Schine Center goes organic...or at least a little bit

On Saturday, I stopped by Schine Student Center cafeteria at Syracuse U. to have lunch with my five-year old daughter. After we loaded our tray with the usual not-so-good for you fare of pizza, we spied a far-corner section of Schine cafeteria that, amazingly enough, included a display of organic snacks and apples. Organic snacks and apples in Schine? Schine Student Center home of Dunkin' Donuts, the chocolate covered donut and the canned whipcream Mochaccino? Yes, there is a small section off to the right in Schine stocked with Nature's Way products: energy bars, cracker and cheese packaged snacks, organic chips and nuts, and even some fresh fruit--Granny Smith organic apples from Washington state--probably grown in the Columbia Basin (maybe 50 miles from my family's orchard).

It was good to see this display, and we grabbed up an apple and put it on the tray to (futilely) blot out our fatty pizza. But I was immediately thinking of ways that the organic food display could stock locally grown organic produce and fruit--maybe farfetched since the dining services contract may not allow for this. But what that contract does allow for is some percentage of organic products now or they wouldn't have these. This may seem like it is about health--but it's likely about economics. These products will sell b/c organic food is big money--the health claims are persuasive to consumers; the sell factor is persuasive to the distributors. Whole Food has made organic products mainstream, and the dining services contracts at universities will increasingly reflect that--even Sysco.

So maybe it is the prime time to work on getting local food to SU. Why not? Many colleges and universities have moved to serving a certain percentage of locally grown food. When one of the eating clubs at Yale served organic food, the students started swarming the place. At Oberlin, students go out to local farms and buy produce, fruit, and meat directly and bring it back to prepare at their dining halls. Some universities have established direct relationships with farmers, getting them to supply organic milk, for instance.

Local Beak and Skiff cider has been sold at the snack bars and dining centers here on campus, so why not locally grown organic apples, organic mixed greens grown locally in greenhouses for the salad bar, free range organic chicken breast, etc.

OK, food for thought.

The national Farm to Cafeteria project is one way that local food is catching on campuses. The Farm to Cafeteria project brings together local farmers with public schools, colleges/universities, hospitals, prisons and other places where there are large scale dining facilities. The goal is to stock these places with local food--often organic, although not always. The point is to reduce shipping costs (fuel use in transporting food), and to guarantee fresher food. Instead of the food traveling 1,300 miles to the table, it will travel 30-50 miles. A big difference in creating C02 admissions, and we'll be able to taste the difference, in most cases.