Feeding College Students One Garden at a Time | Civil Eats

Feeding College Students One Garden at a Time

With all the current discussion around improving school food, university food has been less-covered territory. Sure, it isn’t always funded by the government, but changing the way college students eat is an opportunity for better student health and the local economy. That was the impetus for creating Bon Appetit Management Company’s Comprehensive Student Garden Guide [pdf], a road map to starting, promoting and managing campus vegetable gardens as a force for bringing local produce to the college lunch room — where a campus full of hungry mouths and a budget means buying from student farmers becomes a logical option.

Most college campuses have land to spare — and now as farming has become a focus of interest for students, and willing participants are lining up to volunteer their time planting, weeding and harvesting across the US, there couldn’t be a better time to think about starting a farm on campus. The idea behind the guide was to empower students to harness this momentum, showing step-by-step how to start a campus farm, as well as providing students with resources for seasonal planning, maintaining relationships with buyers, food safety, building community around the garden, and forming composting partnerships so that it continues to thrive.

One of the most successful university farm-to-lunchroom projects is the Yale Sustainable Food Project, which began in 2001 after students began pushing for better food in their lunchrooms. I wrote the director of the project, Melina Shannon-DiPietro, because I wanted to get an idea of what is possible for a student farm, even on a small plot in the northeast, and to ask her how this program has affected the campus community. This is what she had to say:

The farm is one-acre, and the produce grown at the farm is shared with volunteers, sold at farmers market, and tops pizza from our wood-burning hearth oven. In one year, this one acre inspired nearly 30 interns to make 1,500 pizzas in our brick oven, more than 1,300 students to volunteer during afternoon workdays, and more than 300 community members and school children to get their hands dirty. Another 600 students visited the farm for events like a pig roast and a harvest festival. We grow 300 varieties of vegetables, fruit, flowers, and herbs, and we grow in all 4 seasons. One of the most exciting numbers last year is that over 850 students took courses related to food and agriculture. Students are hungry for this work.

The farm is an entry point for students to become involved in other initiatives involving food, agriculture, and the environment. Students talk about how important the Yale Farm is to them as a space to learn with their hands and minds, a place to enjoy long conversations with friends while working, and a place to spend time outdoors and develop a connection to land and food. They also tell us that the Yale Farm is the place where they  first connect the dots and understand that the way we live is a political act, an ethical act, and even, today, part of a movement.

Each of these gardens around the nation can teach students what good food means – what tastes good, what’s good for our health, what’s good for farmers and for the land, and what’s good for our communities.  These gardens can teach our children to be better learners by opening their senses, to be environmental stewards by connecting them to the land, and to be better citizens by connecting them to community.

We’ll bring the news to you.

Get the weekly Civil Eats newsletter, delivered to your inbox.

Sounds terrific, right? So as the school year begins in this period of new thinking on agriculture, here is a tool that students can use. Besides the vital world of books, an opportunity awaits to get dirty and produce food — right outside of your dorm room. It is a chance to build a community on campus around food, while turning the tide on a corporate-dominated food system that is making us sick.

Today’s food system is complex.

Invest in nonprofit journalism that tells the whole story.

Paula Crossfield is a founder and the Editor-at-large of Civil Eats. She is also a co-founder of the Food & Environment Reporting Network. Her reporting has been featured in The Nation, Gastronomica, Index Magazine, The New York Times and more, and she has been a contributing producer at The Leonard Lopate Show on New York Public Radio. An avid cook and gardener, she currently lives in Oakland. Read more >

Like the story?
Join the conversation.

  1. Robin
    I love this, but I think we should also expand the conversation to recognize the potential between forming community partnerships between colleges, with their land to spare, and local elementary/middle/high schools. Forming coalitions and pooling resources could really help to make these sorts of Alice Waters-inspired 'edible schoolyards' a reality.
  2. David
    Great post!

    Another great resource that goes into great detail on how to *start* a student garden (particularly at schools without Bamco's *enlightened* management) was published last year by the real food challenge. It can be downloaded here: http://realfoodchallenge.org/files/College_Garden_Guide.pdf

    Happy Gardening!
  3. I attended the Northern Nut Growers Assoc. meeting held on the campus of Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana this summer. The street where I stayed was loaded with black walnut trees; and the nuts are falling, as I write. College students can harvest nuts that would otherwise go to waste. (Write me for an article on how to process these nuts, sproutnut@aol.com.) And what better way to feed future generations of college students than by planting nut trees -- walnuts, hickories, hazelnuts, chestnuts, pecans, pine nuts, or butternuts on or around the campus?
  4. mike
    Great information, gardens are so "in" - I'm kicking it with a raw veggie diet.. here are a few good recipes, if anyone is into it Raw Food Recipes
  5. David B Taft
    Great article! Where can I get more info and help on start up on our campus?

More from

Young Farmers

Featured

‘For the Culture’ Is a Joyful Celebration of Black Women and Femmes in Food

Klancy Miller’s new book showcases the ‘sisterly insights’ of 66 pioneers in food, wine, and hospitality, while not shying away from the hard truths of racism, sexism, and mental health.

Popular

How Crop Insurance Prevents Some Farmers From Adapting to Climate Change

Organic farmers grow radishes as cover crops. (Photo credit: Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Cover Crop Image database)

California Leads the Way in Low-Carbon School Meals

This Oregon Farmer Is Building a New Model for Indigenous Food and Agriculture

Spring Alaska Schreiner walks in her greenhouse at Sakari Farms. (Photo courtesy of Spring Alaska Schreiner)

Op-ed: Big Ag Touts Its Climate Strengths, While Awash in Fossil Fuels