Local Color on Campus

Colleges create partnerships to realize the full potential of farm-to-fork programs.

By Jamie Popp, Senior Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 8/1/2006

At peak season, Wheaton College sources as much as 40% of its produce locally, according to Executive Chef Marco Hetterich (r.). Green Café at Hamilton College features a farm-to-fork culinary station with entrées made with locally sourced ingredients.

As a culinary movement, local sourcing has legs, and the home-grown philosophy is finding strong support on college campuses where it has been embraced by students and foodservice managers.

Local—shorthand for area-sourced farm and foraged products such as produce, meats, milk, maple syrup, nuts and cheese—is advocated by many chefs who believe that, beyond the issue of quality, purchasing from small producers enables them to exist among huge agribusinesses. On campus, though, student preferences carry the most clout and increasingly, local suits their style. Looking for foods described as authentic, clean and wholesome, they view local as a vehicle to deliver those traits.

Foodservice directors who opt to put local into play quickly find that it’s not as simple as striking deals with nearby producers. Primary supplier agreements, seasonal availability, sufficient volume and distribution challenges can block even the best intentions. That’s where networks come in.

During its pilot program in 2003, State University of New York (SUNY) Potsdam locally sourced 500 pounds of sweet corn, 1,100 pounds of cucumbers and 3,300 pounds of tomatoes as well as apples, beans, beets, cabbage, carrots, squash and bell peppers. Director of Dining Services George Arnold says last year $75,000 was spent on local goods, including produce, milk, maple syrup, buffalo meat and products from area businesses. Arnold estimates that as much as $250,000 could be spent.

An “accidental farm-to-fork program” caused Arnold to go local. He had met a group of Amish farmers whose tomatoes he wanted to bring to campus. From that grassroots beginning, it has become an ordering, sourcing and distribution system. “Our pilot program demonstrated the feasibility of the concept and laid the groundwork for the creation of a cooperative which is the group from whom we now purchase,” Arnold says.

St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., provided storage, and Potsdam, N.Y.-based resource center Seedcorn funded an employee to manage the program. In addition, Cornell University’s extension program in Ithaca, N.Y., helped pinpoint local farmers.

Making Connections

No matter how good the products, high-volume kitchens need assurance that supplies will be reliable and consistent. Making connections with farmers who can meet those demands and setting up delivery mechanisms is one of the challenges.

At least one powerful person is adding muscle to such programs. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who is active in support of finding avenues to expand markets for New York State agriculture, headlined at the one-day “Colleges Buying Local: A Farm-to-Fork Initiative” conference held in April at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, N.Y. College contracting giants Aramark, Bon Appétit Management Co. and Sodexho sponsored the event, at which 28 colleges participated.

CIA involvement was an extension of one of its core philosophies. The CIA spent $373,000 on local products last year, a number that will increase, according to Paul Wigsten, a former produce supplier to the school and now its farm procurement manager.

Northampton, Mass.-based Smith College also is realizing the benefits of bringing farmers and institutions together. It hosted a five-college consortium last fall with the University of Massachusetts, Amherst College, Hampshire College and Mount Holyoke College to which local farmers were invited. From that meeting, a spreadsheet was created to track produce availability and preferred delivery method, according to Kathleen Zieja, Smith’s director of dining services.

Farm to Fork

Other organizations also bring growers and college buyers together. Growers Collaborative, a Ventura, Calif., company owned by Community Alliance with Family Farmers, specializes in institutional accounts. It delivers produce from its 38 local growers to the University of California at Santa Barbara and 23 Bon Appétit Management Co. accounts.

“It is a natural fit [to work with institutional accounts because of demand],” says Stephanie Johnson, general manager. Lettuce mixes, tomatoes, peaches, plums, nectarines, carrots as well as specialty products such as collards and sweet potatoes from African American farmers, and lemongrass and traditional Hmong vegetables also are available.

“At the university level, student groups are pushing for more sustainable foods,” Johnson says. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Bon Appétit encourages its accounts to work with local farmers as part of its push for more sustainable practices.

The Green Café at Hamilton College, Clinton, N.Y., features a farm-to-fork culinary station with entrées made with locally sourced ingredients. Bon Appétit General Manager Patrick Raynard finds the produce through contacts made at local farmers markets.

Wheaton College, another Bon Appétit account, in Wheaton, Ill., serves 4,500 meals daily. At peak season, it sources as much as 40% of produce locally, according to Executive Chef Marco Hetterich. Depending on the orders’ size, growers may include Hetterich on their route as they travel to farmers markets.

The college also partners with other Bon Appétit accounts in the Chicago area, including AT&T and the Art Institute of Chicago; this streamlines the local purchasing process.

Yale University, a vastly larger enterprise, facilitates deliveries by using a produce distributor to limit the number of deliveries farmers would otherwise make to the New Haven, Conn., campus.

“We’ve set up a program with the distributor in which we pay on a fee basis rather than a percentage so there’s transparency in the transaction,” says Melina Shannon-DiPietro, Yale Sustainable Food Project director. “If we pay $22 for apples, the farmer gets $20.”

Working within an established distribution system is how College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn., adds more locally grown ingredients to 1,500 meals served daily, says Production Manager Paul Ruszat. The school’s primary vendor agreement, which allows only 10% of food to come from outside sources, restricts local purchasing.

But Ruszat says its national food supplier offers access to locally grown products when available. Through the program, Ruszat gets e-mails about what farmers are selling when produce is in season. It’s a way to incorporate local practices and benefit from national supplier relationships.

“The challenge for institutions is that they work through global markets, and they need to figure out how to convert from global to local supply chains,” Shannon-DiPietro says.