By: Caroline Fagan
11,000 meals served a day, every day, 180 days out of the year. That is a lot of food when you think about it, but that is the amount of food needed to feed the ~5,000 students who live on campus, me being one of those students. It is difficult to source from sustainable roots due to the massive quantities of food that are needed to supply enough food so all the students can have 2-3 meals a day. Though it requires work to take a sustainable approach to food for a large university, it is still possible.
CSU is one, if not the top ranked university in the U.S. on their efforts of sustainability. This is evident based on the fact they have received the STARS Platinum rating, the highest level ranking, for their sustainability efforts three times, thus putting CSU as the highest scoring university in the U.S. CSU is also recognized by Sierra magazine as a “Cool School”, a recognition/title for large universities practicing sustainability, for the seventh year in a row. With all these rankings CSU has received in sustainability this puts the university in a good position to be able to influence other large universities in sustainability. Spreading awareness not only in Fort Collins but throughout the rest of the country.
To be able to tackle all of the aspects of sustainability for a university starting out in their sustainable journey would be a lofty goal; however, starting with one aspect of practicing sustainability, like food sourcing, would be a more manageable way of starting.
What is Food Sourcing?
Food sourcing is the tracing back of where the food you eat comes from. This not being the supermarket that it was bought from, but right from where the seed was planted. One of the major factors that comes into figuring out how sustainable an item is whether the food bought is sourced locally or is a result of outsourcing. As stated in “Chilled foods: A comprehensive guide,” food miles refers to the total distance a food travels from the start of production all the way to the consumer. Food that is locally sourced is defined as “…the direct or intermediated marketing of food to consumers that is produced and distributed in a limited geographic area.” While outsourcing is the providing of one or multiple service(s) from a vendor based on a contract, which usually occurs with large companies.
Locally sourced food does have a defined number of food miles a product must be below to be considered local; instead, it is about the number of people/middlemen the product must go through. However, it’s inferred, when a product goes through less people, then there will be less food miles. Monitoring the sources and how many people are involved in the buying of food is one main way to monitor and determine how sustainable a product really is.
Why is Sourcing Locally so Important?
Now a question you might be asking is why is food sourcing so important, and does it really make that much of an impact? Well, the answer is yes it does make a large impact. Food sourcing has connections and impacts on the economic, social, and environmental level, which can all be positively influenced by sourcing food locally. On the economic level wherever food is sourced, the money used to buy that item will go back to the company or owner who “provided it”. This looks different between locally sourced and outsourced food; for outsourced food, the money is brought back to a large company that is not usually connected to a community or group of people, while the money for locally sourced food goes back to the farmer or producer that supplied the food, thus going back into the community. This type of sourcing, giving back to the community, also has effects on the social level by allowing growth in a community and affecting the people that are within it. Based on the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, input of money into local farmers has been shown to allow farmers to have a positive net income and lower operating expenses and debts. This is vice versa for when a farmer has to work/rely on a large company for profit.
Environmentally, the impact food sourcing has is mostly about food miles and the carbon footprint, but it also includes the health of land and wildlife. In the U.S. most food products travel about 1,500 miles from production to consumer. Based on food miles, having large companies/vendors as sources of products were responsible for 5-17 times more CO2 production than sourcing food locally or regionally. For the health of the land and wildlife, small farmers usually practice environmentally friendly habits, including less pesticide use, and more diversified crops, which creates a thriving environment for not only the crops but the wildlife around.
The impacts of sourcing locally are clearly evident in being beneficial for not only the people within the community, but all of the plant and wildlife around it- promoting sustainability. So how can CSU promote this to the community and to other universities?
CSUs’ Efforts on Locally Sourcing Food
As already noted, CSU is acknowledged for their practices in sustainability. These practices are a way for CSU to support the local community and educate their students on the importance of food sustainability and local food sourcing. There are multiple programs happening at CSU to promote these missions, one being Environmental Eats. Five times every academic year there is an event that is held on campus, attracting many students, promoting and teaching them about sustainable food, how to source sustainably, and why it’s important.
On-Campus Grown Greens, a Campus-Grown Food Partnership is another example of CSU practicing local food sourcing within their own student body. In 2016, CSU Horticulture Center made a partnership with Housing and Dining Services.
This partnership incited that the Horticulture Center would supply the dining halls with fresh lettuce that was grown by the students straight out of the center, and it does not stop at just lettuce. There are now efforts to develop more growing projects with other produce as well.
Now with the issues and restrictions COVID-19 brings, I have noticed and realized how much harder it is to practice sustainability, this being food sourcing and with how our food is served. There is no washing and reusing of dishes in the dining halls, all the food is served in containers which leads to a lot of waste. CSU has made an effort to make some containers compostable but not all of them are, and some students decide not to compost them since the bins are not as easily accessible as trash cans. These issues are all connected to COVID and other universities are experiencing the same issues with restrictions, making them not be as sustainable as well.
The Importance for CSU to Educate Other Universities
Sourcing food locally has been shown to create many positive impacts on communities and the environment as well; however, this effort can only cause large scale change if it is practiced on a large scale too. The same goes for overall sustainable practices in food, like food containers and ways of serving food.
Universities have such an influence on the surrounding community due to the amount of people, and money it draws in. So how a university functions/runs will have a direct effect on the well-being of the surrounding community. This creates a reason as to why colleges are so important for leading the practice of food sourcing and sustainability because it directly affects the community and is an influencer for change. Since CSU is one of the highest-ranking universities in sustainability for their practices, this puts CSU in a good position to mentor other colleges on how food sustainability can be achieved. Especially with the current adversities the US, and the world, has faced within the past year, this should not be a reason to halt all sustainable efforts. Universities should help one another out and teach other universities how to practice sustainability in these rough times when it might not be as easy than before. This makes it all the more important for a university like CSU to step up to the challenge and help other universities practice sustainability. This can be through webinars, zoom calls, or meetings between university advisors/administrators to present, discuss, and figure out ways to be more sustainable with the resources and circumstances that are present.
Working together is vital during this time and what CSU can do as a university is to help other universities how to navigate sustainability through it. Our practices now are going to affect us and the Earth still, pandemic or not, so we need to make sure sustainable practices are still being partaken in through this tough time.
About the Author
My name is Caroline Fagan, and I am a freshman at Colorado State University. I am a Biological Science major on the pre-vet track, with the goal of becoming a wildlife veterinarian to help aid in the efforts of wildlife conservation. Nature and wildlife are very important to me, and this love for nature and wildlife carries over into my interest/eagerness to learn about sustainability as well.
References
Giordano, J. (2020, September 29). CSU ranks high on Sierra magazine’s ‘Cool Schools’ green ranking. Retrieved November 03, 2020, from https://source.colostate.edu/csu-ranks-high-on-sierra-magazines-cool-schools-green-ranking/
Brown, M. (2008). 2.9.1 Sustainability, food miles and carbon footprint. In Chilled foods: A comprehensive guide. Boca Raton, FL: CRC.
STARS (2019, December 6). Colorado State University OP-8: Sustainable Dining. Retrieved November 03, 2020, from https://reports.aashe.org/institutions/colorado-state-university-co/report/2019-12-06/OP/food-dining/OP-8/
CSU Admissions (2019, October 28). Campus Life. Retrieved November 03, 2020, from https://admissions.colostate.edu/campuslife/
NAL, USDA (n.d.). Local Foods. Retrieved November 03, 2020, from https://www.nal.usda.gov/aglaw/local-foods
Wilding, R., & Juriado, R. (2004). Customer perceptions on logistics outsourcing in the European consumer goods industry. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 34(8), 628-644. doi:10.1108/09600030410557767
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, F. (2020, August 04). The Economic Impact of Locally Produced Food. Retrieved November 03, 2020, from https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/december/economic-impact-locally-produced-food
Cho, R. (2012, September 4). How Green is Local Food? Retrieved November 03, 2020, from https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/09/04/how-green-is-local-food/
CSU, Housing and Dining Services (n.d.). Colorado State University. Retrieved November 03, 2020, from https://housing.colostate.edu/about/sustainability/green-dining/
Thomas, L. (2020, February 28). Campus grown food partnership brings fresh greens to CSU dining halls. Retrieved November 03, 2020, from https://agsci.source.colostate.edu/campus-grown-food-partnership-brings-fresh-greens-to-csu-dining-halls/
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