 "Photo: Brittany Bledsoe")
 "Photo: Brittany Bledsoe")
The average piece of food is needlessly trucked more than 1,000 miles before it is eaten. This semester, students in the Geography 440 class helped pass an advisory measure that will encourage the Associated Students to buy at least one-third of the food served on campus from local producers.
Now that the advisory measure has passed with 84 percent of the vote, it is in the hands of others.
Sustainability Coordinator Robyn DiFalco will be involved in the next steps for the initiative, she said.
“When an advisory measure like this passes, it’s still just an advisory,” DiFalco said. “It doesn’t force A.S. or the university to do anything. But the voters have spoken so now we will look into the next steps and see what’s feasible.”
Another thing that has to be considered is that some foods are harder to get locally during certain times of the year, she said. In winter, not as many things are produced in Northern California, but that’s when the most people eat on campus. In summer, there is a lot of food production but fewer students to feed.
“I’m not as concerned with nitpicking over whether the food is coming from adjacent counties or not,” DiFalco said. “If we find that the best price is coming from Sacramento, then lets do that. And if that means we’re not having it driven up from San Diego, then that’s great."
A.S. is also setting up an internship where students can continue working on the advisory measure and get experience implementing it, she said. No one has been enrolled in the internship yet, but it was just organized in the past couple of weeks.
Some students from Geography 440 are already interested in continuing to work on the advisory measure.
Senior Kevin Parisi has already inquired about getting a position as an intern for the implementation process.
“It will be our job to get the ball rolling,” he said.
This measure was a part of the curriculum for the geography class, Environmental Thought and Action. Throughout the semester, students in the class rallied for the measure to be passed.
The students started off figuring out what would be considered local, how much of the food A.S. buys is already local and what foods are available locally, said professor Mark Stemen, who teaches the class.
“They decided to define local by what county the food is coming from,” he said. “If it comes from within or from one of the six counties adjacent to Butte County, it qualifies as local.”
The class came up with ideas on something they would change on campus, Stemen said. Then they narrowed the ideas down to one, researched it, wrote it out and passed it by an A.S. lawyer.
The students from the class collected signatures on campus to get the advisory measure passed, Stemen said. Students voted on it in the A.S. general elections April 21 through April 23.
The class rallied and gained student support for the initiative.
“We wanted students to get excited about it, said junior Gavin Dixon, a student from the class. “We staged food fights in the free speech area, jumped around with music playing and started conga lines on campus while wearing support-local-food costumes.”
Students had unique goals for the advisory measure because of their findings.
The class found that, on average, fresh produce travels nearly 1,500 miles before it gets to someone’s plate, said junior Brad Manouse, who thinks that is a huge waste and wanted to see the average piece of food going less than 300 miles before being consumed.
A lot of fuel is used by hauling food around, Stemen said. Encouraging people to purchase locally cuts down on greenhouse emissions and encourages people to support their local economies. Food just tastes better when it’s fresher because it loses its quality the longer it sits in a truck.
“Local is the new organic,” he said.
Joel Hersch can be reached at
jhersch@theorion.com
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