Project Update #1

The Campus Garden on a beautiful misty Friday morning.

I have decided to focus the scope of my personal project, and concentrate on learning about the local food supply chain in a hands-on way. At the Big Red Eats Green Festival I had the chance to speak with some representatives from the IU Campus Garden initiative and wanted to get involved, so I went to my first workday last Friday. I spent the morning weeding, watering trees, and picking a lot of tomatoes of several varieties!

Just a small sample of the yellow cherry tomatoes I picked. Sweet like candy!

In addition to the tomatoes, I also harvested basil, kale, lemon cucumbers, bell peppers, and a whole watermelon to take home with me. There was also swiss chard, but I didn't take that as my wife hates swiss chard (she claims it tastes like beets.

Freshly picked watermelon! 

After the harvest, I sat down with Sara, the Campus Garden coordinator, to talk about ways to get involved with the garden outside of the regular workdays. The garden as a good relationship with  the IU RPS (residential programs & services), and contributes the bulk of its produce to be used in the dining halls. The biggest challenge in this program is making sure all food goes through correct sanitation procedures before delivery. We talked about possibly formalizing a process to make this easier for volunteers and increase the efficiency of food coming from the garden to the dining halls. 

In addition to food from the campus garden, there is a push to source more local food to the dining halls and student union in general. It is one thing when the food is free, but another when the campus has to purchase local food from outside farms. Sara said this can get tricky and there are sometimes complications and disagreements regarding pricing and regulations (for example, what level of organic certification is required?), but offered to put me in touch with one of the people managing this program. With my particular interest in supply chain and vendor management, I am very curious to see what the specific issues are involved in sustainable sourcing on the local level. 

So, it was a successful visit, and I look forward to not only getting more involved with the campus garden this semester, but also doing some research into the food supply chain of the IU RPS. Stay tuned for more!