Campus Dining pushes for local food
Officials are working to add more locally produced food to meals.
Published Nov. 29, 2005
From the farm to the college dining hall, some fresh produce at Plaza 900 skipped the middleman and shortened the journey to hungry students' stomachs.
The pilot program at Plaza 900, which started in August, incorporates locally grown food into the dining hall's menu.
The program started with a meeting last summer between the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, Campus Dining Services and other organizations.
"We started out very small to get the kinks worked out," rural sociology professor Mary Hendrickson said. "We are starting at the beginning with produce and are taking baby steps."
Peters Orchards in Waverly, Mo., and Rasa Orchards in Lexington, Mo., provided the apples, and MU's Bradford Farms supplied the cucumbers, tomatoes and green peppers.
The primary value of locally grown produce is its improved taste and quality, Hendrickson said.
"America has developed a foody culture," she said. "People demand quality. You can't compare Plaza 900 to what we had when I was in school 20 years ago. Students have developed taste buds."
At smaller private schools the movement started with pressure from students trying to express their values. Hendrickson said Washington University in St. Louis and other schools across the nation started programs this way. MU's interest was more in incorporating local farmers with campus food services, Hendrickson said.
Jim Quinn, research extension assistant professor of horticulture at Bradford Farms, said the advantages of locally grown produce are that it's generally fresher, benefits local farmers and reduces "middlemen."
Jared Cole, president of the environmental activist group Sustain Mizzou, provided a student voice in the pilot project and said decisions on food shouldn't be taken lightly.
"High-quality food is the best investment of our lives," he said. "It has to come from somewhere. It provides the physical and chemical energy we need to survive."
Sandy Perley, coordinator of purchasing and quality control for Campus Dining Services, said dining service directors are planning a meal at Plaza 900 with only Missouri-grown foods sometime in March. She said they plan to discuss delivery and logistics of expanding the program at a meeting in the summer.
CDS Director Julaine Kiehn said they are taking a comprehensive approach but are still at the beginning of the process.
"We are using a multi-prong approach: state support, education and representation of the student body," she said. "We want to promote Missouri products, and why not educate people about how to use them, like which apples are for baking? And the largest part of the student population is from Missouri."
Hendrickson said she hopes students learn where their food is from and about the seasonality of produce.
Perley said the biggest difficulty with local produce is transportation. She said the school's main distributor, the St. Louis-based U.S. Foodservice, might carry more Missouri products because of growing interest.
"It would open up an easier market," she said. "Right now, it's all outside of our contract. It would be easier to get it all at once."
Quinn said though Bradford Farms wouldn't be able to consistently supply CDS with produce, he hopes the program would stimulate farmers to look into working with the university in the future.
"Without the cooperation of Campus Dining Services, if we didn't have their support for this program, it wouldn't have happened," Hendrickson said. "They could have said no."