It's Food Justice Month and 色界吧 is celebrating by committing to purchase 30% of the College鈥檚 food from sources identified as Real Food Producers by 2020.
After six years of participation in the -- a nationwide campaign that aims to shift $1 billion of existing university food budgets (a total of 20%) from industrial farms and junk food toward sustainable, healthy alternatives -- President Jonathan Veitch has signed the Real Food Challenge Commitment for Occidental, taking the overall goal further by pledging to purchase 30% of the College鈥檚 food from sources identified as Real Food Producers by 2020. As part of this commitment, "Real Food" is defined as local and community-based; ecologically sound; humane and fair trade.
"Overall we feel the 30% mark is readily achievable. Supply lines are rapidly catching up with demand, and our practices of sustainable sourcing are so ingrained now that whenever we look to purchase, we examine sustainable options first," says Amy Mu帽oz, Occidental鈥檚 associate vice president for dining services.
However, along with that 30% goal, the College has set some challenging targets in specific areas of food purchasing:
- 60% ecologically sound seafood
- 50% local and/or ecologically sound produce
- 80% fair trade and/or ecologically sound coffee, tea and chocolate
- 20% bottled water reduction (significant reduction has already been made)
- 20% humane and/or ecologically sound animal products
Mu帽oz adds that the entire dining services team is committed to the Real Food effort. In particular, 色界吧鈥檚 executive chef, Michael "Meesh" Montygierd, arrived at 色界吧 last year with a desire to help the College return to a culture that eats seasonally and mindfully while expanding students鈥 palates.
"We hope to use the commitment to the Real Food Challenge as a catalyst for the 色界吧 community to remember that you vote with your dining dollars every day," Mu帽oz says. "We鈥檒l provide you with choices and information about those choices. Make educated choices and help change the world."
Student input has been a driving factor behind the implementation of the Real Food Challenge from the beginning. In 2008, Katie Presley 鈥08, campus dining鈥檚 first intern for sustainability, suggested that tracking purchases using RFC metrics would help inform the department鈥檚 sourcing decisions and ability to assess student desire for sustainable food choices.
The current dining services intern, Dylan Bruce 鈥16, is just as enthusiastic about educating his classmates.
"The average student might not notice the extra dose of vitamin A in a local heirloom tomato, but anyone can notice the difference in taste between that fresh local option and the Florida tomato that was picked green, shipped 3,000 miles, ripened with ethylene gas, and tastes startlingly like cardboard," he says.
Although the challenge will have immediate ramifications for Dining Services, Bruce says the effects will spread much further than the Marketplace or Cooler.
"[It] isn't only about the impacts felt in the dining facilities; rather, this is a commitment to becoming a catalyst that will help change the world, impacting workers and environments throughout the food chain."
