Yale Sustainable Food Project

The Yale Sustainable Food Project was founded in 2001 by Yale students, faculty, and staff, President Richard Levin, and chef Alice Waters. The Sustainable Food Project directs a sustainable dining program at Yale, manages an organic farm on campus, and runs diverse programs that support exploration and academic inquiry related to food and agriculture.

Mission Statement

"Every day, food offers us the opportunity to engage with the world around us. By gathering people around shared food, shared work, and shared inquiry, the Yale Sustainable Food Project fosters a culture that draws meaning and pleasure from the connections among people, land, and food.

"The Sustainable Food Project directs a sustainable dining program at Yale, manages an organic farm on campus, and runs diverse programs that support exploration and academic inquiry related to food and agriculture. "The world’s most pressing questions regarding health, culture, the environment, education, and the global economy cannot be adequately addressed without considering the food we eat and the way we produce it. By creating opportunities for students to experience food, agriculture, and sustainability as integral parts of their education and everyday life, the Sustainable Food Project ensures that Yale graduates have the capacity to effect meaningful change as individuals and as leaders in their communities, their homes, and their life’s work." [Mission Statement, Yale Sustainable Food Project (http://www.yale.edu/sustainablefood/about_mission.html)]

The Food

Since 2002, the Sustainable Food Project and Yale University Dining Services have collaborated to change the culture of food at Yale. They started with the premise that food choices have an ethical and ecological impact, and that the best tasting food is local, seasonal, and sustainable. Their buying practices aim to nourish the well-being of those eating and working at Yale, contribute to the vitality of agricultural communities, and protect the long-term health of the environment. Their choices about food are integral to the University’s goals of becoming a sustainable institution and reducing carbon emissions.

Today, each college serves the same sustainable food: a fully sustainable meal at Sunday brunches, Thursday lunches, and Wednesday and Thursday dinners; a sustainable entrée and side at every lunch and dinner; organic milk, coffee, yogurt, tea, bananas, granola, and tomato sauce at every meal. The Project aims for each of the 1.8 million meals Yale’s dining halls serve each year to feature entirely local, seasonal, and sustainable food.

The Farm

The Yale Farm is a one-acre plot located on Edwards Street between Prospect Street and Whitney Avenue in New Haven, Connecticut.

At the Yale Farm, students, faculty, staff and community members come together to learn about the connection between land and food. The Farm, a 15-minute walk north of the Old Campus, hosts workshops, seminars, volunteer workdays, and tours for local school children. Working in this four-season market garden teaches the principles of sustainability and the practices of sustainable agriculture.

Throughout the school year, the Farm hosts weekly volunteer workdays from 1-5 on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, sharing pizza from the hearth oven with volunteers after Friday workdays. Yale Professors from several departments use the Farm as a resource in their coursework, and teachers from New Haven schools bring their classes to the farm for lessons in ecology, science, and food production. Each summer, six undergraduate interns spend their summer working the land and learning deeply about sustainability, food and agriculture. And each spring and autumn, new students gather around the hearth oven to share pizza during Bulldog Days and before leaving on pre-orientation trips in the fall.

Crops are raised throughout the year, with hardy greens spending the winter months in unheated greenhouses. The harvest is given to volunteers or sold at CitySeed’s Wooster Square Farmers’ Market. The Union League, one of New Haven’s most highly regarded restaurants, regularly features produce from the Farm. In an urban area like New Haven, that’s as locally grown as it gets.

The Farm was established in May 2003, when the Project’s first group of student interns cleared dying hemlock trees, poison ivy, shrubs, and weeds from a forgotten corner of Farnam Gardens. Today, it is a lush, productive, organic farm that produces hundreds of varieties of vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers. In growing, distributing, and eating this bounty, volunteers learn about sustainability first hand. The Yale Farm seeks to model focused, efficient, and sustainable practices that are economically viable and ecologically sound. It produces beautiful, abundant, and delicious food while engaging in agricultural practices that can be continued indefinitely without causing degradation to the biological systems on which they rely.

Education

The Sustainable Food Project is an integral part of the academic experience at Yale. Since its founding, there has been a proliferation of classes related to food and agriculture at Yale. For undergraduates interested in rigorous academic study of food, agriculture, and sustainability, the Environmental Studies major now offers a concentration in Sustainable Agriculture. For those with a focus in other fields, the Project is frequently the subject of student papers, projects, and theses in a variety of disciplines including psychology, literature, and economics. Students can count on several dozen courses from myriad disciplines to focus on the connections between food, the environment, health, politics, and the global economy. Professor Kelly Brownell’s immensely popular lecture course, “The Psychology, Biology, and Politics of Food” regularly enrolls more than 300 students and is one of Yale’s most well-attended classes. Project staff continue to act as a resource for professors developing courses like Brownell’s, contributing material to the curriculum, advising student papers, and appearing as guest lecturers.

Throughout the year, public lectures by guest speakers join with culinary workshops and film screenings to offer the Yale and New Haven community a chance to learn more about food and farming. Past speakers have included chefs Alice Waters and Jacques Pepin, authors Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan, architect Bill McDonough, and food scientist Harold McGee. Culinary workshops at the Yale Farm and in residential college kitchens provide hands-on opportunities for students to learn the art and practice of skills like bread making, fruit preservation, and lacto-fermentation. Films offer another way for people to learn about food and agriculture; past films shown at the Whitney Humanities Center have included King Corn and Black Gold.

References

External links

* http://www.yale.edu/sustainablefood
* http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E00E7DC1430F935A2575BC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
* http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/10/nyregion/10yale.html?_r=2&scp=3&sq=alison+cowan+yale&st=nyt&oref=slogin&oref=slogin