Vegetable co-op takes root at USC

From battered apples to mangled cabbage, Superior Grocers is not a hotspot for great produce. Ralphs has better quality, but woe to the student who doesn’t check the price until the register.

For USC students, however, this barren plane of near-campus veggies does not go on forever. Since February, USC has had its own vegetable drop-off program. For just $15 per week, students can get a box loaded with organic, fresh vegetables, support local agriculture and have an excuse for a nostalgic visit to Trojan Grounds.

Community-supported agriculture is a concept that has been utilized in cities across the United States. Similar to co-ops, CSA works with local farmers to bring their produce to people that buy shares of the farmers’ produce for the season.

It’s a win-win situation: The buyer gets cheap, fresh vegetables all season while the farmer can guarantee a percentage of sold crops.

USC’s activity, however, works a little differently. While many CSAs pull from a group of approved local farms, the produce for USC comes from the South Central Farmers Cooperative, an urban farm whose history was documented in the Oscar-nomintated film The Garden.

And instead of requiring customers to pay for the entire growing season, the South Central Farmers allows them to pay for their boxes on a week-by-week basis. For students, this means as many or as few monster veggie boxes as desired.

To receive a week’s worth of vegetables, all you have to do is place an order online before Monday at 5 p.m., and every Wednesday, the boxes are dropped off in front of Birnkrant Residental College for pickup. That’s it. All I had to do was check my name off a list and somehow cram 10 different kinds of greens into my refrigerator.

The process might sound easy, but getting the vegetables to come to campus wasn’t as simple.

It took Jessi Schoner, an employee at the Marshall School of Business, almost a year to get USC its own drop-off site.

She first got the idea from UCLA’s similar setup, and after hearing a talk by the environmentalist-philosopher Vandana Shiva, she enlisted the help of her boyfriend and various USC students to bring the veggies to campus. She definitely considers the CSA site worth it.

“It brings you closer to the seasons,” Schoner said. “In Los Angeles this is what is supposed to be growing. You can taste the difference.”

Besides the warm fuzzies achieved from knowing you’re helping local farmers, buying from a CSA drop-off has its advantages. The vegetables are fresh — not supermarket standard fresh, but “picked just before your morning coffee” fresh. Because of this, they last longer.

When properly stored, local vegetables will outlast any grocery store counterpart, which is good for those who don’t always cook their own food.

Some might think $15 sounds like a lot for a box of vegetables, but in reality, this behemoth box is easily big enough for two people to cook all their own meals. An apartment of four roomates who sometimes eat out could even split it four ways.

Farm-fresh veggies for $7.50 or $3.75 a week? Superior Grocers can keep its puny bunches of spinach.

If there is a downside to the CSA, it is that it might scare off those not as well acquainted with their veggies. This week’s box had, among other things, red Russian kale, dinosaur kale, Swiss chard, red romaine lettuce and Detroit red beets. Each item, from peppery mustard greens to crunchy sweet carrots, was at its peak of freshness and taste.

So you have a huge box of quasi-identifiable greens sitting in your living room. What do you do with them?

For Schoner, this is the fun part. She and her boyfriend are fond of soups and stir-fries. Recently, she made her own beet and apple chutney.

For a simple side dish, take a bunch of greens and sauté them in garlic and olive oil. Season with salt, pepper and a dash of basil, and you have a restaurant-quality side dish.

Greens add tons of flavor to omelets and egg scrambles. When mixed with docile greens such as romaine or spinach, a few leaves of curly mustard or dinosaur kale add sass to any salad. You are limited only by your own creativity — or lack of Google skills.

USC’s CSA drop-off makes it as easy as possible for students to enjoy fresh, local and cheap produce.

Stick with Superior Grocers for milk and toilet paper, but leave the produce to the farmers.

Mimi Honeycutt is a sophomore majoring in print journalism. Her column “Gingersnaps” runs Wednesdays.

For more information or to order your own vegetable basket online, go to http://scfcoop.southcentralfarmers.com.