Many American colleges and universities have recently been making efforts to emphasize sustainable and local food on their campuses. Perhaps the best example is at Yale University, where the Yale Sustainable Food Project – founded in 2001 by Yale students, faculty, and staff with administration support – directs a sustainable dining program for the university, manages an organic farm on campus, and runs programs to support exploration of food and agriculture sourcing. Yale’s own farm is a 15 minute walk from campus and hosts workdays, classes, tours, and even offers summer internships in sustainable agriculture projects. The farm’s produce is used in campus dining halls, sold at a farmers market, and featured in local restaurants. “In an urban area like New Haven, this is as locally grown as food gets.” – Yale Sustainable Food Project

Closer to home here at MIT, the MIT Sustainability project’s Campus Wide Food Initiative has outlined a series of longterm goals for sustainable food projects including a food mapping project. We are initiating collaboration with the Food Initiative and their connections with MIT Dining services to integrate Sourcemap into their projects. Additionally, an MIT alumnus recently opened The Clover Food Truck, a new food truck on the MIT campus focusing on organic, vegetarian, and locally sourced food in an “open kitchen style”: “The Clover Food Truck will promote the “open kitchen concept” which allows customers to see how their food is being prepared, local-sourcing for meal ingredients will allow customers to trace where food comes from. The entirely vegetarian food menu will include salads, soups, french fries, pita wraps and sandwiches. Fresh juices, coffee, aqua fresca, lemonade and ice tea will also be available. “

Despite these efforts, MIT and many other universities still have a long way to go to match efforts similar to Yale’s.