Letter to the editor

Sustainable food limited

Here’s something that should make you lose your appetite: Only 6 percent of food served on USC’s campus is purchased from local producers.

Even less is organically grown or raised. The bread on that sandwich you’re eating likely came from a factory in Ohio, the meat from a slaughterhouse in Kansas and the tomato … well, who knows?

Recently, many USC students learned that eating sustainable foods — whether local or organic — is beneficial to the environment, farmers, ranchers and eaters.

Money spent on produce, meat and bread spurs the economy of your region and has a drastically lower footprint on the environment, since it does not need to travel by truck thousands of miles to reach your dinner plate.

Moreover, local food tends to come from small-scale growers rather than larger corporate growers who exploit their workers almost worse than their livestock.

Eric Schlosser, the co-producer of the hit documentary Food, Inc. and author of Fast Food Nation, and Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, emphasized these points in their lecture at Bovard.

Unfortunately,  the Visions & Voices event Feb. 9 was basically our university’s most expensive investment in sustainable food.

USC might have hosted sustainable food advocates, but in actuality it is doing little to progress the very movement it claims to champion.

Sustainable food on our campus is nearly nonexistent. Students can purchase pastries from the local Homeboy Bakery at Shop Café, organic snacks from the Law School Café or natural salads at Popovich. Meanwhile, roughly 30 percent of the food served at Lemonade is sustainable.

USC students have few sustainable food options outside of these limited venues.

Other universities, meanwhile, are winning the food fight for tastier, fresher and more sustainable dining options.

At the University of California, Berkeley, students can eat at Crossroad’s, an entirely organic dining hall.

Imagine if Everbody’s Kitchen served nothing but organic food.

Meanwhile, at Stanford, almost half of the school’s dining produce is organic or regionally grown.

Even UCLA is increasing organic and local options for its students and faculty.

Last week, USC’s Director of Hospitality, Kris Klinger, stated he wants to purchase the majority of our campus’ food from local markets.

The most effective way to accomplish Klinger’s goal is to convert one of USC’s many eateries into a fully sustainable restaurant.

Other universities have done just that with the widespread approval of students’ taste buds.

Just last month, the University of Pennsylvania opened Joe’s, a café serving fresh, local, seasonable produce and naturally raised meats. Ronald Tutor Hall Café and other venues have the infrastructure to achieve the same. But nothing is being done.

Let’s create a difference you can taste. We students are hungry for change.

Nick Brown

Sophomore, political science