More than 50 per cent of food served at the University of B.C.’s cafeterias and outlets is either grown, raised or processed within 150 miles of the school or certified as organic.
Shannon Lambie, communications and project manager at UBC Farm, said UBC Food Services tries to use as many fruits and vegetables grown at the farm as possible.
“We want to be a model for other university and institutional dining halls by showing our strong relationship with sourcing local food,” said Lambie, who completed the UBC Farm Practicum of Sustainable Agriculture last year.
The UBC Farm encompasses 24 hectares of integrated farm and forest land on Ross Drive on the university’s south campus near Westbrook Village. It’s open to the public year-round with seasonal hours and operates a Saturday market June through October.
The farm is managed by the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, which offers a wide variety of interdisciplinary learning, research and community programs at the green space.
Lambie said the most famous example of the university’s food services moving towards locally grown products was the butternut squash pizza introduced to the school’s cafeterias in 2000.
“During that time the movement towards locally sourced food was in a very early phase,” said Lambie. “It’s only been in the last five or six years that it’s really scaled up and the farm has been able to supply Food Services with so much more including carrots, beets, kale, arugula and squash.”
UBC was recognized last year with the Golden Carrot Award from Farm to Cafeteria Canada for its efforts in using as much locally processed, grown, raised or organic food as possible.
Farm to Cafeteria Canada is a national organization that recognizes efforts to implement farm-to-university purchasing programs. The university’s cafeterias, restaurants and food outlets sell an average of $24 million worth of food and liquor annually.
Lambie said Chef Steve Golob, who’s been with UBC Food Services for 17 years, had a large part to play in the shift to introduce sustainable and locally-grown food to the campus.
Golob is also a member of the Farm to School Canada advisory board, a co-investigator with the Think and Eat Green at School research project, and the recent recipient of the UBC President’s Staff Award for Global Citizenship.
Lambie will take part Feb. 7 in a panel discussion called Scaling up: Bringing Local to a Global Campus, part of the UBC Farm Symposium taking place at the Old Barn Community Centre on Thunderbird Boulevard.
Joining Lambie on the panel will be Joanne Bays from Farm to Cafeteria Canada, Victoria Wakefield of Student Housing and Hospitality Services, Liska Richer from Campus Sustainability, Chef Golob and Amy Frye from UBC Farm.
Opening remarks will be made by Veronik Campbell from UBC Farm, Larry Grant of First Nations House of Learning, and Murray Isman, dean of the Faculty of Land and Food Systems.
The day-long symposium is offering numerous sessions, including A Hopyard on Campus, Indigenous Lens on Kids Learning Land, Organic Foods and Organic Farms, and Practicum for Sustainable Agriculture.
The symposium, sponsored by Vancity and AMS Sustainability, is free and open to students, faculty, staff and the public, but registration is required at ubcfarm.ubc.ca. The event takes place from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Old Barn Community Centre, 6308 Thunderbird Blvd.
For those attending all day, lunch is available to purchase for $5.
sthomas@vancourier.com
twitter.com/sthomas10
