Food is the new cause at Yale
NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Food is the new cause at Yale and elsewhere, with students pushing their schools to use their substantial purchasing power and influence to buy locally grown or organic produce. ...even starting organic farms in cities like New Haven and Providence, R.I. "We're trying to change the culture of food on college campuses around the country," said Laura Hess of the Yale Sustainable Food Project. "We believe the world's most pressing questions and problems cannot be adequately addressed without looking at food and the way we produce it." Yale will hold a first-of-its-kind summit Saturday and Sunday with students from 50 colleges around the region in an effort to galvanize a national movement around food. The summit will end with a declaration of principles that students can bring back to their colleges to push for changes. Supporters hope those changes spread from campuses to wider society. About 70 percent of colleges buy food from local farms and 64 percent serve fair trade coffee, certified as meeting practices that do not exploit laborers, according to a new study by Sustainable Endowments Institute, a nonprofit group based in Cambridge, Mass. The study of 200 public and private universities with the largest endowments also found that 27 percent of schools offer cage-free eggs and more than one-third buy milk from a local dairy.
Source: John Christoffersen,Food is new cause at universities, Associated Press Writer, Boston.com October 31, 2007