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Sustainable Food |
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Emory's sustainability vision sets an ambitious goal of 75 percent local or sustainably grown food in the hospitals and cafeterias by 2015. Sustainably grown food attends to environmental health, worker welfare and wages, and farm viability, as well as taste and nutrition.
A Sustainable Food Committee was named by the President in the spring of 2007 to lead Emory’s Sustainable Food Initiative. The group includes a dozen members - faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students - from all across the University and has accomplished a number of projects including establishing food purchasing guidelines.
Purchasing Guidelines
The Sustainable Food Committee reached consensus on definitions of “sustainable” and “local” food. Sustainability Guidelines for Food Service Purchasing were adopted in fall 2007, and provide clear goals and implementation steps for 10 categories of food purchases.
"Local" is defined in two tiers:
- highest priority to Georgia farmers, through relationships with known producers. As products become available, we hope to buy more of our food from areas close to Emory.
- a second priority is our eight-state region of Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Mississippi. This broader region recognizes the limits of the Georgia growing season.
A number of certification systems are emerging in North America and around the world, to help verify food production methods that embody the triple bottom line of sustainability.
The combined commitment to local and sustainable aspects of food purchases allow us to contribute a number of related sustainability goals, including:
- rural economic health
- civic vitality
- open space preservation
- reduced use of fossil fuels
- environmental protection from harmful agricultural inputs and practices
- preservation of biodiversity
- safe and just working conditions in the agricultural sector
- improved human health
- optimal nutrition
- new systems of accountability
Farmer Liaison
To support the expansion of local and sustainable purchasing, Emory University partnered with local nonprofit Georgia Organics in 2007 to hire a part-time Farmer Liaison.
Chaz Holt travels around the state and provides information about the Emory program to diverse agricultural groups. He offers guidance to the food service distribution system, identifies new farmer partners, and helps growers to become certified as sustainable producers with Food Alliance. Producer Guidelines for becoming an Emory Food Supplier were developed in winter, 2008, to provide information for interested farmers.
Educational Food Gardens
To date, Emory has seven small educational food gardens on campus that highlight sustainability and food. Three food gardens are maintained by a team of staff, students, neighbors, and faculty and harvests are shared within each team. They are located:
- in front of Dooly's Depot
- beside the Rollins School of Public Health
- beside the Cox Hall ravine
Boasting lovely tomatoes, lettuces, peas, beans, greens, eggplant, broccoli, strawberries, and even cotton, the gardens have become islands of beauty and campus interest.
Two other gardens are dedicated to general education about seasonal grains, fruits and vegetables: one at Oxford College and another at the Center for Science Education on Oxford Road.
A medicinal herb garden was established at the School of Nursing, and the Yerkes Primate Center created a garden for enrichment activities for the primates in the facility.
Emory Food Gardens are part of a growing sense of what it means to live sustainably, including:
- increasing awareness of local food and educate about what food crops look like and how they grow.
- reminding passersby that eating locally reduces fossil fuel use and addresses global warming.
- offering locales of respite and stillness, spaces to withdraw from the ordinary round of academic life.
- fostering an awareness of seasons and the bioregion of which we are a part.
- offering meaningful work that increases attachment to place.
- educating about ethnic traditions and crops from around the world.
Emory Farmers Market
The Emory Farmers Market is held on Tuesdays from 2 - 6 p.m. in front of Cox Hall and runs until Thanksgiving. The market is sponsored by the Office of Sustainability Initiatives in cooperation with Emory Dining.
The market feature fresh local produce, and some vendors are certified organic. The market also includes sustainably produced meat, bread, cheese, and other artisan products. The market is open to everyone, and some weeks features music and chef demos.
The farmers market offers a weekly gathering for the Emory community to support local Georgia farmers and to expand knowledge about healthy eating and sustainable production systems. Small Georgia farmers are can sell their products and it allows the community to establish a relationship with the people who grow their food, a component of a local, sustainable food system.
The market is governed by a subcommittee of the Sustainable Food Committee, led by Julie Shaffer, market coordinator.
Guidelines specify the kinds of food to be sold, labeling, certification, food safety, and fees.
For further information about the market, please contact her at marketcoordinator@emory.edu
Sustainability Summit on Food
A Sustainability Summit on Food was held in 2008 to expand understanding of sustainable food issues among all sectors of Emory, and foster informed dialogue around issues of sustainable food.
Summit 2008
Over two-half days in February, student delegates debated trade-offs among local, organic, fair trade, grass-fed, humanely raised, and sustainable seafood aspects of sustainability. In a simulation of food service menus, small groups of delegates were offered nine meals and alternative purchasing choices for ingredients, based on actual retail prices from Atlanta stores. With a given budget, they had to reach a consensus about how to allocate their food purchases.
The recommendations from the student summit emphasized fair trade coffee and tea and sustainably-harvested fish. Local produce was strongly preferred, hormone and antibiotic-free meat and dairy products were widely chosen, and organic eggs and milk were priorities for many groups.
The lively event built a stronger community around issues of food at Emory and created an approach that can be replicated in the future and shared with other schools.
To reach faculty and staff, the Summit committee conducted on-line survey to ask for preferences among the same set of choices around sustainable food that the student delegates had considered. Over 1000 respondents gave their advice. A series of open forums offered deeper discussions around sustainable food on campus.
Emory/Oxford Farm
Creating a student-run, sustainable/organic farm is a long-term vision of the Sustainable Food Initiative. A farm would return Emory to the “work and learn” philosophy of its founders in the 1830s, when students joined academic studies with farm work at the college’s original Oxford location.
Today, many have expressed interest in seeing summer opportunities for students as well as fall and spring efforts around a farm, either near the Oxford Campus or at a site in Druid Hills. At present, the Office of Sustainability Initiatives is pursuing possible locations and identifying faculty mentors before proceeding further with plans for a farm.
Sustainable Food Fair
Students in the anthropology course “Fast Food/Slow Food” put on a Sustainable Food Fair, in collaboration with the Office of Sustainability Initiatives and Emory Dining.
A lively midday event features music and roughly 40 stands of locally grown fresh food for sale, chefs offering delectable samples, stores featuring sustainably grown foods and other products, and nonprofits in the Emory area that are part of the sustainable food movement. The event has become one of the most popular fall events at Emory.
Interested in knowing more about local sources of sustainably grown and certified organic foods? Check out the Georgia Organics Directory to local producers, restaurants, farm-to-school programs, stores, and more.
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