At Auburn, 20 Percent of Campus Food Must be Local
Students pushed for change.
by Melissa Brown
On an average day, the Nile tilapia travels less than five miles from its watery home to an Auburn University dining tray.
âThese are very healthy fish,â said Auburn University School of Fisheries, Aquaculture and Aquatic Sciences research associate Mollie Smith. Inside an aquaponics greenhouse on a steaming September Wednesday, she sprinkled feed along the waterâs surface, attracting a thrashing, splashing horde to its surface. âWe know everything that has gone into their ecosystem.â
Itâs the circle of life at Auburnâs E.W. Shell Fisheries Centerâand its cafeterias.
A Montgomery Advertiser review of the dining contracts at the four major universities in Alabama and Mississippi found that Auburn alone required specific local purchasing standards in their Aramark contracts. While other universities have âlocal foodâ programs, highlighting the occasional local ingredient or using vague language to suggest dining contractors buy local âwhen possible,â Auburn requires dining to buy 20 percent of its annual products from Alabama businesses or out-of-state producers within a 200-mile radius, looping in nearby Georgia.
The commitment began to percolate nearly a decade ago, pushed forward by Auburn students interested in the local food movement and sustainability concerns. Glenn Loughridge, director of Dining Services, says one of the first meetings he took when he came to Auburn in 2012 was with the Auburn Real Food Challenge, a student group dedicated to getting 20 percent of ârealâ food (âlocal, fair, humane, and ecologically-soundâ) to campus by this year.
In 2019, SFA shared three interlocked stories, produced in collaboration with AL.com, the Montgomery Advertiser, the Clarion Ledger, and Mississippi Today. Together, they shine light on the economics and labor practices of campus dining at Auburn University, the University of Alabama, Mississippi State University, and the University of Mississippi â the largest public universities in Alabama and Mississippi. Read those stories here.
Loughridge expects Auburn to meet that goal easily, but it will still take work.
âItâs not a simple, âWe want Farmer John who lives down the street to sell us his field full of collard greens,ââ Loughridge said. âWe need to be able to trace back sources, to make sure theyâre certified, to make sure food is safe for our students to eat. Itâs not always a simple process of going to buy local stuff.â
At the University of Alabama, Bama Dining promotes its âHomegrown Alabamaâ initiative, which denotes any locally grown and produced products at campus dining halls. According to UAâs website, dining managers are ârequired to purchaseâ local products âwhenever available.â
âThe dining halls at UA are unlike local restaurants that can promote all local ingredients, in that a local restaurant may serve 400 guests in a typical day, and at UA we serve over 6,000 meals in an average day,â Kristina Patridge, director of UAâs Dining Services, said. âWe purchase what we can, but if we can only get three cases of a certain item, we serve it until it is gone, and then may have to use products from another source.â
At Auburn, produce comes from Clanton; dairy from Thomasville, Georgia; Alabama-made products from Evergreen and Dadeville. Auburn also loops in its own meat services department. Tilapia from Auburnâs flourishing hydroponics research appears as fish tacos in Auburn dining halls. Cucumbers from aquaponics greenhouses accent freshly picked lettuce salads.
âYou win the hearts and minds when somebody tastes something that is different,â Loughridge said. âWhen you have a tomato thatâs been vine-ripened and brought to campus that day, itâs a different experience than that pulpy tomato from somewhere else. With campus food, students might have the feeling that theyâre a captured market, so you donât try as hard. We want to dispel that. Weâre trying harder.â
Melissa Brown is an enterprise reporter focusing on criminal justice and public health issues at the Montgomery Advertiser.