Food Services

One example of a college that has maintained an in-house food service from the start is Middlebury College. When I spoke with the dining service manager at Middlebury College (Matthew Biette) about the work we were doing at Hampshire, he was in full support of our interest in creating an in-house food service. He spoke very highly of his experience working with Middlebury's dining service, emphasizing the amount of flexibility he had as a manager, particularly in regards to where the dining service purchased its food. He talked about the fact that Middlebury has been purchasing local food from its inception and about how he didn't think they would still be able to do this to the extent that they do if the dining service management were outsourced. His point was that the in-house dining service allowed him, his employees, and the students to more readily influence how the dining service was run.

Working With the Corporations

An example of a school that has done a lot to work with a dining service corporation in an effort to hold it more accountable is Colorado College. This school not only worked with Sodexho (their dining service) to create new system-wide policies around their prison work, race and discrimination, and fair labor on Colorado College's campus (click here to read more about this work), but they also worked with Sodexho to create 'Herb n' Farm,' an organic-when-possible all night café. The example of Colorado College provides hope that it is possible for a college to use its relationship with a dining service corporation (specifically Sodexho) to make positive changes both on campus as well as within the corporation.

'Dump Sodexho' Campaign

Through the organization of 'Not With Our Money!,' a network of activists working to end the use of prisons for profit, students from over 60 campuses and about six national student groups participated in a 'Dump Sodexho' campaign to get Sodexho out of the prison industry. May 22, 2001 was a victorious day for the campaign when the CEO of Corrections Corporation of America (the world's principal prison company) announced that Sodexho (who was its largest investor) was ending its relationship with the company. This decision was surely influenced by the 5 sit-ins, 2 sleep-outs, participation of 60 college campuses, dozens of protests, negative press, and 6 lost Sodexho dining service contracts that occurred over a period of about two years as part of the 'Dump Sodexho' campaign.

The following is a time line of the 'Dump Sodexho' campaign (taken from the 'Not With Our Money!' webpage)

More than seven colleges actually dropped Sodexho during this campaign, including American University, Evergreen College, University of Texas at Austin, State University of New York at Albany, Goucher College, James Madison University, and Wheeling Jesuit University.

Although the 'Dump Sodexho' efforts did not entirely end Sodexho's complicated relationships with prisons in other parts of the world (which you can read about here), they succeeded at influencing the policy and behavior of a large corporation and at drawing public attention to an important issue.

As you can see, different schools have approached local foods purchasing and corporate accountability in a variety of ways. My research into these different examples both inspired and influenced my relationship to this process at Hampshire.

RESOURCES

Working Toward Sustainability

"Green Dining At Middlebury." Middlebury College. The President and Fellows of Middlebury College. April 2005 http://web.middlebury.edu/offices/enviro/initiatives/green_dining.htm

This site talks about Middlebury College’s efforts to create a more sustainable dining service.

"National Protest Fueled." The Ithacan. 2000. April 2005 http://www.ithaca.edu/ithacan/articles/0012/14/news/LSnational_pro.htm

This article is about Ithaca’s sit-in that was a protest against Sodexho Marriott.

"Students Take On Sodexho Marriott." Resist, Inc. 2001. April 2005 http://www.resistinc.org/newsletter/issues/2001/04/pranis.html