At Skidmore College, they say they want a revolution. Fear not. This revolution is culinary in nature and reasoned in approach, pursuing the simple goal of being able to eat more local farm products in the college dining hall.
Skidmore College isn't alone. Students at a growing number of colleges and universities are asking for eats that include local apples, potatoes, milk, cheese and honey. Colleges such as Williams, Bates, SUNY Potsdam, Oberlin and Yale have begun meeting that demand, embarking on programs that work with local farmers to size up local harvests and mix them into their recipes.
Union College in Schenectady is considering a similar project.
“It's an exploding phenomenon around the state, and around the country for that matter,” said Bill Jordan of the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, which wants all kinds of schools to consider using state farm products.
Next fall, three SUNY campuses – Delhi, Morrisville and Geneseo – will launch pilot projects using 13 fruits and vegetables that have been identified as being available when school is in session.
“We've tried to work with products with the longest growing seasons,” Jordan said. “It's a lot more challenging than it is in California [where] there is a year-round growing season.” From there, the department hopes to take the project to other colleges.
This fall, Vassar College in Poughkeepsie will hire one of its students for the unusual position of “part-time forager” to help expand its supply of local farm products. The forager will search the Hudson Valley for local produce and meats that can be added to campus menus.
At Skidmore College, organizers of what is called the Dining Hall Revolution started off by researching what local farms have to offer and how those products might mix into the Skidmore cuisine. The early results of that research, presented May 4 at the college's annual Academic Fair, show a significant number of farms within easy geographic reach of the Saratoga Springs college. Using local farm products will put more nutritional foods into the dining hall as well as establish strong connections with local farms, said Marissa Rossi, a sophomore working on the project.
Skidmore College President Philip A. Glotzbach said he supports the concept. “Having fresh locally grown produce is a value,” he said. “It really becomes a question of cost and dependability of the source.”
Skidmore students, for example, are already eating apples from Saratoga Apple, an orchard in nearby Schuylerville. Christine Gaud of Saratoga Apple said Skidmore's need for 20 bushels a week was a small, but welcome, bit of business. “We have tons of apples we pick in the fall,” she said, noting that the farm limits its operations to retail sales. “In a society where less than 2 percent of people live on the farm, many in that larger society have lost connection with where their food comes from,” Jordan said.
Using local farm products is also good for the environment in a number of ways, she said, including reducing pollution by reducing the fuel needed to ship products long distances. “It's important for Skidmore to recognize the need to be environmentally friendly,” Rossi said.
Lots of groups and agencies, including the state Department of Agriculture and Markets and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, support efforts to have schools make greater use of local farm products.
Aramark, a food service company with more than 420 colleges and universities as clients, has seen a significant increase in interest in this kind of program, said Kate Moran, the company's communications director. Aramark already has some of these programs in place. At the University of Pennsylvania, for example, students have access to local produce at campus food shops and, to some extent, in the dining halls. “It really varies by campus,” she said. “If it's something that's important for our customers, then it's something we work hard to develop,” Moran said.
There are some challenges, including making sure there's enough supply to meet the school's demand and working with the local harvest calendar. “It requires a lot of menu cycle planning,” she said.
“It's interesting at the college level because a high proportion are contract managed,” said Jennifer Wilkins, director of Cornell's Farm to School Program. That means the process must involve working with big companies like Aramark. “They're hearing from an increasing proportion of their clients that they're interested in local products,” Wilkins said. “We see them as a potential partner, not an obstacle.”
The mission of Cornell University's Farm to School Program is to develop strategies to increase the amount of locally grown food served in New York's schools, colleges and universities. There's a strong belief that, especially with fruits and vegetables, local products are of higher quality and more nutritious, Wilkins said. “They're bound to be fresher because they don't have to be transported great distances,” she said. Higher quality foods are more likely to be eaten.
“And in line with dietary guidelines and the new [U.S.] food pyramid, we need to consume far more fruits and vegetables,” Wilkins said.
Local farmers benefit by securing a reliable new customer, one that usually buys in bulk. “By buying food from local farmers, [schools] are benefiting the community far more than they would through a national distributor,” Wilkins said.
There's a broader benefit as well, she said. By underscoring local production cycles, the programs help people unfamiliar with modern farming better understand how the nation's food system works, she said. At Williams College in western Massachusetts, a wide variety of foodstuffs from farms in the outlying countryside have been added to the dining hall in recent years.
“We live in the Berkshires,” said Mark Petrino, associate director of food services at Williams. “We think it's only fair to be good members of the community and to help sustain it as much as possible. We want to help as many local businesses as we can.” Like other Northeast colleges, Williams faced a timing problem when it considered adding local foods: its school year doesn't coincide with the local harvest of many fruits and vegetables grown in this region. When the strawberries are ripe, the peas at their peak and the zucchini overproducing, the campus is largely empty.
But dairy isn't seasonal, and Williams consequently lined up agreements with local farms for milk and ice cream. “We're trying to do our part to keep the local guy in business,” Petrino said. “We also want to instill that [philosophy] in our students and they can take it away with them when they leave here.”
Local foods were scheduled to be the theme of the college's annual community picnic, scheduled for this past Friday. It's a big event – open to the Williamstown community as well as college students and staff – that traditionally serves about 3,000 people.
Menu items included such things as hamburgers, kielbasa, potato chips and ice cream – all locally produced and a regular part of the college's menu. The Williams initiative began with composting, collecting most of its paper products and dining hall scraps and eventually sending them off to a nearby farm.
Over time, Williams' list of local products has grown to include honey, hamburger, mushrooms, sausages and kielbasa. Black River Produce, the company that supplies Williams, “jumps on whatever's local whenever they can because they know that's what we want,” Petrino said.
In terms of cost, local products are usually 20 to 25 percent more expensive, Petrino said. But there have been bargains along the way. The farm that supplies the college's milk, for example, was primarily focused on producing restaurant-quality butter and had no good outlet for its nonfat milk. That was just the kind of milk the students wanted, Petrino said. “It's a great deal,” he said.
Williams hopes that technology will eventually allow the college to offer local produce out of season. The college's new student center, slated to be finished by the end of next year, includes a kitchen with a blast-chill area. The idea, said Petrino, is to buy as much local produce as possible and blast-freeze it for use throughout the year. “It's something we're going to be experimenting with,” he said.
The first step in developing any farm-to-school programs is to become aware of what is grown locally, said Cornell's Wilkins.
For many, that can be a learning experience. “People go in a supermarket and there's this seasonless abundance of fresh produce,” Wilkins said. “It does obscure awareness of your local agricultural production.”
Cornell University's contract with the company that runs its dining hall includes, as a stated goal, the desire to use at least 20 percent New York state-grown produce. Incorporating local foods also requires a rethinking in college kitchens, Wilkins said. Colleges should think about developing seasonal menus – menus that in part reflect what local farms are producing or have stored at a particular point in the year.
Wilkins expects that there are some produce staples – like lettuce – that will remain major menu ingredients no matter what. But the idea is to capitalize on local crops when they're available, like tomatoes into September and root crops into the winter.