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Slow Food School
Yale's commitment to sustainable food generates international acclaim.
Saturday, 04 April 2009 | Courtney Fukuda
Free-range chicken breast, grass-fed lamb and feta burgers, individual organic pizzas, tofu apple crisp. These are hardly the dishes one expects in a university dining hall, but with Yale's Sustainable Food Project (YSFP), they have become staples of the Yale College meal plan.
Yale's gourmet dishes are remarkable not only for their end product but also for the process that brings them to students' trays. These dishes are examples of "slow food"-a term that is not just a buzzword unique to Yale, but a phrase conveying a worldwide shift in attitudes toward food and agriculture. Slow food means food created with care from healthy plants and animals, food produced by people who are fairly compensated for their work, food grown and harvested in ways that positively affect local ecosystems. Yale's impact in the worldwide slow food movement has been incredibly positive-and global.
Every two years in Torino, Italy, farmers from 180 nations convene for a four-day conference celebrating global developments in slow food and sustainable agriculture. Known as Terra Madre, this international forum hosts the world's premier organic farmers, celebrity chefs, and food aficionados for a weekend devoted to environmental advocacy, fair trade agriculture, and sophisticated cooking.
Yale's special role in the conference began when students were first invited to participate in 2006. Since then, 22 Yalies have taken part. In 2008, 13 students and administrators represented Yale, participating in cross-cultural discussions covering such diverse topics as the global food shortage, genetically modified organism technology, and school garden networks. Yale's delegates came away from their four-day experience informed and inspired to solve the globe's most pressing food and nutrition challenges.
While student groups from other universities were limited to four members, Slow Foods International, Terra Madre's sponsoring organization, offered Yale a special exemption. The size of the delegation was an acknowledgment of Yale's dedication to the principles behind sustainable food and, in particular, a testament to the success of the Yale Sustainable Food Project (YSFP). The YSFP directs Yale's sustainable dining initiative, manages an organic farm on campus, and organizes relevant campus events. Anastatia Curley, the YSFP's communications coordinator, explained that the program's impact extends beyond the dining halls: "By creating opportunities for students to experience food, agriculture, and sustainability as integral parts of their education and everyday life, the YSFP ensures that Yale graduates have the capacity to effect meaningful change as individuals and as leaders in their communities, their homes, and their life's work." At Yale, slow food has become part of a liberal arts education.
Yale's Longstanding Commitment "As evidenced by the masses of people who gathered at Terra Madre this past fall, there is no question that food is a major issue in the world today," noted Stephanie Cheng, a sophomore in Silliman College who attended the 2008 Terra Madre conference. "Unfortunately, the U.S. lags far behind many other countries in respect to movement toward a more sustainable food system." But this national trend does not extend to Yale. Cheng explained: "The YSFP is unique in that its relative progress far exceeds some of the most highly supported agricultural organizations across the globe."
The movement for sustainable food has a long history at Yale. Alice Waters, a self-proclaimed "food activist," was one of the movement's early pioneers on campus. Waters founded the Chez Panisse Foundation, an organization that supports educational programs that use food "to nurture, educate, and empower youth." Prior to working with Yale, Waters helped to organize the Edible Schoolyard, a program that allows middle school students at a public school in Berkeley, California, to supplement classroom learning with farm work in order to better understand the connections between food and nature.
Slow Food School
Yale's commitment to sustainable food generates international acclaim.
Saturday, 04 April 2009 | Courtney Fukuda
Free-range chicken breast, grass-fed lamb and feta burgers, individual organic pizzas, tofu apple crisp. These are hardly the dishes one expects in a university dining hall, but with Yale's Sustainable Food Project (YSFP), they have become staples of the Yale College meal plan.
Yale's gourmet dishes are remarkable not only for their end product but also for the process that brings them to students' trays. These dishes are examples of "slow food"-a term that is not just a buzzword unique to Yale, but a phrase conveying a worldwide shift in attitudes toward food and agriculture. Slow food means food created with care from healthy plants and animals, food produced by people who are fairly compensated for their work, food grown and harvested in ways that positively affect local ecosystems. Yale's impact in the worldwide slow food movement has been incredibly positive-and global.
Every two years in Torino, Italy, farmers from 180 nations convene for a four-day conference celebrating global developments in slow food and sustainable agriculture. Known as Terra Madre, this international forum hosts the world's premier organic farmers, celebrity chefs, and food aficionados for a weekend devoted to environmental advocacy, fair trade agriculture, and sophisticated cooking.
Yale's special role in the conference began when students were first invited to participate in 2006. Since then, 22 Yalies have taken part. In 2008, 13 students and administrators represented Yale, participating in cross-cultural discussions covering such diverse topics as the global food shortage, genetically modified organism technology, and school garden networks. Yale's delegates came away from their four-day experience informed and inspired to solve the globe's most pressing food and nutrition challenges.
While student groups from other universities were limited to four members, Slow Foods International, Terra Madre's sponsoring organization, offered Yale a special exemption. The size of the delegation was an acknowledgment of Yale's dedication to the principles behind sustainable food and, in particular, a testament to the success of the Yale Sustainable Food Project (YSFP). The YSFP directs Yale's sustainable dining initiative, manages an organic farm on campus, and organizes relevant campus events. Anastatia Curley, the YSFP's communications coordinator, explained that the program's impact extends beyond the dining halls: "By creating opportunities for students to experience food, agriculture, and sustainability as integral parts of their education and everyday life, the YSFP ensures that Yale graduates have the capacity to effect meaningful change as individuals and as leaders in their communities, their homes, and their life's work." At Yale, slow food has become part of a liberal arts education.
Yale's Longstanding Commitment "As evidenced by the masses of people who gathered at Terra Madre this past fall, there is no question that food is a major issue in the world today," noted Stephanie Cheng, a sophomore in Silliman College who attended the 2008 Terra Madre conference. "Unfortunately, the U.S. lags far behind many other countries in respect to movement toward a more sustainable food system." But this national trend does not extend to Yale. Cheng explained: "The YSFP is unique in that its relative progress far exceeds some of the most highly supported agricultural organizations across the globe."
The movement for sustainable food has a long history at Yale. Alice Waters, a self-proclaimed "food activist," was one of the movement's early pioneers on campus. Waters founded the Chez Panisse Foundation, an organization that supports educational programs that use food "to nurture, educate, and empower youth." Prior to working with Yale, Waters helped to organize the Edible Schoolyard, a program that allows middle school students at a public school in Berkeley, California, to supplement classroom learning with farm work in order to better understand the connections between food and nature.
When Waters' daughter Fanny matriculated at Yale in 2001, Waters brought her zeal and insight to the campus as well. With the help of passionate students from a new undergraduate organization, Food from the Earth, she garnered administrative support for the development of a one-acre organic farm on the university's campus. This initial collaboration grew into the YSFP.
Since its inception in 2003, the YSFP has become a model program. Brown and Harvard have recently hired staff for similarly structured programs; Emory, Columbia, and other universities have made use of the YSFP's printed educational materials in classrooms and dining programs.
The Project's insight has been recognized outside of academia as well. YSFP members recently began advising the United Nations development Program in its effort to create a sustainable dining initiative for international organizations. Furthermore, the YSFP's student interns have traveled to Washington, d.C., to help build a sustainable garden on Pennsylvania Avenue and participate in discussions about a proposed federal school garden and lunch program.
An Established Presence
The YSFP brings more to campus than its organic rustic Italian pizzas. It hosts events throughout the academic year, including guest lectures and Masters' Teas, culinary workshops, and film screenings-all with a particular YSFP flare.
When organized by the YSFP, a standard 90-minute documentary about food turns into a gastronomic viewing experience, complete with warm apple crisp and lively discussions about food's portrayal in the featured film. dahlia Mignouna, a freshman in Berkeley College and a regular at these events, appreciates the YSFP's efforts. "They make me look at things as commonplace as food from entirely new perspectives," she said. "For example, when I went to watch the movie 'King Corn,' I realized that America is moving toward treating food as merely one more economic good, a viewpoint that hurts both the environment and the consumers of corn products." The YSFP provided corn-free products to munch on during the film.
The conviction that food is more than an economic good has been strengthened by the recent failure of traditional economic structures, suggested Curley of the YSFP. In light of the economic downturn, she said, students and administrators across campus have begun thinking about everyday matters such as food and agriculture in deeper, unconventional ways.
"The financial systems we were living with were completely unsustainable," she said. "They were essentially built on nothing. Thus, we need to focus again on foundational matters. We need to pay more attention to the fundamental pleasures and rights of our land and people and be more conscious of the effects of our actions."
Some students have even committed themselves to the academic study of sustainable food, an effort made possible by the addition of two new concentrations in the Environmental Studies and Women's Studies majors. These programs are sustainable agriculture and food studies, respectively. Melina Shannon-diPietro, director of the YSFP, thought this new interest in the interdisciplinary study of food and agriculture was understandable. "If you are concerned with global trade, women's issues, the environment, or public health, you are concerned with agriculture-agriculture is still the most common occupation in the world," she explained. Shannon-dipietro is adding to the new academic offerings in sustainable food and agriculture by offering a spring course called "Farming and Eating in the USA."
A Sustainable Future
As commodity markets and subsidies supplant individual family farms, it takes strong advocates to bring slow food to the forefront of public attention.
"If we continue to exploit our agricultural resources the way we have for the past half century, we will not only pay the price in terms of cost of food but with our health as well," explained Cheng, sharing her lessons from YSFP and Terra Madre. "We either need to learn from our mistakes or implement more innovative programs like YSFP to help reverse the problems we have created."
Under the right leadership, this solution could become a reality. In summer 2008, Joshua Viertel, former YSFP director and the father of slow food at Yale, left the University to accept a new position as president of Slow Food USA (SFUSA), an affiliated subgroup of Slow Foods International. At Yale, Viertel was particularly respected for his ability to inspire students to think about food and engage in the world around them via agriculture. "Naming Viertel president of SFUSA is great for both the YSFP and SFUSA, because they get his talent while we share the pride," said Curley. "Picking an individual so invested in communities of youth says a lot about the direction SFI wants to go in."
If the YSFP model continues to spread at its current rate, perhaps the next generation of university students will no longer crave fast- food. Instead, they may ask for their food slow.
Courtney Fukuda is a freshman in Berkeley College
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