What's Cooking On Campus

By Margot Roosevelt / Portland

They shut down the Pepsi machines in the University of Portland cafeteria the other day. The plastic bottles of Hunt's Ketchup disappeared. Sugar was replaced with honey from a neighborhood beekeeper. And everything else on the lunch menu, from soup (lentil) to nuts (hazel), was locally grown, baked, milked and mixed. The shrimp was harvested in nearby Netarts Bay, not in Thailand; the herbs were gathered in adjacent Clackamas County, not in California; the chicken was pastured on fields outside Eugene, not imported from the Midwest's vast factory farms. "It's awesome," said Alex Samuels, 19, a freshman from Puyallup, Wash., swigging a drink made from Oregon berries. "We're helping smaller farmers instead of big corporations."

It may seem to lack the ideological passion of antiapartheid or antiwar protests, but the new activist slogan on campuses is "Eat local." Students are rediscovering the political adage that you are what you eat. And colleges are voting with their palates--and their multimillion-dollar food budgets--against an ever more global agricultural industry in which produce travels, on average, 1,500 miles from farm to plate. Posters around the University of Portland campus proclaimed that BUYING LOCAL FOOD IS ONE WAY YOU CAN HELP STOP GLOBAL WARMING ... AIR AND WATER POLLUTION. A racier consciousness-raising stunt was staged at Brown University, where activists published Ripe, a 2005 calendar featuring naked students posing with strategically positioned Rhode Island fruits and vegetables (for August, cantaloupes rest on the buttocks of the women's soccer team).

Will politically correct gastronomy save the family farm? That may be wishful thinking. At the University of Portland, the all-local lunch was merely symbolic--Pepsi was back for dinner. What's meatier is that the university, which serves 22,000 meals weekly, has hiked spending on local and regional products to 40% of its food dollars--up from less than 2% five years ago. "Even the burgers are from Oregon steers," boasts dining manager Kirk Mustain.

Some 200 universities have jumped onto the eat-local haywagon--half of them since 2001, according to the Community Food Security Coalition, an advocacy group based in Venice, Calif. For many of these academic foodies, buying local is only part of an educational mission. Scholars like Oberlin environmental-studies professor David Orr advocate "ecological literacy," tying agriculture to the study of fiction, history, science, economics and politics. In a form of dirty-fingernail "experiential learning," some 45 universities and colleges, from Maine's Bowdoin to Minnesota's St. Olaf, have started campus farms. And courses like Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California at Santa Cruz deconstruct relationships between producers and consumers, with such readings as The Maturing of Capitalist Agriculture: Farmer as Proletarian.

The eco-food movement may appeal to antimultinational globophobes: packaged, refrigerated goods transported from afar use tons of fossil fuels that pollute and release ozone-depleting gases. Locally grown produce typically needs fewer pesticides than big farms use--and fewer synthetic additives for a long shelf life. But as students seek to upend the food-supply chain, they get a gritty lesson in practical economics. Cafeterias are often serviced by billion-dollar behemoths such as Sodexho Inc. and Aramark Corp., which make money partly by purchasing cheap foreign produce and centralizing distribution. Even when colleges operate their own dining halls, the staff is used to making a single phone call to order thousands of meals from distributors like the $30 billion Sysco Corp. Roast beef arrives cooked and sliced, powdered soup requires only added water, broccoli comes in precut florets. When the University of Montana decided to eat local two years ago, four graduate students spent months finding 34 nearby suppliers and organizing logistics. "We couldn't have 10 different farmers driving pickup trucks to drop off tomatoes," said dining director Mark LoParco. They nudged growers into co-ops for delivery and processing. Now the romaine comes washed and chopped--and the farmer gets a higher price. In January the university's new contract with Sysco will stipulate that the company supply bacon from Daily's Inc., a Missoula processor.

If caterers are starting to pay heed, it may be none too soon. University of California students on 10 campuses launched a statewide campaign last month to pressure U.C. regents to spend at least 10% of their $20 million annual food budget on local and organic products. Sodexho, which was ousted from the University of California at Santa Cruz after a student campaign, recently began to draw its supplies from local sources near eight Midwestern campuses. Aramark works with the University of Rochester and Vassar to buy from nearby farmers. And California-based Bon Appetit, which operates dining halls at 67 colleges, has hiked spending on local food to 20% of its budget.

In some cases, cooking from scratch with local ingredients is more expensive. Williams College will pay $85,000 more this year to double local products to 14% of its $2.7 million food budget. But at the University of Montana, even though the price of local beef and safflower oil was higher, the dining bill actually shrank slightly because of reduced spoilage. Liability can also be an issue, as University of Vermont students discovered when Sodexho forced a nearby orchard to buy $4 million worth of insurance. But activists persist. "Students go through purchasing reports to see where we are buying pears," says Robert Volpi, Williams' dining director.

Pure idealism? Not necessarily. Local food is usually tastier. When Alice Waters, the celebrity chef, helped her daughter's Yale cafeteria switch to a seasonal, regional menu (even the chips are made from organic potatoes grown in Connecticut), students from other dining halls began forging IDs to crash the feast. When Brown introduced Rhode Island Macouns and Winesaps--replacing the Red Delicious and Granny Smiths grown for long-distance trucking--apple consumption doubled. To be sure, some colleges find it easier and cheaper to install fast-food counters. And some students would just as soon dine on Kraft cheese and Cocoa Puffs ("This stuff is weird," grumbled University of Portland physics major David Baldwin, 18, sniffing at the salmon-fennel latkes). Even a few Yalies grouse that the all-local dining hall doesn't serve tomatoes in winter. "My generation knows how to put food in a microwave and eat in front of a computer screen," says Louella Hill, 24, a food activist at Brown. But she adds, "When someone bites into an heirloom plum, I see a profound awakening."

That awakening is enhanced by growing contact between students and farmers. At the University of Portland's local-foods lunch, fish broker Amy Dickson set up a display with shells, nets and a sign reading SIGNATURE SALMON: 100% LINE-CAUGHT IN OREGON WATERS. "My slogan is 'Roe vs. Wave: Salmon is a choice,'" she joked. Aaron Silverman of Greener Pastures Poultry gave out brochures describing how his chickens "wobble around as they please." And wheat farmer Karl Kupers touted the environmental benefits of no-till planting. "Students come up and shake your hand and call you a hero," said Kupers, whose co-op sells to seven area colleges. Spokane senior Emily Magnuson, 21, echoed the sentiment. "It's a homey feeling to know who's growing your food," she said as the scent of fresh-baked bread made from Kupers' wheat wafted out of the kitchen.