Hungry for change
Sustainable revolution happening on campuses across canada
Our students can harvest in the morning and it’s on the plate by the afternoon. People talk about the 100-mile diet. We have a 100-foot diet ... It’s great because we’re not shipping food hundreds or thousands of kilometres. — TONY DOYLE ,CFF
If the 100-mile diet has given people food for thought, Durham College’s (DC) Centre for Food (CFF) hopes its field-tofork concept will up the ante. With orchards, agricultural fields and greenhouses — and now an apiary — located on campus and served just steps away in its teaching restaurant, it’s proud to offer a ‘100-foot diet.’
“Our students can harvest lettuce in the morning and it’s on the plate in Bistro ’67 by the afternoon. Our customers tell us they can taste the difference,” says Tony Doyle, associate dean of CFF, located at DC’s Whitby campus. “People talk about the 100-mile diet. We have a 100-foot diet … It’s great because we’re not shipping food hundreds or thousands of kilometres.”
The CFF’s annual harvest dinner — which serves up 50 different types of produce — is an interdisciplinary experience. Horticulture technician students prepare the grounds, horticulture food and farming students harvest the food and culinary students prepare the meal, which is served by event management and hospitality students. “That’s the real world,” says Doyle.
Casey Chessman, a secondyear food and farming student, says CFF complements her generation’s sustainability mindset. “There’s a sustainable revolution happening, and projects like field to fork push this movement forward,” she says. “We have a beautiful garden here at DC with over 100 varieties of fruits, veggies and herbs. As I see people walk by, they smile. That, to me, communicates the feeling this movement evokes. There’s a connection with the food.”
Four Ontario colleges have launched pilot projects to make more locally grown food available for students on campus. Led by Hamilton’s Mohawk College, the procurement initiative will see Ottawa’s Algonquin College, Sudbury’s Collège Boréal, Peterborough’s Fleming College and Toronto’s Humber College attempt to replicate and validate the initiatives used at Mohawk and develop new initiatives.
The initiative is designed to promote healthy food options for students, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing transportation and support local food producers. Results from the pilot projects will be used to help build the province’s first local food procurement framework for Ontario’s 24 public colleges in early 2018.
The local food movement — sometimes called the ‘urban farm movement’ — is flourishing on campuses across the country. At University of British Columbia, campus gardens provide hands-on opportunities for students, staff, faculty and residents to learn about sustainable food systems. It has even published the UBC Farm to Fork Cookbook that promised to “tantalize your taste buds, and to get you thinking about healthy, inseason and local food that is grown, promoted and sold right here at UBC.”
Green roofs are also taking root. According to researchers in UCalgary’s Green Roof initiative in Alberta, the benefits are many. They eat CO2 and produce oxygen, cleaning the air, which translates to improved health. They act as natural insulators, saving energy through summer cooling benefits and providing some winter heating reduction, especially in older buildings.
Green roofs reduce the quantity and improve the quality of stormwater runoff, last longer than conventional roofs, decrease noise and give urbanites a chance to enjoy nature. Urban agriculture can also supplement food budgets by providing access to fresh foods that some can’t otherwise afford. Urban farms also create a sense of community, bringing people together for a common purpose.