Cutting Food Stamps? No GMO labeling? More ethanol subsidies? Last Farm Bill five years ago? Congress can’t get their act together, but young people can. Real food policies must start from the ground up and today on Food Day, students are making that happen.

In the fall of 2010, students at Johns Hopkins University came together under a common vision: What if they could get their university to invest its purchasing power, much larger than any of theirs individually, in building a sustainable and just food economy?

It was a powerful idea, one thousands of other students across the country united by Real Food Challenge were imagining as well. So in the spring of 2011, they dug in and began auditing their university’s food purchases for products that qualified as “real”: Sourced from farms and food producers with fair labor practices, grown within 250 miles, raised in an ecologically sound manner, and humanely raised. The result? Only seven percent real.

Determined to increase this percentage, in the fall of 2011, they gathered over 500 petition signatures in support of a real food policy and engaged in conversations with university administrators about how to make their vision a reality. After three years of building their case, their university president has agreed to officially commit Johns Hopkins to purchasing 20 percent real food by 2020.

This is Real Food Hopkins’ story. And they’re not alone.

At two other major universities–The University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Northeastern University–students also just won big campaigns to achieve sustainable and just food policy.

These three universities are all formally signing on to Real Food Challenge’s Real Food Campus Commitment, pledging to source 20 percent of their food from local, fair, sustainable, and humane farms and food businesses. Together, these institutions bring the number of signatories to 22, representing over $55 million in annual purchases devoted to “real food.” Each school will also inaugurate a new food policy committee on campus that will adopt rigorous new transparency standards regarding product origin and vendor social responsibility.

We’re announcing this today on Food Day, a nationwide celebration and a movement for healthy, affordable, and sustainable food policy–taking place in over 4,000 events across the country.

On 350 college campuses, thousands of students across the country are every day, and especially today, creating a powerful nationwide demand for investment in real food and agriculture to eventually achieve the same commitment win themselves. They are creating inter-campus and cross-country networks, increasing food sourcing transparency on campus, and building power with students and community members.

For example, students from multiple Boston-area universities–including Tufts, Northeastern, Brandeis, and Boston University–are breaking down traditional rivalries by building an inter-campus organizing network and planning multiple Food Day events to bolster each others’ campaigns for real food.