Yale University has a rich history. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the esteemed Ivy League school is the third oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five U.S. presidents, nineteen U.S. Supreme Court Justices, and several foreign heads of state.
Perhaps it is an index of how deeply the need for change in our food system has penetrated that it has reached these hallowed Ivy League halls. The Yale Sustainable Food Project operates an on-campus sustainable farm, a weekly farmers’ market, and programs that involve students in the running of the farm as part of the university curriculum.
The farm itself is set up to produce in all four seasons and grows about 300 varieties of vegetables, fruits, herbs and cut flowers. It is staffed by a full-time manager and student interns who also act as tour guides and teachers for students and public. The plentiful produce is sold through the farmers’ market and to local restaurants. A portion of it also goes to local homeless shelters.
Undergraduates become inspired by the farm; after their first encounter, either as a volunteer or as a participant in a workshop or through a visit as part of a class, they generally go on to take more responsibility and integrate food and agriculture into their courses of study.
“The project was founded with a particular understanding that the world’s most pressing questions—whether regarding health, our culture, the environment or the economy—need to be addressed while considering the food we eat and the way we produce it,” Melina Shannon-DiPietro, executive director of the Yale Sustainable Food Project, told Organic Connections. “If you try to answer any of those questions without thinking about food and agriculture, you can’t answer the questions adequately. Our mission is to create opportunities for students to experience food, agriculture and sustainability as an integral part of their education and their everyday life here at Yale. That’s what gives them the capacity to effect meaningful change as individuals and as leaders in their communities, their homes and their life’s work.”
The tactics of the program are threefold, involving shared work, shared food and shared inquiry. These tactics have given undergraduates, faculty and staff, as well as visiting community members, new understandings of the options they have for eating food that is good for them, for the people that grow it, and also for the land.
“Our work really brings food and agriculture front and center,” Shannon-DiPietro said. “That’s where it needs to be. For a long time it’s been distant; it’s been something that happens far away. Our project is operating much the same way as when universities began bringing women into colleges, and they had to rethink the relationships between men and women and larger social structures. As we’re bringing real food and sustainable agriculture into the university, it’s causing us to rethink the relationships between people, food and the land.”
The project had its beginnings in 2001 when legendary chef and sustainable-food activist Alice Waters, whose daughter Fanny Singer had enrolled at Yale, became interested in the culture of food at the university. A conversation between Waters and Yale president Richard Levin sparked the idea for an ambitious undertaking: a project encompassing a sustainable dining program, a college farm, university composting, and increased education around food and agriculture.
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“We really thought of it as a meeting of the minds and a lining up of the constellations,” Shannon-DiPietro related. “Students had been advocating for change in the food system here on Yale’s campus, and President Levin and Alice Waters were able to share a meal with her daughter. President Levin, Alice and the students came together and began talking about what Yale would look like if there were a commitment to put sustainability practices into operation in our dining hall, and a larger commitment to change the way the campus thinks about food, agriculture and the environment.”
The farm itself is not USDA certified organic, but the practices on the farm are often “beyond organic.” One primary guideline relates to the particular varieties selected; as suggested by Alice Waters, they are chosen according to taste—their flavor must be “extraordinarily good.”
“What I’ve seen is that after people taste really great produce, they become very excited about the way it is grown—for itself, for the environment, and for the people who grow it as well,” said Shannon-DiPietro.
At this point the food grown on the farm has not made it into Yale’s campus dining halls, but there is a long-term program for integrating it. While that’s occurring, students can partake of it through the farm’s wood-burning hearth oven. “Something like tomatoes, basil and eggplant on a September pizza when students are returning communicates directly the power of healthy agriculture,” Shannon-DiPietro said.
In concluding, she explains the project’s most important function. “A third of our greenhouse gas emissions are related to food and agriculture. At this point, a third of our nation’s children are obese. When we look around the world, about 60 percent of the population work in food and agriculture. If we’re going to confront the challenges that come with these statistics, we really need to think about the way food is produced and shared. And that’s what the Yale Sustainable Food Project is here for.”
To find out more about the Yale Sustainable Food Project, visit their website at www.yale.edu/sustainablefood.
