Students Flock to Campus Organic Farms

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Students Flock to Campus Organic Farms

By JULIA SILVERMAN, AP Education Writer Fri Jul 22, 7:44 AM ET

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Plenty of college kids still subsist on a steady diet of ramen

noodles,

cold cereal and beer to wash it all down. Not Nate France. The crop and soil

sciences major

at Oregon State University here wouldn't dream of following the well-beaten path

to the

local Carl Jr.'s for cheap, mammoth burgers.

 

 

Instead, every Thursday afternoon until the sun sets, France helps till and tend

to a

pocket-sized, student-run organic farm on a couple of soil-rich acres just

outside this

western Oregon college town.

 

"I sowed some corn while it was raining, and then I tamped down the soil too

much — it

caked up, hard as a brick, and the corn plants couldn't come up," said France,

27, who

dreams out loud about farming his own land someday. "This next time, I know to

mix

manure in. This is like a trial by fire, a way to make mistakes before it

matters too much."

 

In the last decade or so, student-run farms have cropped up across the country,

at almost

60 schools in 27 states. Foodies call it the latest sign of the seasonal,

regional food

movement's influence, even on a collegiate landscape that's virtually paved with

Hot

Pockets, Pop Tarts and leftover pizza.

 

Over the past few years, about 200 schools have signed up with farm-to-college

programs, which match up local farmers with area universities, according to the

Venice,

Calif.-based Community Food Security Coalition. The University of Montana in

Missoula,

for example, allocates about $425,000 to local meat, dairy and wheat products,

about 17

percent of the school's overall food budget.

 

At Brown University, in Providence, R.I., dining hall purchasers started

swapping Granny

Smiths and Red Delicious for locally grown Macouns and Pippins. Apple

consumption

tripled, and the experiment extended to locally grown tomatoes and peaches, milk

from

Rhode Island dairies and, eventually, a farmers' market that set up shop outside

the dining

hall.

 

"I was carrying a flat of local peaches into the dining hall once, it was like

having bread at

the beach and having seagulls following me," said Louella Hill, a recent Brown

graduate

who helped organized the on-campus farmers' market. "People were grabbing

peaches

and eating them before I could get to the fruit bowl."

 

But student farms, which range from half an acre to 200, turn students

themselves into

growers.

 

Some student farmers, like those at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, sell the

fruits

of their labor at on-campus farmstands, while the bounty from the University of

Idaho at

Moscow gets parceled out each week to community members who have prepaid for

baskets of whatever's fresh.

 

Some student farms supply their dining halls with fresh produce, while others

sell directly

to restaurants. At Colorado State University's student farm, what doesn't get

sold on

campus or eaten by volunteers is donated to local food pantries.

 

"I, like students, like the social aspects of working in the garden, and being

able to

connect with other similar-minded people," said Debra Guenther, a Colorado State

horiculture research associate who helps run the student farm.

 

In Corvallis, the fat green fava beans, pearly garlic, broccoli and lettuce

harvested on a

recent Thursday are for sale the next morning at an on-campus, unstaffed booth;

payment

is on the honor system and helps support the farm.

 

This time of year rows of tomatoes and eggplants nod in the sun, waiting for

their

moment in late August, and a tiny patch of strawberries grows nearly wild — just

enough

for eating, not for selling. After four hours or so of weeding, harvesting and

planting,

students have a communal meal.

 

"It's nice during school to be able to go out and get my hands dirty," said

Kevin McAlpin,

22, an Oregon State junior majoring in natural resources who was on his hands

and knees

weeding a lettuce bed. "It's stress relief."

 

Some student farms stretch back decades, but the Oregon State one was begun in

2001.

Previous attempts to start a farm had failed when students found that gardening

was a

year-round job, said James Cassidy, an instructor in the soil physics lab, who

has become

the group's leader.

 

Now, Cassidy, a former bass player for the '80s dance group "Information

Society" who

nourished an interest in soil even as group churned out hits like "Pure Energy,"

is an

undisputed garden fanatic.

 

"It's like working in a kitchen," he said. "Gardening is not a democracy."

 

Cassidy dreams of planting canola seeds one day to extract oil to make the

biodiesel

necessary to power a tractor and of expanding the farm by eight more acres.

 

"Creative people are coming to this," he said. "It gives students an opportunity

to put a

seed in the ground and see what happens."

 

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On the Net:

 

http://www.newfarm.org/depts/student-farm/index.shtml