James Haddock and his wife Jamie Haddock show off boxes of medium portobello and oyster mushrooms from the Twin Sisters Mushroom Farm in Acme, Wash. Twin Sisters delivers mushrooms to Western's dining halls. Photo by Carey Rose

Dining Services joined a national program in October 2009 called the Real Food Challenge, said Alyson Simeone, sustainability coordinator for Dining Services.

The challenge encourages universities in Washington, which collectively spend about $4 billion on the food industry, to increase the amount of “real food” on their campuses, according to the program’s Web site.  Real food is food that has been ethically produced.  

The program challenges universities to increase the national level of real food on campuses to 20 percent by 2020, but Simeone said her goal is for Western to be at 20 percent by 2012.

Dining Services spent about $127,000 on local produce fall quarter. Currently, Dining Services purchases food from 11 local vendors such as Bellwood Acres, Edaleen Dairy and Growing Washington.

The added cost of buying local products has been offset by the savings of other sustainable practices dining services has started, said Ira Simon, director of University Dining Services.

Dining services is also working with Growing Washington to dedicate land specifically to harvest food for Western, Simon said.  

He said the dedicated land will allow Growing Washington to provide more food to Western and for Dining Services to have some control over the produce available.

Growing Washington owns their own farm and works with 15 local farms to provide approximately 50 different produce products to Western.

Many of the products Growing Washington supplies to Western are not in the dining halls this quarter because the growing season ends in the fall. But Dining Services plans to increase the amount of products for spring quarter and the next school year by freezing or preserving produce received over the spring and summer months, Simeone said.  

The partnership with Western had been in the works for nearly three years, said Clayton Burrows, Growing Washington’s director.  

“It’s kind of complicated, but we can make it work,” Burrows said. “Overall it was great and we look forward to working with Western in the future.”

Western sophomore Patricia Robinson, a member of Students for Sustainable Food, said she is pleased to see the improvements to provide more ethically produced food on campus, but would like to see more sustainable food options throughout the campus.

“One thing I would really like to see more of is real food in the markets,” Robinson said. “I feel like that’s pretty much the same as last year.  There’s that whole student population that doesn’t have meal plans that aren’t seeing the changes that [Dining Services] is making.”

Simeone said she also wants to dedicate a dining hall or market solely to sustainable food, but for now she is focusing on getting local food to campus and educating students about their food options.

“This isn’t just a sustainable endeavor, but it’s an experimental learning process for the students in their dining experience to learn more about sustainability as they are choosing their foods,” Simeone said.

Simeone is currently working to determine the university’s percentage of real food by looking at the amount of real food purchased in 2009 to December  compared to the same products not considered real food.

Share this article:
                                   

Be first to comment on this article

Only registered users can post comments.
Please login or register.