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Links from this page are maintained by volunteers. Please help
us build our inventory of sustainability knowledge and keep it
current by emailing such information to the webmaster (for Fall
2005:
claudiah@uidaho.edu)The opinions and positions expressed in
articles and websites linked from these pages belong to their
authors and are not necessarily shared or endorsed by UI and our
community. |
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| Sustainable
Food & Farming at UI |
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Sodexho
Campus Dining Services |
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| History. by Claudia
Hemphill |
| The take-home final for Environmental Philosophy students in Fall 2002 challenged them to: "Name 5 things you think this campus would need
to do to be a sustainable place, and explain why. Try to provide such
a powerful moral argument that people will actually go out and support this
idea, and bring it into being!" |
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One
of the top 5 items: There should be an organic farm offering education, carrying out research for the region and the
state, and most importantly, providing fresh local community-supporting
organic produce. Our campus currently had none.
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- The UI has a great College of Agriculture & Life
Sciences -- but no ecological agriculture program. I was taking a
course through the CALS Plant Science division on 'sustainable
small-acreage farming,' which included organic farming as one
option -- but again, there was no UI organic farm program to provide
tours, speakers, or practical experience.
- On the other hand, in the Environmental Philosophy
class that I was teaching, there were students from Natural Resources, Environmental
Science, social sciences
and other programs who believed a sustainable farm for our campus would
be an important part of UI practicing, and teaching sustainability.
Of course, they had no way to start one.
- But meanwhile, Soil Science professor Jodi Johnson-Maynard
was also thinking about how to do this. She told me she had the
research acres to raise organic vegetables, on the Plant Science Research Farm
east of Moscow --
but not enough students.
- I said I knew where they were!
- Still, we lacked any program in ag to support the
project. So -- with Jodi as advisor, a handful of us started it as a club.
Since sustainability requires democratic participation, a club format
provided this cooperative framework. Our goal was to continue this even after we
became successful enough to be "adopted" into the university structure.
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Philosophy in Action: Student-run farm with research relationships, a
club for community, and growing support ... |
| Our first season for the Soil Stewards
student-run organic farm was 2003. We had a lot of tomatoes, potatoes,
peppers for research and about 5 people to water -- by hose, from a water
truck. Many students since then have helped plant, harvest, learn and
eat. Thousands of pounds of fresh, healthy, organically grown food has
been enjoyed by students, staff and faculty on our campus -- from the
freshman dining hall up to the President.
Campus Dining Services was skeptical till I brought them a
20-pound basket of our first year's harvest -- then the managing director
joined our project (Henry Spira's rules work!). We've sold tomatoes
and herbs to campus dining, started a farmstand and a CSA
(community-supported agriculture, or member shares) last fall, and between
those sales and support from our Plant, Soil & Entomological Science
department chair, we were able to pay our land fees, install irrigation, and
send 6 members to the first western U.S. conference on Sustainability in
Higher Education, in October 2004 in Portland, Oregon. Currently we
are waiting to see where this
successful sustainability start-up can become a larger, more formal part of
the UI structure and mission.
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Our Oct., 2004 conference poster:
Land-Grant
University Returns to its Roots... |
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 UI
wrote a pair of July, 2005, stories on my PhD research on society and soil,
and the Soil Stewards organic farm project :
A Closer Look
at Dirt: UI Doctoral Student Changing Perceptions...
Organic Produce,
Research Take Root on UI Farm near Moscow...
As a result of these press releases, a product stewardship
manager at a major electronics & computer firm emailed me to learn more
about how his alma mater is becoming sustainable. This kind of
connection between business and education, engineers and philosophers, is an
important part of taking sustainability forward, as well.
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 Our
cover story article from the Idaho Farm Bureau's
Gem State Producer, Oct 2004:
UI
Students Produce Organic... |
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Fall 2004: An
well-reasoned argument, a good plan, supportive partners, and UI gets
sustainable Coffee Cups!
Sustainable coffee is the
topic chosen for several Fall 2004 take-home finals. Breann Westfall
put her concept into action, Spring 2005.
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| "After thinking over what my
motivational philosophy for this type of campaign has been," wrote Breann in
her take-home final, she decided that "the campaign to rid the university of
unneeded waste is a surface argument for a deep ecology perspective that
leads us to treat the environment with as much respect as we treat
humanistic needs. Nature is an equal partner with humans in the
sustainability of life on our planet."
Henry Spira's example supported Breann is seeing coffee
cups as a useful baby step toward her larger vision of a deep ecology
society. She decided that her campaign would succeed with its
deontological argument about our obligation not to "reduce the richness and
diversity of the earth, except to satisfy vital needs." Breann also
voiced an additional duty of concern for future generations, which she
believes is meaningful for students who are in college out of concern for
their own futures.
But Breann also planned to reward people for "doing the
right thing" by meeting with coffee service managers on campus to arrange a
lower price for filling up the reusable tumblers. The mugs could carry a
logo, too, reinforcing the message to help remove "barriers" in other
people's thinking and prompt them to join, as recommended by Douglas
McKenzie-Mohr's Consumer-Based Social Marketing strategy.
You don't have to have just one ethical argument.
Class member Kelly Corrigall also wrote about all the coffee cups that go
into our thousands of pounds of weekly trash. But she proposed a far
less radical argument: the existing anthropocentric acceptance of our moral
duties to act against waste and pollution, and to be consistent. By
our existing rules of society, Kelly wrote, we do our part in protecting
forests, rivers, land and everything else. A person should thus act to
eliminate the several hundred pounds of coffee cups they dispose of each
year.
Breann followed through on her own proposal in Spring of
2005, working as a member of the UI Environmental Club. She compared
cup types and costs, met with campus food service directors and secured
their agreement to a discount, and through personal visits and emails
convinced many individuals, departments and other groups on campus to place
an order. Those who bought 100 or more got their own group's name on
their cups, to show their support for sustainability. Breann graduated
with her B.S.Env.Sci. in May 2005. Good job! Her contribution to
a sustainable UI will -- we hope -- be a lasting one that others build on.
I know I'll enjoy buying organic, shade-grown fair-trade coffee at a
discount price when I hold out my Graduate & Professional Student Assoc.
sustainable UI mug. |
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