Student Perceptions and Constraints for Community ... · Student Perceptions and Constraints for...
Transcript of Student Perceptions and Constraints for Community ... · Student Perceptions and Constraints for...
Student Perceptions and Constraints for Community-Supported Agriculture
in the Dartmouth Food System
by
Lucia Pohlman
A Senior Honors Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Bachelor of Arts in the Department of Environmental Studies
Dartmouth College
June 2015
All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author.
1
2
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Chapter 1: Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Chapter 2: Background and Literature Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Part 1: Issues in Industrial Agriculture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Section A: Ecological Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Section B: Economic Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Section C: Social Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Part 2: How University Campuses Can Leverage Change . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Part 3: History of Food Projects at Dartmouth College . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Part 4: Exploring Paths Towards Sustainable Food at Dartmouth . . . . . . . .
29 Section A: Investigating Local . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Section B: Investigating Community-Supported Agriculture . . . . . . . 35
Chapter 3: Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Part 1: Study Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Part 2: Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Part 3: Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Chapter 4: Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Part 1: Univariate Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
51 Part 2: Bivariate Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Part 3: Multivariate Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Chapter 5: Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Part 1: Factors Leading to Interest and Disinterest in CSAs at Dartmouth College 59 Part 2: CSA Features Relevant and Important to Dartmouth Students . . . . . .
62 Section A: Season and Frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Section B: Types of Food . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Section C: Pricing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Section D: Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Section E: Other Important Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Chapter 6: Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Part 1: Practical Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Part 2: Limitations of the Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Part 3: Ideas for Further Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Appendix 1: Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Appendix 2: Stata statistics commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
3
4
Acknowledgements
This project has been a year long journey through which I’ve begun to understand
institutional change, hone my critical thinking, and learn the dedication required to make
change. I want to offer many thanks to the Dartmouth Sustainability office for shaping my
research and providing me with the on the ground know how to navigate the Dartmouth
bureaucracy, to Michael Cox, my advisor, who put up with my ideological battles and kept
me grounded in practicality based on fact not conjecture, to Dartmouth Dining Services
who has graciously met with me, been receptive to my research and worked with me to
create change, and lastly my student allies who have inspired me with their work on food at
Dartmouth and given me a cause to fight for. I also want to thank the Stamps Scholarship
foundation whose gracious award helped me fund my research and opened doors to
conferences that guided my project. And of course I would like to thank my mother for
feeding my intellectual curiosities since I was born!
5
6
Abstract
This thesis is motivated by the externalities of industrial agricultural and explores
how campuses can act as leverage points to enacting positive change. By first looking at
what other universities are doing and then zeroing in on Dartmouth and its history with
sustainable food, I examine how local Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs
can incite food system reform, as well as generate a host of other positive externalities. In
order to mold CSAs to the unique student population of Dartmouth College, I conducted a
survey to reveal student preferences on food, cooking, and DDS. The results of this survey
show that CSA interest was influenced primarily by respondent’s gender, living situation,
and their personal desire to cook more. Students cited CSA’s positive externalities, ease of
getting produce, and quality of product as motivations for purchase, and cost, infeasibility
and apathy as reasons for disinterest. The survey also exposed preferences about features
of a potential CSA, suggesting that students may use less produce than a weekly CSA
delivery provides, as well as clear preferences for immediately edible or easy to cook
produce including fruits and berries, salad supplies and eggs, among other specific CSA
features that students found relevant. This thesis explores those results and their practical
implications for an ideal CSA that could be instituted at Dartmouth College.
7
8
Introduction
This thesis concerns bringing more local food into the Dartmouth food system, a
change motivated by the negative externalities of industrial agriculture. I will first provide
a rough sketch of the consequences of the conventional food system and then present the
argument that learning institutions such as Dartmouth are ideal places to be making
food-system change, provide some examples of work being done at peer institutions, and
then go into some detail about the history of food projects that have already been
completed at Dartmouth. Next I will describe a variety of alternatives to the conventional
food system, focusing on the local food approach. Lastly I will define Community-Supported
Agriculture and how it could be the next step towards moving Dartmouth’s food system
towards sustainability. To test for such a project’s feasibility I conducted a student survey
at Dartmouth in order to answer the following research questions:
1. What factors lead to interest or disinterest in signing up for a CSA program for
Dartmouth students?
2. What structures/factors relevant to a Dartmouth CSA should be prioritized when implementing a pilot CSA program?
9
10
Background and Literature Review Part 1: Issues in Industrial Agriculture
In a discussion about food and sustainability it is important to first capture the
status of the current food system and its effects on environmental, economic, and social
welfare. Our current food system has become a network of large scale production farms
characterized by monocultures, fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, and heavy-duty
machinery. These features of the conventional food system have changed how agriculture
impacts the soil and surrounding environment as well as the economy and the people who
grow and eat its food. The scale and approach of industrial agriculture has reduced the
cost-per-output of major crops, but such benefits have come at the price of soil breakdown,
soil erosion, fertilizer runoff, pesticide contamination, and water shortages. These
environmental costs are embedded within a larger distribution network characterized by
inefficient subsidies, fossil fuel consumption, and food waste at every step in the supply
chain. Beyond these measurable environmental and economic costs are decreases in U.S.
health outcomes, the quality and taste of food, food culture, and sense of community; all of
which are associated with the conventional food system.
Industrial agriculture co-developed with the Industrial Revolution but it gained
prominence after World War Two when the United States was left with excess industrial
capacity for creating ammonium (Dahlberg 1979). In this Green Revolution, with larger
amounts of energy and nutrient inputs American farms began producing much more food
than ever before, turning what used to be a decentralized network of small family-owned
11
businesses into a large industrialized production system characterized by high yields, high
inputs, and deleterious ecological consequences (Pohlman 2012). Farmers have reduced
the diversity of crops they grow to get higher yields and now a great deal of America’s
farms consist of endless acres of land planted with a single type of crop. Monocultures have
no biodiversity, are demanding on soils, and require chemical inputs for long-term
productivity. This system of large industrial monocultures produces food for the nation’s
supermarkets, restaurants, and large institutions. While alternative producers exist, this
conventional food system is what feeds large institutional buyers like Dartmouth, and as
such must be understood and analyzed in order to motivate any beneficial alternatives.
Section A: Ecological Effects
Industrial agriculture is dependent on three main inputs—fertilizer, pesticides and
water—all three of which have unique environmental consequences. One of the major
fertilizers in industrial agriculture, nitrogen, creates problems throughout its lifecycle . To
be produced nitrogen fertilizer requires large amounts fossil fuels in the form of natural
gas, an input that degrades local air and water quality during its mining and combustion.
During its application an inevitable portion of the nitrogen fertilizer will run-off into the
local watershed creating a surplus of previously limiting nutrients. This overabundance
leads to water pollution, algae blooms, and eutrophication; all of which threaten the water’s
ability to support life (Pohlman 2012). Beyond leading to pollution, the application of
nitrogen fertilizer leads to nitrous oxide emissions, a powerful greenhouse gas that is
contributing to climate change. Additionally due to frequent applications and
12
monocultures’ constant demand for the same soil nutrients the structure and integrity of
the soil begins to break down, a precursor to soil erosion, which not only threatens the
future viability of the soil, but also pollutes surrounding water sources by depositing large
amounts of particulate matter into nearby streams and lakes (Pohlman 2012). In fact, "84%
of all endangered or threatened plants and animal species were listed in part due to
agricultural activities," a good portion due to the massive environmental footprint of
fertilizers and soil degradation (Defenders of Wildlife 2005). Fertilizers damage natural
ecosystems in both their production and in their use and eventual deposition into water
sources, and these consequences are unsustainable (Pohlman 2012).
The use of pesticides and herbicides is another environmentally damaging practice
in modern farms. In order for monoculture fields to be productive in the long term they
have to successfully overcome weed and pest infestations that are much worse than those
on farms growing many crop species together (Hesterman 2011, 78). To prevail over these
unrelenting pest and weed infestations, monocultures require chemical applications in an
ever-increasing fashion, often creating resistant insect and weed populations that only
responds to chemicals that are harsher to the environment (Pohlman 2012). Pesticides
negatively impact non-target species living in the crop, the farmers and laborers that apply
them, and the water they eventually wash into (Pohlman 2012). The EPA states that
agriculture is currently the largest contributor to water pollution (EPA 2012). Agricultural
chemicals are prevalent in our water and our food, and this is dangerous to both human
health and the health and natural value of our ecosystems (Pohlman 2012).
13
In addition to fertilizers and pesticides, the water demands of modern agriculture
are unsustainable. The effects of irrigation vary by location and season, having minimal to
extreme effects on local groundwater levels (Pohlman 2012). Overall however, agricultural
irrigation accounts for 31% of all water withdrawn and approximately 80% of all
consumptive water use in the US (Barber 2009)(USDA 2013). Such massive water demands
threaten to drain local aquifers and other fresh-water sources, leaving ecosystems and
human residents with massive water shortages. This problem is typified in California,
where massive farm operations in the desert-like central valley have drained local water
sources. Water shortages have negatively impacted the wildlife of that watershed, but also
forced municipalities to find water elsewhere, costing taxpayers billions (McWilliams 2009,
193). Agriculture can damage local watersheds and place higher demands on surrounding
areas, threatening their watersheds as well (Weber 2009, 131).
In addition to these effects which result from growing crops, there is a whole other
layer to environmental degradation caused by raising animals for meat production.
Globally, agriculture and livestock are the largest source of methane emissions due to
confined animal feedlot operations that create literal lagoons of animal manure (EPA,
2015). The disconnection of crop and animal production is a major problem because it
creates nutrient shortages and nutrient pollution where there was once harmony. Because
manure is accumulated away from crop production it is concentrated and dealt with as
toxic waste, while crop fields are being forced to apply greater amounts of nutrient
additives to maintain yields. This disconnect as well as issues in animal welfare, hormone
14
use, improper feed, water contamination, and air pollution are all problems associated with
industrial meat production.
All of these environmental issues take on a particular urgency in light of climate
change and the unpredictability of water and weather as well as the increased fragility of
our planet’s biodiversity. Climate change alters the very niche that agriculture has come to
thrive in and will present great challenges to the farmers of the world as they need to apply
even more inputs to their fields to support their crops. In light of an agricultural system
that is presently beyond its limits—how much water it can take from its watersheds, how
much fertilizer and pesticide runoff it can absorb, and how much soil depletion it can
endure—climate change is a serious concern as it calls for an even lighter environmental
footprint while agriculture is already struggling to scale back its effects to manageable
levels. Climate change can decrease the allowable threshold of resource use while at the
same time requiring farmers to do more to keep their fields alive in the context of heat
swells, floods, droughts and natural disasters (EPA 2013). This combination of increased
stressors and decreased resources puts farmers in a situation where they are unlikely to
succeed.
Section B: Economic Effects
The ecological effects of industrial agriculture are not its only flaw. While the
massive industrial system of production appears to be cheap and efficient, it is dependent
on government subsidies that artificially deflate food prices by aiding farms that grow cash
crops (corn, soy, wheat, rice and cotton), have large acreages, and those that are
15
considering making capital investments in even greater mechanization and input
dependence (Pohlman 2012). Taxpayer money is being spent to make industrial
agriculture economically feasible despite its numerous negative externalities. Farm
subsidies amount to $25 billion dollars annually are damaging the environment and
harming consumer health (Riedl 2007). The money spent on cash crops benefits large
farms that can quickly spit out large quantities of commodity crops, running smaller farms
out of business (Krotz 2011). To be profitable within the modern food system farmers are
adapting their practices to be eligible for these subsidies, and are effectively being forced
into a “spiraling cycle of debt and corporate dependency inherent in capital-intensive
industrial production” when competing with larger, more mechanized farms (Macias 2008,
1087). Both consumers and farmers lose out in this scenario, leaving many farm workers in
the industrial agricultural system with little job security and annual incomes of $11,250
which is only $400 dollars above the poverty line (NFWM 2009). One of the negative
aspects of industrial agriculture and leverage points for positive change is the economic
waste of agricultural subsidies.
While subsidies unfairly tip the scales, the sheer scale and throughput of
conventional food creates another economic consequence: food waste that could be
revenue for farmers and distributors, and savings for consumers. Waste starts at the farm
where one-time harvests fail to absorb the early and late-to-ripen produce. If plants within
a large operation are not mature during harvesting they are left to rot as they missed their
only opportunity to be collected (Bloom 2010). The next stage is transport, where over
long distances food can become damaged or rotten. It is important to note that at this stage
16
there is not only food waste but a massive waste of energy and fossil fuels from
refrigeration and fuel use. While carbon emissions from food miles tend to be smaller than
carbon emissions that take place on the farm, they still account for 11% of total emissions
from food production (Weber & Matthews 2008). The next stage of waste occurs at the
supermarket where “ugly” produce is rejected or left unsold due to strict requirements of
product size, shape, color and texture (Bloom 2010) Supermarkets also have more food
than they ever expect to sell to ensure that the shelves are well stocked for consumer
impressions (Bloom 2010). While that business strategy may make them money, it wastes
food and doesn’t reflect the unpredictable realities and fluctuations of food availability. The
last stage of waste occurs with the consumer who may not use all they buy.
This waste adds up: “roughly one-third of food produced for human consumption is
lost or wasted globally, which amounts to about 1.3 billion tons per year” (Gustavsson et al.
2001). The nature of this industrial supply chain disconnects producers and consumers
with formalized predefined contracts and do not adapt to the variable aspects of food
production both in bounty and loss. This is a massive waste of economic resources for
farmers, distributors, vendors and consumers who are paying for food that will never be
eaten.
Section C: Social Effects
Clearly agriculture is deeply connected to environmental and economic systems, but
it is also embedded within a system of people who grow and consume its products. People
are affected by food in regard to their health and weight, their ability to be self-sufficient
17
and cook for themselves, their profession, their connection to community, their
understanding of the natural world and natural processes, and a sense of appreciation and
gratitude that quality food can elicit. Some of these effects are measurable and quantifiable
while others are more psychological and anecdotal but all of these effects have been noted
by the empirical food literature.
Take health for example. US farm subsidies artificially deflate the price of major cash
crops, providing food companies with an incentive to create food products from these
cheap, nutritionally deficient inputs. 90% of the $25 billion spent annually in farm
subsidies goes to major cash crops—not to supporting and reducing the prices of healthy
fruits and vegetables (Riedl 2007). Because corn and soy have become so cheap, the food
industry can easily use them as the source of processed additives, syrups, and starches,
products that negatively impact human health (Fields 2004). Farm subsidies are not only
supporting farms that create negative environmental externalities, but they actively
support inputs to the western world’s health epidemic.
The growing crisis of obesity and poor health in the United States might be
compounded by the lack of nutrients available in today’s produce, a declining trend that
has been observed over the past 50 years with the advent of industrial agriculture (Davis et
al 2004). In comparison to organic crops, conventional crops have been scientifically
proven to have lesser concentrations of nutritionally significant minerals as well as higher
amounts of toxic heavy metals and nitrates (Worthington 2001). As seen below in Figure 1,
industrial agriculture is creating nutrient-deficient crops, and this combined with the
18
subsidization and overproduction of unhealthy cash crops, is leading to poor health
outcomes in the United States, a major source of dissatisfaction and pain in our country.
Figure 1: Mean % Additional Mineral Content in Organic Compared to Conventional Crops
(Worthington 2001)
There are other social welfare concerns that have more to do with ethics and
preferences. Macias notes a sense of “hopelessness and despair resulting from a lack of
social integration or meaningful connection to other human beings” (2008, 1089). He
connects this trend to the “lower levels of civic engagement and social capital” (2008,
1089). Food used to be the locus of such civic engagement and it created a sense of
connection to the local community and environment that produced the food, but in our
globalized system those relationships have waned. In comparison to anonymous
supermarket vegetables, farmers markets and other direct-to-market sales create
face-to-face interactions that inspire local pride and citizen participation (Macias 2008). In
the current globalized food system in which citizens are disconnected from their food
19
producers, the natural world, and what was needed to create the food, consumers make
choices that may not be best for their bodies, for the farmers or the land.
20
Part 2: How University Campuses Can Leverage Change
College campuses can be a ripe place for interventions into the food system. They
have a scale of production that can be impactful, a social mission to educate, and the duty of
caring for their students. There has been a good deal of research on how college campuses
can take responsibility for their environmental footprint by making their interactions in
their globalized and localized food system more sustainable. Peggy Bartlett provided an
excellent overview of campus sustainable food projects, and of all the sources that
discussed university food systems, Bartlett (2011) truly motivated the need for change in
that area. She confirmed the externalities discussed in the Part 1 of the background and
motivated her arguments with the results of campus audits which show that food
production and transportation are major greenhouse gas contributors (2011). She also
cited health problems associated with conventional food, the threat of climate change, and
the practical point that conventional food simply does not taste as good. In response to
these problems, Bartlett argues that food is an ideal leverage point for sustainability on
campuses due to its “economic clout, corporate connections, and emotional resonance with
family tradition, place and identity” (2011, 102). Bartlett identifies four main leverage
points for change within campus food systems.
The first concerns innovations within campus kitchen operations, menus and
procurement. Bartlett argues that college dining services have the capacity to impact their
local and regional food systems due to their size and economic clout. This clout allows
university dining programs to incubate new nodes in an alternative food chain if they
change their practices (Bartlett 2011). Additionally, by changing their purchasing contracts
21
with broadline distributors, institutions can put constraints on existing corporate systems
(2011). The second leverage point deals with academic and co-curricular programs and
their ability to evaluate, disseminate, and legitimize critiques of the conventional food
system, both in the classroom but also during campus events dealing with food and
agriculture (2011). The third point of intervention identified by Bartlett is direct
marketing, including farmer’s markets and community-supported agriculture (CSAs).
Bartlett argues that the provision of direct marketing experiences give local farms a new
market to expand into, supporting the growth of new nodes, actors and institutions in the
food system (Bartlett 2011). And lastly she sees the hands-on experience gained through
working in community gardens and campus farms as an impactful way to change food
culture and appreciation on college campuses (2011).
Bartlett’s points are not lost on collegiate institutions, many of which have taken
advantage of their ability to create food-system change. Ways forward to creating this
change are plentiful, and dining managers have found many ways to improve their food
system’s sustainability. However because universities are large bureaucratic institutions in
which rapid change is hard to come by, small incremental steps may be the key to achieving
food system sustainability (Breymen 1998). While initially small, these tweaks can have
potentially huge benefits, and many universities are making progress on different fronts of
the food sustainability issue.
To elucidate the approach that other universities have taken I will draw from
Dartmouth student Cristina Pelligrini’s 2012 report Building a More Sustainable Food
System at Dartmouth College: Lessons and Insights from Campus Models Across the Nation.
22
Pelligrini undertook an in-depth analysis of the actions taken at 8 institutions similar to
Dartmouth in order to discover lessons learned in their approach and take an educated
look at how Dartmouth was approaching its own food system. Below is a table with content
from her paper showing the similarities and differences between these institutions and
Dartmouth.
Table 1: Comparing Sustainable Food Across Universities
School Campus Farm
Educational Connection
Campus-wide engagement
Dining progress
Institutional Support
Main Foci
Dartmouth ✓ ✓ ✓
Stanford ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ farm as connector
Harvard ✓ ✓ ✓ food education
Bates ✓ ✓ ✓ food awareness
UC Berkeley ✓ ✓ ✓ inherently green
Duke ✓ ✓ dining standards
Brown ✓ ✓ ✓ sourcing local
Yale ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ farm, sustainable sourcing
Middlebury ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ sourcing local
The common thread among the institutions that have made significant
progress—Stanford, Middlebury and Yale—is a clear sense of commitment (grassroots or
administrative), implementation through a specialized staff, campus-wide awareness, food
purchasing priorities, a connection between food, nutrition and health, and a clear sense of
culinary pride (2012). This study revealed a wide range of approaches, with schools like
Yale, Stanford and Harvard having a large number of staff and student interns working on
food-specific sustainability, and other institutions like UC Berkeley with no direct staff but
a clear sense of sustainability culture (2012). No matter the manpower, some institutions
focused on education and awareness around the health and environmental effects of our
food (Harvard and Bates), whereas others were more focused on the sustainability of the
23
actual food being provided in the dining halls (Duke, Brown, Middlebury) (2012). That said,
one of the most comprehensive programs with ties into the university’s classrooms,
campus culture, dining halls, and institutional mission was Stanford, who used their
campus farm as a living laboratory for food system change (2012). The overall takeaway
from Pelligrini’s report is that the context of the school was important: each school had
unique opportunities to be a food sustainability leader, but those opportunities differed
greatly between each institution. For Dartmouth to find its own success, its important to
pay attention to the resources our Dining Services has and how such assets can be
leveraged to create the most change.
24
Part 3: History of Food Projects at Dartmouth College
Turning the focus more strictly to Dartmouth, this section will briefly describe
important food initiatives on campus. There has been a longstanding history of improving
the sustainability of food within Dartmouth Dining Services (DDS) that should be
acknowledged before going forward. An important step in sustainability at Dartmouth was
the hiring of the Sustainability Director Jim Merkel in 2005. One of the first major
initiatives he implemented was a zero waste program in a old dining hall known as Home
Plate where he intended to change waste and packaging practices (Pelligrini 2012). Paired
with this change was a push of support from the Sustainable Dining Club which had a
returnable take-out set for students to use and avoid waste, but due to a 25% loss in
tupperware after the pilot, the program was terminated (2012). During his time there were
numerous student studies on waste reduction and waste diversion in dining halls paired
with student-led interventions (Musco 2015). These initiatives unfortunately failed due to
lack of accountability, hurdles in the college’s health standards and theft rates (2015). Next,
Merkel created a sustainable dining committee proposal to the Provost for administrative
approval and a public statement of support for future initiatives (Pelligrini 2012).
Unfortunately because Merkel left Dartmouth soon after, this project was never driven to
fruition (Musco 2015).
In 2007, one of the most notable sustainable food projects tackled by DDS was Farm
to Dartmouth, a 3 year collaboration between Vital Communities, Dartmouth Dining
Services and local farmers (Pelligrini 2012). Funded by a USDA grant, the project was able
to create direct purchasing relationships between DDS and local farms as well as
25
sponsoring tastings, local lunches and dinners on campus, as well as a labeling system to
identify local food projects for students (2012). This is the first time in Dartmouth’s history
that the school made a major effort to cooperate with local farms. While being a
noteworthy project, DDS encountered a host of problems. The variety of processing
methods from the many farms in the area as well as short-term changes in production
volume created many transaction costs for DDS (Musco 2012).
The next major step forward was the inception the Dartmouth Sustainability Office
in 2010. With direct reporting to the Provost this office became the legitimate and
centralized house of all things sustainability on Dartmouth’s campus. Through this office
Dartmouth acquired a small in-house staff and began sponsoring intern-driven projects
around sustainability and sustainable food in specific. One project was the work done by
Pelligrini who in 2012 published her comparative report on institutional food. Her work
inspired two sustainable food interns in the Sustainability Office to launch the Real Food
Challenge to reinvigorate student interest on campus (Musco 2015). These interns also
conducted a survey which showed that 77% of students wanted to see more local food in
Dartmouth’s dining halls (Franklin & Kumalah 2012).
At the same time that the Dartmouth Sustainability Office was being established,
DDS was making its own strides. Despite becoming a zero-sort campus in 2010, food waste
was still an issue on campus and DDS was building a new dining hall to internally solve
some of the problems Merkel had encountered at Home Plate (Musco 2015). In its place,
Dartmouth Dining Services planned the new 1953 Commons, an all-you-can-eat dining hall
built with waste reduction in mind. They installed a somat food composting system that
26
took 100% of food and paper waste from the facility and diverted it to compost (2015). In
addition, DDS changed their food contract with their main broadline distributor
Performance Foods Group in 2013, including language asking for sustainability
programming and sourcing whenever possible (2015).
This language led to stipends for student interns who continued to work on
sustainable food initiatives in DDS and work on the Real Food Challenge in particular
(2015). From 2013 to present, students have continued doing research on sustainable food
sourcing for DDS, running into the familiar challenges of changing institutional food
systems, including: the difficulty of sourcing large quantities from small producers,
processing small orders in the same manner as their broadline distributor, making
sourcing switches cost-efficient, and when providing grocery-like options, overcoming the
lack of student cooking knowledge and kitchen equipment (2015).
There has also been a bigger prioritization of local food by DDS who has worked on
specific food targets: regional dairy (milk, yogurt, and cheese), Marine Stewardship Council
(MSC) certified seafood, and sourcing a handful of local grain products and regional
humanely-raised meats (2015). While not taking on a massive sustainable produce
campaign, DDS has greatly increased their programming about sustainability, hosting two
harvest dinners per year and including sustainability in their special programming events
for students. Additionally, DDS has created and strengthened a partnership with the
Dartmouth Organic Farm (DOF), and is always receptive in doing more with the farm’s food
when possible (2015). Food from the DOF is often showcased in the Collis salad bar during
summer and fall months, and there is the potential to source even more from the farm.
27
Since the DOF is within Dartmouth’s legal holdings and has the insurance and legal
contracts to produce food for the college, the DOF can act as a great first partner for many
of DDS’s local food programs due to ease of entry (2015). Furthermore, DDS has recognized
that local food and the DOF in particular is a hotbed of student interest which can positively
impact DDS’ public image.
Lastly there is some specific data about DDS practices from the 2013 to 2014 STARS
report that shows both areas of growth and opportunities for further change. Data from
this report shows that a total of $7,807,734 dollars were spent on local, community-based,
and or third party verified food and beverages (Harrison 2015). While 89% of total
beverages fit the above description, only 22.3% of food was non-conventional, meaning
that 77.7% of total food purchases are connected to the negative externalities discussed in
Part 1 of this thesis (Harrison 2015). At that the time of data collection Dartmouth was not
certified as a Fair-Trade Campus, given the Green Seal Standard, MSC certified, or Real
Food Campus committed (2015). Clearly, DDS has made great strides in terms of
sustainable food sourcing, but there is still room to grow, especially in the area of
conventional food purchases.
28
Part 4: Exploring Paths Towards Sustainable Food at Dartmouth
Section A: Investigating Local
When thinking about how to achieve a sustainable university food system there are
many paths forward. Outside of the conventional food system there are many different
forms of agriculture that are more beneficial to the environment, economy, and social
sphere. For example, organically labeled products are certified to have been grown without
the use of “synthetic fertilizers, chemicals, or sewage sludge, and cannot contain genetically
modified organisms or be irradiated” (USDA 2015). Other types of products include
cage-free eggs, free-range eggs, grain-fed meat, certified humanely raised and handled
meats, pasture-raised animals, hormone-free milk and dairy products, biodynamic
produce, fair-trade certified bananas, food alliance certified products, marine stewardship
council certified seafood, rainforest alliance certified coffee, local food, and many other
types of food that have labels associated with positive ecological social and economic
outcomes (Anderson-Gips 2008). There are also alternative food lifestyles to the extent
that consumers can decide how to engage with food on a daily basis, most notably eating
lower on the food chain, or avoiding meat altogether. Clearly there are many paths towards
a more sustainable food system, the harder question is in what direction does a community
want to go and what kind of changes will have the largest impact.
That said, one label will rarely encapsulate a food panacea: having the least resource
use, minimal economic waste, and the most social value across all scenarios. There is no
"silver bullet" that can immediately reverse the vast problems of poor farming policies
(Hesterman 2011). These alternative food systems are difficult to define and classify given
29
the complex nature of food production globally. While “sustainable” tends to coincide with
the labels listed above, in some cases the labels fail to represent farms that create social,
environmental, and economic welfare, falling short of consumer expectations. For example,
an organic farm that complies with regulations by not using synthetic fertilizers or
pesticides can still be a massive industrial monoculture that taxes ecological systems with
high input demands and soil degradation (Guthman 2004). When trying to avoid industrial
agriculture, the only confirmed ‘label’ of sustainability is direct knowledge of the farmer’s
practices. Even though labels ensure some beneficial practices, they fail to guarantee
wholesome ecological, economic and social welfare.
Although labels are not perfect, I had to choose some metric to focus on within the
Dartmouth food system. Going forward with any kind of change in institutional settings is
difficult: changes in procurement are time consuming and management intensive; their
benefits are hard to calculate; and switching to these certified foods can be financially
burdensome for tight institutional food budgets. During my research I found that
Dartmouth is making significant progress despite these challenges: starting an effort to
source all seafood as marine stewardship certified; expanding their selection of organic
products; switching to fair-trade coffee; and using local produce when cost efficient. Even
though DDS is successfully tackling many sustainability issues, more could be done, seeing
as in 2013, 77% of DDS’s food was still conventional. However many of the beneficial
changes I learned about from other colleges were already being made within DDS and
changes like sourcing more organic products were beyond my expertise and understanding
given the complexities of global sourcing and pricing.
30
That said I found that there was traction within DDS to increase the amount of local
food at Dartmouth. DDS’ efforts to increase local food began in 2007 with the Farm to
Dartmouth program, leaving them with first-hand experience working directly with
farmers and making local food sourcing a familiar idea for DDS. Additionally, I was
inspired by my own personal experiences at Dartmouth enjoying the bounty of produce
available in the Upper Valley during the summer and fall, as well as cooking food from the
Farmers’ Market during sophomore summer. Due to the reasons above I chose local as the
metric to focus on throughout my food project at Dartmouth.
After taking this next step, I had to qualify local as a legitimate target to aim for.
“Local” is a complex label, certainly not a panacea, but there is evidence to suggest that
shifting back to a more localized scale could lead to improved environmental, economic,
and social outcomes. Local food can solve problems associated with the cost and emissions
from travel that create negative environmental outcomes, as well as overcoming ignorance
about the seasonality and production of our food. Surely it would lead to the kind of
education that Barbara Kingsolver talked about in her book, Animal Vegetable Miracle
(2008). Her family embarked on a massive challenge, sourcing their food for an entire year
locally. Her journey showed the dedication, research, and sheer amount of cooking time
required for such an effort, but also the massive rewards. She experienced improved health
and a connection to the seasons: both the meagerness of late winter but also the excitement
of spring and bounty of late summer.
Our current agricultural system robs eaters of these experiences, and in their
ignorance, they expect things from their food provisioners that are exorbitantly wasteful,
31
difficult, and impractical. For example, Dartmouth students routinely complain about the
lack of fresh fruit during frozen New Hampshire winters, expect avocados to be the same as
those in California, and “hate turnips” even though they happily ate the winter root
vegetable stir-fry full of them. Students come to Dartmouth from all over the world and
exist in a bubble disconnected from rural communities that surround them. Eating locally
and learning about how food works in your region can be an eye-opening journey, one
clearly positive from Kingsolver’s account (2008).
While having many benefits, such outcomes are not restricted to the local scale, nor
does the local scale inherently provide environmental, economic, or social benefits. For
example, Confined Animal Feed Operations (CAFOs) in California may be local to Central
Valley residents, but that does not mean that their meat is desirable. New York might want
to grow its own food but its level of urban density surely makes it impractical. “Local
Organic New Hampshire Tomatoes!” sounds idyllic but if local was always better, why
would these tomatoes have a bigger carbon footprint than the ones beside them shipped
from California? (Friedland 2012). The energy required to heat a greenhouse to grow
tomatoes in the New Hampshire winter is greater than that required to grow and transport
tomatoes from California that grow without heating inputs (2012). In many cases
increasing local food can have deleterious environmental effects or be an impractical food
system feature to optimize.
As Born and Purcell argue in their essay, Avoiding the Local Trap, local is not an end
in itself, to environmental justice, sustainability or strengthened community ties (2006).
Sustainability is situational and depends on the local climate and soil. A label is not what is
32
sustainable, what is sustainable the the actual complex system of food production made up
of actors and institutions with various priorities and values. Born and Purcell criticize those
who have mistaken local as inherently better—correctly identifying the actors operating in
a particular place and scale as the cause of any good or bad outcome (2006). This means
that to optimize a specific food system you need to engage with producers that are acting
towards your goals, no matter at what scale they are operating or how far they are away
(Born & Purcell 2006). There is some concern about the energy requirements of food
transportation, and transport emissions should be calculated, but for the most part one
must truly investigate if local farmers are growing food the way that inspires their local
community. It is important to avoid overgeneralizing the benefits of certain labels, ensuring
that we take into account all of the energy inputs and environmental effects of the
agricultural practices we are supporting (Born & Purcell 2006).
The quality of localized food systems vary a great deal and need to be looked at
individually in order to compare them positively or negatively with the globalized food
system. For the purposes of this thesis, the context was Dartmouth College and the
surrounding Upper Valley region. By deeply analyzing the food network within which
Dartmouth is located, it becomes clear that the intentions and behaviors of local farmers
are sustainable and could benefit Dartmouth College. Situated within 26 road miles of
Dartmouth are 5 small scale farms: The Dartmouth Organic Farm, Sweetland Farm, Cedar
Circle, Blue Ox, Luna Bleu. Although all 5 use sustainable practices, Cedar Circle, Luna Bleu,
Blue Ox, and the Dartmouth Organic Farm are all certified organic. A majority of the farms
make diversified crop production central to their mission as well as raising their animals
33
freely on pasture. All of these farms except the Dartmouth Organic Farm have CSAs as their
primary source of income. Beyond these farms there are many more in the surrounding
region. To provide a visual example of the plethora and density of small farms surrounding
Dartmouth college I have included the image below resulting from a google maps search of
“farm”.
Figure 2: Google Map of Area Surrounding Dartmouth College
Note that Dartmouth is the blue dot on the map and all of the red dots represent search results for ‘farm’ in the area surrounding Dartmouth. Map source is Google Maps, May 2015.
Operations such as these and those just a bit farther away could aggregate together
to share their summer and fall harvests with Dartmouth. While in some locations local
34
doesn’t mean better (and surely in the Upper Valley winter it does not), during the
productive New England growing season it would benefit the Dartmouth Food System to
source locally.
Section B: Choosing Community-Supported Agriculture
Even when focusing on increasing local food inside of Dartmouth Dining Services
there are still many different ways forward. Dartmouth could focus on increasing direct
purchases from farms similar to those listed above, or they could focus their attention on
more local-food-celebration dinners oriented towards creating campus awareness. If DDS
were to tackle local procurement they could focus on sourcing 100% of certain food groups
locally, such as meat, milk, or produce, or they could take a generalist's approach and do
less but for more food groups. There is also the need to consider what to do in winter
months because greenhouse growing in the Upper Valley is not a sustainable venture.
Would focusing on storage crops like potatoes, onions, apples and other roots be most
advantageous? Another question is scale: should DDS focus on bigger players in the food
system like their broadline distributors and draft better purchasing guidelines, or build
stronger connections with local farms?
While clearly all of these avenues could be explored, this thesis will focus on one
avenue: a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. A CSA program is a system
whereby a local farm distributes produce regularly (usually weekly) to people who have
bought shares in the farm for that season. While the other pathways to increasing local
food are beneficial they were not as viable as a CSA. Specifically, interventions in
procurement are controlled by DDS staff so they do not have the same capacity as a CSA to
35
be an initiative led by students. CSA programs are an entirely new domain for DDS to enter
so there is a lot of room for student research, input, and involvement. Secondly, a CSA can
visibly engage a large diversity of Dartmouth students on food issues. Instead of the
one-time excitement associated with longstanding changes such as switching to all-local
dairy, a CSA can garner weekly buzz and interest by being a visible program with public
pick-up locations. Lastly, a CSA can change the very nature of how students interact with
food on campus. Unlike changing how Dartmouth procures food for its dining halls,
providing a CSA for students gives plentiful opportunities for hands-on learning on how to
prepare fresh fruits and vegetables and the nature of eating sustainably. Such learning
about how to consume food can become lifelong habits that will benefit students and the
environmental and economic systems with which they engage. In summary, CSAs at
Dartmouth create the opportunity to innovate positive change within our food system.
CSA programs, as briefly defined above, involve farms that are supported and
maintained by the communities that surround them. In the broadest sense a CSA is any
kind of program that directly brings food from a local farm to a community member
without a marketplace. Usually, consumers buy a “share” of the CSA in advance that
consists of a predetermined number of weekly deliveries of fresh produce. Because these
shares are pre-purchased, small farmers are better off because their shareholders help
shoulder the risk of a poor growing year. At the same time this investment is beneficial to
CSA members because they are rewarded in years of bounty, get the freshest food available,
and likely explore new vegetables and produce they usually wouldn’t try. One variable
feature of a CSA is if the consumer can decide which crops and at what quantities they want
36
from the farm, or if the farm just divvies up that week’s harvest equally into the number of
shares it has sold for that season. Nonetheless, day-to-day changes on the farm determine
the food provided by a CSA and thus CSA programs mitigate the fluctuations that usually
hurt farmers.
While there has not been a large amount of research on the effect of CSA programs
on colleges and universities, there has been some research on the benefits of CSAs in
general. I will structure these findings in a direct parallel to the problems of industrial
agriculture, beginning with how CSA’s can benefit the environment. Marcia Ostrom, a
sustainable agriculture research professor at Washington State University, has weighed in
on the issue after conducting a broad investigation of CSAs looking to understand their role
as an agent for change in American farming. Environmentally, “production on CSA farms
often employs organic, low input agricultural methods: acreages are typically small and
crops are diversified” (Wharton & Harmon 2009, 113). CSAs on the whole use methods
antithetical to industrial agriculture and as such avoid many of the disastrous effects that
coincide with large monoculture operations. Interestingly however, CSA researchers
haven’t confirmed that such positive externalities are a main driver to CSA membership.
While Cone and Myhre in their article Community Supported Agriculture: A Sustainable
Alternative to Industrial Agriculture found that shareholders were motivated by positive
environmental effects (2000, 196), Ostrom identified environmental stewardship as only a
weak motivator for CSA interest (2007).
Economically, CSAs seem to avoid the waste associated with industrial agriculture
as well as improving economic conditions for farmers. A rundown of CSA’s financial
37
benefits include that they do not waste taxpayer money in the form of subsidies, their
payment structure shares the financial risk of farming with the consumer, they provide a
fair wage for the farmer, and their small scale is much less likely to produce the massive
waste associated with industrial agriculture (Wharton & Harmon 2009, 113). While not all
CSA farms are financially viable, Ostrom found that the most financially successful farms
were entrepreneurial in nature and also had the highest quality produce, highest member
return rates, and generated living wages for the farmers. Another factor related to
long-term viability of CSA farms was the presence of farm-to-farm collaboration. When
farms band together to offer shares that include a greater diversity of products they are
further able to mitigate risk and offer a better offering for their members. When CSAs are
entrepreneurial in nature and collaborate with neighboring farms they are able to truly
deliver on their promise of offering a superior product than conventional agriculture.
Additionally, many researchers have found CSA shares to be cheaper than buying the same
produce in the supermarket, organic or not (Cone & Myhre 2000). Even with these financial
benefits Cone and Myhre found that the price of CSAs were not a major motivation for
membership (2000).
A majority of the research on CSAs has focused on social benefits because that is
where CSAs offer unique and tangible rewards that a regular local farm cannot offer. Health
and nutrition is one of such social benefits that is directly addressed by CSA membership
due to their provision of fresher and more nutritious produce (Wharton & Harmon 2009,
113). In Ostrom’s results she shares anecdotes of CSA shareholders who said their
involvement changed their eating habits, leading them to eat more vegetables of a greater
38
variety and increased freshness, citing that “around 90 percent of survey respondents said
their household eating and shopping habits had changed in positive ways as a result of CSA
membership” (Ostrom 2007, 113). In addition to these anecdotal observations Minaker et
al. published an article showing that “higher frequency of shopping at farmer’s markets and
CSAs is associated with reduced body mass index and waist circumference,” a clear benefit
of these programs for social welfare (2014, 485). The article explains that CSA participation
was associated with lower body mass index and waist circumference (even after
controlling for desire to lose weight), as well as increased consumption of fruits and
vegetables. Ostrom also found that shareholders identified such benefits since their
motivations for membership were primarily taste, freshness and healthiness.
But beyond promoting health, Cone and Myhre claimed that CSAs represent a
radical attempt to resist industrial agriculture (2000, 188). Ostrom agrees, identifying the
power of CSAs in their ability to “forge a new understanding of what it means to eat” (2007,
114). Moreover, CSA’s give their shareholders “opportunities to increase their
understanding of food, the challenges faced by farmers, the needs of the environment, and
the potential role informed citizens can play in reshaping food and economic
systems.”(Ostrom 2007, 117) Cone and Myhre also state that “effective CSA farms have the
potential for “re-embedding” people in time and place though linking them to a specific
piece of land and awareness of the seasons,” which is a big transition from the anonymous
nature of the industrial food system (2000, 188). “CSA members not only know where and
when their food is grown, they know who grows it”(2000, 188). Clearly CSAs create a
venue for socially just food interactions and meaningful culinary experiences, but these
39
clear social values may not be motivating membership (Wharton & Harmon 2009). Ostrom
as well as Cone and Myhre found community ties to be an infrequently cited motivation for
CSA interst (2007, 2000). That said, in her focus groups Ostrom identified dissatisfaction
and critiques of the conventional food system to be primary motivators for joining a CSA
program (2007).
In spite of these many benefits, not all CSAs are able to achieve their aims. Cone and
Myhre found that CSA shareholders are deterred by “lifestyle changes, lack of choice, and
inconvenience” (2000, 196). Ostrom found evidence of such deterrence as some CSAs were
struggling to earn enough revenue and retain and engage their shareholders, and that CSAs
were too expensive to be open to all income levels (2007). Cone and Myhre found another
criticism which is that the social benefits of a CSA represented more of a longing than a
realization. They noted that the community ties longed for and promised by CSA programs
tended to be an “expression of longing, a nostalgia for the imagined social bonds of our
rural past”, a kind of community that is difficult for CSA members to realize, given the
demands and constraints of their lives (196). This last point is particularly poignant since it
fully acknowledges the potential CSAs have to offer while showing that many times those
goals are left unrealized in the face of busy schedules and higher priorities, a contextual
feature surely at play at Dartmouth.
In terms of how the benefits and challenges of CSAs apply to college campuses, I
have found exactly one article about CSAs and universities in a peer reviewed journal, by
Wharton and Harmon who come from a nutrition and health background at Arizona and
Montana State respectively. They see universities as a “less common but potentially
40
successful venue in which to run a CSA” (Wharton & Harmon 2009, 112). They solidify the
argument that CSAs can overcome many of the problems currently associated with
institutional food provisioning and the conventional food system. In reference to CSAs on
college campuses they see major opportunities to engage the community around a program
that supports student welfare, the ability to use CSA revenue to support outreach events,
and the ability to use existing collegiate infrastructure to easily market and communicate
about a CSA program (e.g. listservs, newsletters, newspapers, clubs) (2009). The main
barriers that they identify are the liability and contractual obligations that farms have to
comply with in order to serve students, the logistics of scheduling pick ups with variable
class schedules and extracurricular commitments, a lack of cooking facilities and
equipment, and tight student budgets (2009).
A Dartmouth CSA can serve as an ideal site for food system change. There are two
factors to a Dartmouth CSA that would capitalize on the potential benefits to an even larger
degree: sourcing from the Dartmouth Organic Farm and housing it within Dartmouth
Dining Services as a meal plan option. Currently the DOF is only growing on 7% of the total
available arable land, and there is a huge potential to increase production. Drawing on
arguments presented earlier from Bartlett, the DOF can be a key to food system change
success due to its ability to change procurement practices within DDS, involve students and
faculty academically, provide students and community members with healthy nutritious
food, as well as providing community members with hands on experience in the garden.
The DOF is an ideal partner for a CSA because it is tightly knit into the Dartmouth
community. The DOF could solidify a CSA’s ability to ground students in a sense of
41
appreciation and connection to their food, as students are likely to visit the DOF during
their student career, in addition to meeting students who work at the farm. Additionally,
because the DOF is owned by the college the legal requirements for sourcing are not a
barrier for implementation, and financially the produce may be more feasible to purchase
compared to an outside private farm. This last point is only of concern if the CSA is offered
within the meal plan, making DDS the intermediary between farms and students.
If DDS were to institutionalize such an offering, the longstanding success and ability
of a CSA to reach a large percentage of the student population would greatly increase.
While the DOF and other CSA farms in the Upper Valley already have some connection to
Dartmouth College, they lack a robust connection with DDS, the main food provisioner for
undergraduate students. If such a connection were to be forged, and DDS were to offer a
CSA with a thought-out structure that is tailored to Dartmouth Students, because the meal
plan is covered by financial aid, all students regardless of financial need would be able to
access fresh fruits and vegetables. If Dartmouth were to move forward with this step, to my
knowledge after in-depth research, it would be the only higher learning institution in the
nation that will provide students with CSA within the meal plan, and thus the only
institution actively reducing barriers of entry for low-income students.
To summarize, the potential benefits a CSA could offer Dartmouth include: healthier
student eating habits, providing opportunities to learn how to cook, building community
around cooking and food, improving the perception of DDS, improving the local food
system surrounding Dartmouth, reducing Dartmouth’s environmental footprint, and
educating students on what healthy sustainable food is. The question for Dartmouth and in
42
particular DDS is what is the best way to offer such a service to students, and how can we
garner long-term support. For some initial findings there is some anecdotal evidence from
programs historically offered through the DOF. In the past the DOF has provided produce
to Dartmouth students through a pick-your-own model and a CSA. The pick-your-own
model struggled in getting students off campus 3 miles to the farm, whereas the CSA while
small (20 to 40 members), has historically sold out and been a success on campus (Musco
2015). The major problem experienced by the DOF CSA organizers was that during the end
of the term students got busier and busier and at times were not able to pick up or cook the
food they paid for (Musco 2015). Regardless, there is still an opportunity to serve many
more students with local fresh produce and the possibility for ingenuity and planning to
overcome the hurdles of packed schedules and limited cooking abilities and equipment.
The purpose of this thesis is to study the Dartmouth context and student preferences to
find a solution that will help a CSA thrive and accomplish its all of its goals here on campus.
43
44
Methods Part 1: Study Area
This study took place at Dartmouth College. The private undergraduate college has
an average of 4,000 students from all 50 states and 79 international countries. The school
was founded in 1769 and is a member of the Ivy League. The college is located in a rural
area in New Hampshire, bordering Vermont. The survey was distributed during fall term, a
relatively busy term on Dartmouth’s campus.
Part 2: Data Collection
I collected data in the form of student surveys and stakeholder interviews. With the
help of Professor Cox I developed a survey (to view the survey please refer to Appendix 1)
to collect the desired data from Dartmouth students. The survey was designed to elicit
understanding of students’ cooking and eating habits as well as their food preferences
while at Dartmouth. The survey asked students how often they cook at home, what meals
they cook most often, where they live, and what type of type of CSA with what ingredients
they would prefer. The survey revealed student preferences around potential CSA models
and revealed what factors were correlated to their interest/disinterest. The elicited data is
important to understanding what type of students would likely engage with a CSA, what
characteristics should be focused on to increase engagement and student satisfaction, as
well uncovering student’s general desires concerning food and labeling within Dartmouth
Dining Services. Please note that all ordinal data (e.g. “please rate your preference from
1-5”) used 1 as least interested/least important, and 3 or 5 as most interested/important.
45
To help me collect the data, I paid 3 students to act as survey distributors and
interview students coming into dining halls. Since every student enrolled at Dartmouth is
required to be on a meal plan, and thus are provisioned 3 paid-for meals every day in the
dining halls, all students are likely to go to the dining halls during meal hours. Students that
I would be less likely to reach would be students missing a meal, students who travel
frequently and were not on campus, and students who live off campus or in affinity houses
who cook for themselves. The survey distributors and myself approached students
between 11:30 AM - 1:30 PM during lunch hours and between 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM during
dinner hours for a total of 20 survey hours between November 17th and November 21st,
the last week of fall term before finals. That means for one week, during every lunch and
dinner meal period someone was stationed at one of the three dining halls on campus; the
Hop, Collis, and 53 commons. 75 students were reached in this effort, making up 44% of
total respondents. In addition to these samples I emailed out the survey to a variety of
groups on campus. These groups included Ruckus, the environmentally focused Dartmouth
listserv, my sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma, and the Dartmouth Women’s volleyball team of
which I am a member. 95 students were reached via email, making up 56% of total
respondents.
46
Part 3: Data Analysis
After I had received a total of 170 survey responses I used Stata to perform my data
analysis. To prepare question 19 (whyinterest) for analysis, I took the open answer
question in which respondents discussed the reasons why they were motivated or
unmotivated to purchase a CSA, and created 6 binary variables in which to capture their
responses. I read through every answer and coded a 1 into the corresponding new variable
if the student referenced the new variable’s central concept in their response. After
recoding question 19 the answers could be used in a tabulation with CSA interest. The
definition of the 6 variables is below:
1. Posext: interested in CSA due to the positive externalities associated with CSA’s including benefitting the local economy and farmers, contributing to a sense of place, and beneficial effects on the environment.
2. Ease: a CSA would facilitate getting the produce desired by respondents and
increasing the ease of cooking.
3. Good: the food provided by a CSA was deemed as ‘good’ by respondent because of its healthiness, because it provides mainly fruits and vegetables, its freshness, and its high quality of taste.
4. Cost: respondent stated that cost would be a barrier to getting a CSA.
5. NotImp: students were apathetic to a CSA and didn’t care about it.
6. NotFeasible: students cited their busy schedules, lack of cooking facilities, and lack
of equipment as a reason for their disinterest.
After I coded question 19 into binary variables I conducted a series of univariate
analyses to get summary statistics about variables such as gender and where students live,
their major and the types of produce they buy or want in a CSA. I also included basic
summary statistics for responses to what students care most about in regards to food and
47
what changes would impact them most. Next I conducted bivariate analyses to examine
what were the reasons cited as motivations and barriers to CSA interest, the frequency of
students cooking for themselves broken up by where they live, and the importance of the
CSA being organic broken down by CSA interest.
Afterwards I conducted two multivariate regressions. The first was a standard
linear regression of the impact of respondent’s level of CSA interest on their willingness to
pay for a salad share (paysalad) and a jumbo share (payjumbo). My second and most
important multivariate regression used several independent variables to try to explain
individual differences in CSA interest. The independent variables that I included in the
regression were gen, envs, residence, totalmealscooked, and cookmore. I included gen,
envs, and residence to see in a broad sense what type of students make up the CSA market
and if differences in those basic categories had a major correlation with interest in CSA’s at
Dartmouth. I included totalmealscooked and cookmore as independent variables to see if
previous habits in cooking for oneself were predictive of CSA interest, and on the other
hand if future desires to cook more were correlated with interest in CSAs. This analysis was
in the form of an ordinal logistic regression since CSAinterest is an ordinal variable from
1-3. The list of all variable names is below in Table 2.
48
Table 2: Variable Names, Types, and Descriptions
Variable Name Variable Type Variable Description
gen binary, 1=f, 0=m gender of respondent
residence categorical if living off campus, on campus, greek house, or in an affinity house
envs binary if respondent has identified an ENVS major
totalmealscooked interval total number of meals cook by respondent on average week
cookmore ordinal (1-3) desire of student to cook more for themselves or not
grocery numerical frequency of grocery shopping for respondent (# times per term)
foodprefs multiple choice categorical
types of major grocery categories students buy if they grocery shop
CSAinterest ordinal (1-3) respondent level of interest/disinterest in a CSA at Dartmouth
springCSA: ordinal (1-3) interest in 4 week spring CSA: lettuce, broccoli, chard, kale
summerveg ordinal (1-3) interest in 9 week summer CSA: variety of veggies and herbs
jumbo ordinal (1-3) interest in 9 week summer CSA: vegetables, herbs, meat, eggs
fall ordinal (1-3) interest in 4 week fall CSA: kale, chard, lettuce, tomatoes, squash, melons, peppers
products multiple choice categorical
products desirable to get if they were to sign up for a CSA program
organicCSA ordinal (1-3) level of importance placed on organic certification of CSA
paysalad text WTP for ALL 8 weekly boxes of salad supplies
payjumbo text WTP for ALL 8 weekly boxes of salad, vegetables, meats, eggs
whyinterest text qualitative, why students are interested/disinterested in CSA
posext text cited positive externality of CSA as factor of interest
ease text cited ease of getting food & cooking as factor of CSA interest
good text cited interest from fact that CSA food was the food they wanted to eat
cost text cited cost as deterrent from purchasing CSA
notimp text cited their own apathy as cause for disinterest
notfeasible text cited lack of time/space as cause for disinterest
foodprefs multiple choice categorical
what matters most for food served in dining halls: local, organic, hormone free, sustainably produced, healthy, none of the above,
other
sustainable ordinal (1-5) impact of sustainable label on purchasing/perceptions of DDS
fresh ordinal (1-5) impact of fresh label on purchasing/perceptions of DDS
organic ordinal (1-5) impact of organic label on purchasing/perceptions of DDS
tasty ordinal (1-5) impact of tasty label on purchasing/perceptions of DDS
real ordinal (1-5) impact of real label on purchasing/perceptions of DDS
humanemeat ordinal (1-5) impact of DDS serving more humane meat on perception of DDS
localproduce ordinal (1-5) impact of DDS serving more local produce on perception of DDS
CSAoption ordinal (1-5) impact of CSA option paid for w/ meal plan on perception of DDS
marketing ordinal (1-5) impact of increased marketing & labeling on perception of DDS
49
50
Results
The results of this survey are explained below in a series of tables broken up into the following sections: univariate results, bivariate results and multivariate regressions. Below each table is a brief description of the contents of the table, and in some cases complementary graphs to visually display the findings. Please refer to Table 2 for definitions of variable names and Appendix 1 for the survey. Part 1: Univariate Results
Table 3: Basic Univariate Results
Variable Mean Median Min Max
gen (female = 1) 0.6 1 0 1
survey location (dds = 0) 0.44 1 0 1
mealsday 2.83 3 1 3.5
totalmealscooked 2.51 1 0 18
grocery 2.44 1.5 0 10
sustainable 3.31 3 1 5
fresh 4.11 4 1 5
organic 3.45 4 1 5
tasty 3.29 4 1 5
real 3.69 4 1 5
humanemeat 4.19 4 2 5
localproduce 4.39 5 3 5
CSAoption 4.46 5 2 5
marketing 4.08 4 1 5
Table 3 contains the basic univariate results of my survey. Some things of particular importance are that 60% of the respondents were female, that students grocery shopped on average 2.44 times per term, that they cared most about food labeled as fresh and they were most impacted by CSA meal-plan option created by DDS.
51
Table 4: Ordinal Univariate Results
Variable 1: Disagree/ Disinterested
2: Neutral/Somewhat
Interested
3: Agree/Very Interested
Mean Median
cookmore 28 44 98 2.41 3
CSAinterest 20 85 65 2.25 2
springCSA 27 73 70 2.25 2
summerveg 35 68 67 2.19 2
jumbo 32 61 77 2.26 2
fall 22 56 92 2.41 3
organicCSA 31 82 57 2.13 2
Table 4 shows the number of responses for the different categories for a set of ordinal variables, showing that a majority of students wanted to cook more on campus (Figure 3), that an overwhelming majority of Dartmouth students were interested or very interested in a CSA (Figure 4), that the greatest demand for a CSA existed in the fall albeit strong interest in other terms as well (Figure 5), and that students were largely ambivalent about the CSA being organic. Please refer to the figures below for visual representations of the data.
52
53
Table 5: Types of Grocery Items Students Buy
Type of Grocery # of Students Who Buy Category
% of Students Who Buy Category
Other Snacks 96 56%
Produce 78 46%
Dairy 78 46%
Cereals 70 41%
Drinks 62 36%
Never grocery shop 32 19%
Baked Goods 24 14%
Frozen Goods 24 14%
Meats 23 14%
Other 12 7%
None of the Above 6 4%
Table 5 shows the types of groceries that students purchased when they shopped at Dartmouth. The category purchased by the greatest percentage of students was ‘other snacks’ which is unfortunately vague, but 46% bought produce and dairy. When thinking about what food groups to include in a hypothetical CSA for Dartmouth students, zero-prep snack foods, produce and dairy should definitely be considered.
Table 6: Products Desired in CSA
Products Desired in CSA
# of Requests
% of Total Requested
Types in Category
% Type in Category
Bottom 10 Items
Top 10 Items
Veggies 372 0.47 20 0.53 beets, scallions, hard squash, garlic scapes, swiss chard, parsley, dill,
cabbage, radish, fennel, turnips
apples, blueberries,
raspberries, eggs, spinach,
tomatoes, carrots, watermelon, corn,
onions
Fruit 595 0.21 5 0.13
Greens 372 0.13 5 0.13
Meat & Eggs 346 0.12 4 0.11
Herb 199 0.07 4 0.11
Total 2846 38
Table 6 shows the types of products that respondents said they would want in a CSA at Dartmouth. There seems to be a greater preference for fruit over any other type of food (as seen in top 10 items), but decent desire for greens, meat, and eggs as well. Vegetables made up the largest percent of total items requested (47%), but they also made up more than half of the total number of product items.
54
Part 2: Bivariate Results
Table 7: Motivations and Barriers to CSA interest
CSAinterest Variable 1 2 3 Total Percentage
posext 0 19 25 44 26%
ease 0 29 27 56 33%
good 3 50 45 98 58%
cost 2 6 2 10 6%
notimp 7 5 2 14 8%
notfeasible 12 17 0 29 17%
Total 20 85 63 168
Table 7 shows the reasons students listed for being interested or disinterested in a CSA at Dartmouth. These reasons were pulled from a open-ended survey question (19) and the number of students who cited each reason add up to show aggregate rationale for potential CSA participation or disinterest. These responses are broken up by CSA interest to see if certain reasons are more highly correlated with specific levels of CSA interest. The table shows that the greatest number of responses referenced good, followed by ease, posext as reasons for interest in a CSA. For barriers to CSA interest the most cited reasons were notfeasible, notimp, cost. These responses show that students were most motivated by the type of food that would be available (good), but the biggest differentiator between those who were somewhat interested and very interested was if they noted a positive externality associated with a CSA (posext). Figure 6 shows the breakdown of CSA interest for all respondents who cited a particular motivation, showing that the majority of respondents who cited posext as a motivation for CSA interest answered 3 (very interested) when asked how interested they were in a CSA at Dartmouth. Ease was cited by most somewhat interested students, and good was cited mainly by students who were somewhat interested but also by those who were not interested at all.
Figure 6: Reasons Cited as Motivation for CSA Interest and the Distribution of those Respondents’ CSA Interest by Motivation
55
Table 8: Totalmealscooked vs. Residence
Housing Mean Median Min Max
Off Campus 6.21 7 0 18
Affinity House 3.75 1.5 0 17
On Campus 1.54 0 0 12
Greek House 0.64 0 0 4
Total 2.51 1 0 18
Table 8 shows the respondent’s average number of meals cooked per week broken down by the residence of the respondent. Clearly students who were living off campus cooked the most, an average of 6.21 times per week. Surprisingly, respondents who were living in greek houses cooked the least, cooking an average of .64 times per week. Figure 7 shows this distribution visually.
Table 9: Organic Importance vs. CSA Interest
CSA interest Mean Median Min Max
1 1.9 2 1 3
2 2.1 2 1 3
3 2.3 2 1 3
Total 2.2 2 1 3
Table 9 shows the variance in the importance of the CSA being organic by the level of CSA interest identified by the respondent. As respondents level of interest in the CSA increased so did their desire for the CSA to be organic.
56
Part 3: Multivariate Results
Table 10: Effect of CSA interest on Willingness to Pay (WTP) for Salad & Jumbo Share
Variable Beta SE P CI R2
paysalad 25.33 9.64 0.009 6.31-44.37 0.0412
payjumbo 48.34 17.25 .006 14.25-82.41 0.0495
Table 10 shows a statistically significant relationship between WTP for two different structures of potential CSAs and respondent’s overall level of interest in CSAs. These results show that CSA interest is a strong predictor of WTP for both salad shares (paysalad) and jumbo shares (payjumbo). A one level increase in CSA interest (1-3) is correlated with an $25.33 increase in WTP for a salad share and an $48.34 increase in WTP for a jumbo share.
Table 11: Effect of gen, envs, residence (on campus vs affinity house, greek house, off campus), totalmealscooked, cookmore on CSAinterest
Variable Odds ratio SE P CI
gen 1.94 0.63 0.044 -2.85 - 4.64
envs 1.04 0.64 0.950 0.31- 3.49
totalmealscooked 1.06 0.06 0.342 0.95 - 1.18
cookmore 2.60 0.58 .000 1.67 - 4.03
affinity house 2.69 1.82 .144 0.71 - 10.10
greek house 1.05 0.48 .909 0.43 - 2.59
off campus 0.93 0.43 .868 0.27 - 2.30
R2 = .1050
Table 11 shows the results of an ordered logistic regression that examined the effects of gen, totalmealscooked, envs, residence, and cookmore on CSA interest. Gen was included to see if there was a difference in interest along gender, and the odds ratio and p value show the difference to be practically and statistically significant. Women were 1.94 times more likely have a higher level of CSA interest than men. Envs was included to see if only envs majors, envs minors and sustainability minors were interested, but the results showed that being an envs major did not have a significant impact on level of CSA interest, which is important since our sample had a greater concentration of envs students than the population. Residence was included as several dummy variables to see if interest had a strong relationship with where the student lived at Dartmouth. We set on campus as the default and compared off campus, affinity, and greek house as alternatives. In contrast to on campus students, respondents who live in affinity houses were 2.69 times more likely to have a higher level of interest in a CSA, whereas students off campus and living in greek houses did not differ in a statistically or practically significant way. Totalmealscooked was included to see if CSA interest is related to how much respondents have cooked in the past but the regression showed that it was not a highly correlated factor. Cookmore, in comparison was very significant, and shows a strong correlation between CSA interest and the respondents desire to cook more in the future.
57
58
Discussion Part 1: Factors Leading to Interest and Disinterest in CSAs at Dartmouth College
This discussion will be guided by the two research questions stated in the
introduction. To begin I will examine the first question: what factors lead to CSA interest or
disinterest in Dartmouth students? The regression on CSA interest provides the clearest
answer to this question, and shows that there is a linear covariation between respondents
interest in CSAs and other defining characteristics. As seen in Table 11, the multivariate
ordinal regression on CSAinterest—which spanned from 1 (not interested) to 3 (very
interested)—analyzed gender, student residence, academic envs affiliation, the frequency
that the student cooks, and student interest in cooking more, to see how they impact
CSAinterest. The results of this analysis show that the most predictive variable is
cookmore, which captured if the student wanted to cook more for themselves. If a student
wanted to cook more than another student they were 2.6 times more likely to be interested
in a CSA by one level than the student who wanted to cook less. This result suggest that a
CSA fulfills student demand for the food stuffs required to cook more. The second strongest
predictive variable was the respondent's gender. If the respondent was female they were
1.94 times more likely to be more interested in a CSA by one level than a man. Another
predictive variable for CSA interest is if the respondent lived in an affinity house. While not
statistically significant with a P value of .144, living in an affinity house may be a practically
significant variable leading respondents to be 2.69 times more likely to choose a higher
level of CSA interest.
59
What didn’t have as big of an effect on CSA interest was being an envs major, the
average total number of meals cooked per week, living off campus, and living in a greek
house. All of these ‘insignificant’ variables go against common sense. It would make sense
for envs students, who have a greater understanding of the issues of industrial agriculture,
to be motivated to make sustainable food choices. Ostrom identified dissatisfaction with
conventional food to be a primary motivator to joining a CSA, but that did not hold true in
this sample of Dartmouth students. Similarly one would expect students who have cooked a
lot in the past (totalmealscooked) to be interested in getting produce from a CSA, but this
variable had no practical or statistical relationship with CSA interest. Lastly, the impact of
living off campus or in a greek house had no clear pattern on CSA interest levels, generating
very high P values. In summation, this regression showed a practically and statistically
significant relationship between gender and wanting to cook more and CSA interest, an
important result because it better identifies the target population as women who want to
cook more, informing potential marketing campaigns for the CSA, and motivating the need
to provide cooking infrastructure such as recipes, cooking classes, and cooking
infrastructure for students who are interested in a CSA and want to cook more.
Another important source of information on what motivates or limits CSA interest is
found in Table 7. This table shows that the quality and type of food (good) was the main
motivator for CSA interest, with 57% of all respondents citing this reason as their
motivation for being somewhat or very interested in purchasing a CSA at Dartmouth. This
finding is in line with Ostrom’s conclusion that primary motivations for CSA membership
were the taste, freshness and healthiness of the food it provided. The second main
60
motivator for CSA interest was ease of cooking (ease), which was cited by only 33% of
those interested in CSAs. The least cited reason for CSA interest were the positive
externalities it would have on the environment and local community (posext). While only
cited by 26% of respondents, posext was the only variable that was cited more frequently
by respondents that were very interested in a CSA than those who were somewhat
interested in a CSA. This makes posext the variable that best differentiates students who
were somewhat and very interested in a CSA, and thus best identifies respondents who are
most likely to purchase a share. This interesting finding may explain the difference
between Ostrom and Cone and Myhre’s understanding of environmental benefits as a
motivation for membership: even though environmental benefits are a motivator, they only
inspire a small percentage of all CSA members. That said, almost all of the research on CSAs
found social values to be a secondary motivator at best, which was confirmed by the
Dartmouth survey.
In terms of reasons for disinterest the most commonly cited reason was infeasibility
due to a lack of cooking equipment or time to spend cooking. This rationale is in line with
the challenges of changing food habits and the inconvenience of pick up and cooking cited
by Cone and Myhre. Moreover, it is seconded by their finding that CSA’s benefits can be
overshadowed by the time and effort required to accomplish them, and inputs of time and
effort are things that Dartmouth students are certainly lacking. Apathy was the second
most used reason for disinterest, cited by 8% of respondents. Cost was the least cited
reason for disinterest, a finding in line with Cone and Myhre’s findings that the price of
CSAs were not a major influencer for or against purchase. In summary, the main factors
61
that led to interest in CSAs were being female and wanting to cook more, as well as seeing
CSAs as an avenue to get fresher healthier food, being able to cook more, and enabling
positive environmental and social benefits. The factors leading to disinterest were mainly
envisioned difficulty finding the time, space and equipment to cook CSA produce and
apathy to the sustainable food movement.
Part 2: CSA Features Relevant and Important to Dartmouth Students
Section A: Season and Frequency
In regards to the second question ‘what structures or factors of a Dartmouth CSA
should be prioritized when implementing a pilot CSA program?’—there was a great deal of
specificity provided by the survey. First I will unpack student responses related to the
structure, season and frequency of a potential CSA. Students were most interested in a fall
CSA but the results were clustered close together as is apparent in Table 4 of the results,
with meat, eggs, vegetable and salad summer share (jumbo) preferred second, a spring
share (springCSA) preferred third , and a vegetable and salad summer share (summerveg)
preferred the least. All seasonal CSA options had a median response of somewhat
interested (2). It is likely that the increased interest in the fall CSA is explained by student
preferences for food (as seen in table 6) that are harvested primarily during the fall. These
results inform a pilot CSA by showing student interest in a Fall CSA as well as shares with
meat and eggs. A second feature of CSA structure illuminated by the survey is how often
students shop for themselves and perhaps how often a CSA should be distributed. As seen
in Table 5, students grocery shop (grocery) 2.44 times per term, around once every 4
62
weeks. That said, when the mean number of grocery shopping outings is broken down by
CSA interest, the mean for students who are very interested in a CSA is 2.9 grocery
shopping outings per term, about every 3 weeks. With this data in mind it may make sense
to distribute CSA food less frequently. There is a chance that students grocery shop
infrequently due to logistical barriers, and that if the food was easy to get on campus that
they would like to get food more often. Nonetheless, it appears that students may not need
as much food as a standard once a week delivery CSA would provide.
Section B: Types of Food
Another factor relevant to a CSA that should be considered for a pilot program is
what kind of food will be provided for students. In regards to being organic or not,
respondents were on the whole indifferent but the certification was increasingly important
to people who were very interested in the CSA, so it should not be ignored. As seen in Table
9, the importance of the CSA being organic was on average 2.2 on a one to three scale of
importance. The variation in organic preference between students who were somewhat
and very interested in a CSA was small enough however, that if other beneficial qualities
could be achieved by trading off an organic label it should be done, and student support
will likely remain. Especially in light of the ‘practically’ organic farms that surround
Dartmouth, ensuring an organic label on a CSA is not a main priority.
Beyond labels, there are specific student preferences for particular types of food
that could be included in the CSA. The first source of data comes from what types of
products students found most desirable for a CSA program. As seen in Table 6, the number
63
one requested food category was vegetables, then fruit, greens, meat and eggs, and herbs.
The top requested items were apples, blueberries, raspberries, and eggs, followed by
spinach, tomatoes, carrots, watermelon, corn and onions. In creating a CSA its important to
note that students like to items that are easy to cook or can be eaten raw. The food items
that shouldn’t be included are beets, scallions, hard squash, garlic scapes, swiss chard,
parsley, dill, cabbage, radish, fennel and turnips. Students also disclosed what types of food
they usually bought when they grocery shopped, listing products slightly different from
what they requested from the CSA. As seen in Table 5 the students mainly buy ‘other
snacks’ in addition to produce, dairy and cereals. These easy to make foods seem to be the
most important for students, and the products included in a CSA should match that
preference. Even though the organizers of a CSA probably have a high level of comfort with
a wide range of vegetables, a typical student does not. A CSA at Dartmouth should show
students the variety of produce available but focus on the high quality and fresh food that
students requested in this survey.
Section C: Pricing
Another important feature to consider is the correct price to charge per CSA share.
There were two questions in the survey that concerned willingness to pay (WTP); the first
asked about an 8 week salad share and the second about an 8 week jumbo share that
included salad, veggies, meat and eggs. Respondents were willing to pay an average of $118
for the salad share and $208 for the jumbo share. That said, those averages are the mean of
all respondents, and thus include the WTP of students who were both interested and not
64
interested in purchasing a CSA. Table 10 contains the multivariate regression of CSA
interest on WTP. The analysis shows that CSA interest had a practically and statistically
significant effect on respondent’s WTP—a one level increase in CSA interest is correlated
with a jump of $25 for the salad share and $48 dollars for the jumbo share. Furthermore,
the WTP for students who are very interested jumped to $135 for the summer share and
$234 for the jumbo share.
Section D: Marketing
Now that the ideal structure, content, and price of the CSA have been established,
there is still the question of what is the best way to market a CSA to Dartmouth students.
When asked what type of label would be most effective in changing purchasing decisions
and perceptions of DDS, students cared most about food labeled as fresh followed by real,
then organic, sustainable, and tasty (Table 3). Thus when marketing the CSA,
communication should emphasize the freshness of the produce and products offered.
Another source of data is student responses to the question of why they were interested or
disinterested in purchasing a CSA. Table 7 shows that the quality of food and type of food in
the CSA was the most frequently cited motivation by students who were very interested in
a CSA. Clearly a major driving factor of CSA interest is the quality of food a CSA would
provide and that motivator should be well advertised and emphasized during any
marketing or outreach programs.
Section E: Other Important Results
65
The survey also asked students what types of food, labels, and changes within DDS’s
operations would have the greatest impact on their purchasing behavior and perceptions of
DDS. While these survey results are not directly impactful on a CSA, they do inform and
confirm the importance of this work. First and foremost the change respondents said
would most positively impact their perceptions of DDS was a CSA option within the meal
plan. The next most beneficial change was increasing local produce followed by using more
humane meats in the dining halls. As seen in Table 3 the median of both a CSA option and
increasing local food was a 5 out of 5, a response meaning strongly positively impact. In
regards to food served by DDS the most important feature across respondents is healthy
(54%), followed by sustainably produced (19%) and local (11%). Respondents were most
impacted by increases in healthy local, sustainably produced food, especially by their
response that the best change DDS could make would be including a CSA in the meal plan.
This student support strengthens the call for change and should further motivate a
Dartmouth CSA option beyond the reasons discussed in the introduction.
Lastly I would like to summarize some basic results of my survey that concern the
representativeness of the sample of respondents. Graduation year was almost exactly
equally distributed in the survey, similar to the Dartmouth population. Unlike age,
residence distribution didn’t reflect reality. At Dartmouth 70% of students live on campus,
10% off campus, 12% in greek houses and 8% in affinity houses (U.S. News). The
distribution of survey respondents differed with 60% of respondents reporting that they
lived on campus, 20% off campus, 13% in greek houses and 7% in affinity houses. This
change in distribution may be reflective of the groups emailed with the survey or just
66
random variation. Nonetheless the skewed increase in off campus students may have
affected the results. Another cause of concern was the overrepresentation of
environmental studies majors, minors and sustainability minors in the sample. In reality
only 2.4% of total undergraduates are engaged in environmental studies department, but
8.8% of total survey respondents were related to envs in the survey. While dramatically
overrepresented, the large number of envs related student respondents did not skew
results towards inflated CSA interest since the multivariate regression showed no
correlation between being an envs student and CSA interest.
67
68
Conclusions Part 1: Practical Applications
The results of this survey show significant buy in from Dartmouth students in terms
of CSA interest. 37.8% of the sample was very interested in buying a CSA at Dartmouth, a
number so high that even if you accounted for eager respondents who were interested but
would likely not follow through, over a quarter of the Dartmouth student population could
be positively affected by becoming a CSA member. Interested respondents were primarily
female, lived in affinity houses, and wanted to cook more for themselves (a response given
by 57% of total respondents). Not only were students bought in, but when asked to rate
different changes DDS could make in terms of the effect it would have on their perceptions
of DDS, creating a CSA option within the meal plan ranked number one in creating a
positive impact. Additionally the survey data revealed student eating preferences that
could be helpful for DDS when structuring the CSA. One feature to note is high student
interest in a fall csa, likely due to its inclusion of the foods students expressed interest in:
apples, blueberries, raspberries, eggs, spinach, tomatoes, carrots, watermelon, corn and
onions, most of which ripen in late summer and early fall. There are also barriers to
overcome when implementing a CSA, notably the lack of time, kitchen space and cooking
ability of students. These barriers could be reduced by giving CSA members snack-like
produce and products as well as easy-to-cook recipes for the vegetables provided.
69
Part 2: Limitations of the Work
My survey results are limited by the number of respondents (only 4% of
Dartmouth’s total population was sampled), because the respondents weren’t selected
through random sampling, and by the gender imbalance of the sample. The
overrepresentation of females may be due in part to the fact that I emailed the survey to my
sorority, which is all female, and did not email the survey to any fraternities. Original
concerns, such as the greater concentration of environmental studies students in the
sample came to rest as involvement with envs showed little to no effect on CSA interest.
The greater limitation of this thesis has to do with the number of students who will
eventually engage with a pilot CSA. The majority of food consumed by Dartmouth students
will always come from the various eateries on campus, not from individual’s kitchens, so to
create major changes in Dartmouth’s food footprint more broad sweeping changes need to
occur inside of its dining halls. That said, the type of changes associated with CSA
membership do respond directly to the issues raised in the introduction about the negative
externalities of industrial agriculture. So while a CSA might create a plethora of benefits, it
may not reach a large enough group of students to make a visible impact on Dartmouth’s
environmental footprint and its regional foodshed. For real transformation, change needs
to occur on all levels with an institutionalized CSA being one important feature, but
changes in institutional procurement guidelines, menu design, student curriculum, and
organic farm engagement being other necessary factors of change.
70
71
Part 3: Ideas for Further Research
This thesis inspired a lot of ideas that could not be fully explored within the scope of
this project but would be valid and practical steps forward. These other ideas concern
other ways to improve the sustainability and wellbeing of both Dartmouth students and
Dartmouth’s food system, and include: meatless mondays, a local food week in late
summer, a local or sustainable food substitution for one major food group (spinach, carrots,
beets), a connection with the Local Mainstreaming Project directed by Kurt Shilser (the
project would connect medium-sized farms with Dartmouth’s broadline distributor
Performance Food Group), a connection with Don McCormick’s to-be-built integrated food
energy system, a local food marketing plan institutionalized within DDS’s staff (consisting
of better product labeling, email blasts, signs and opportunities for feedback), vending
machine products with smaller ecological footprints that support student’s health, a
revamping of Collis Market to include local healthy products for convenient student
purchase, and connecting local sustainable food to Dartmouth Peak Performance
(providing athletes with nutritious produce-centered meals to better fuel athletes
physically and mentally while supporting their long-term health). As this list demonstrates
there are many other programs that could have and should be explored as a part of
Dartmouth’s comprehensive journey towards food sustainability.
In terms of concrete research, there exists an opportunity to perform a deep
analysis of DDS’s carbon footprint and the changes that would result from different
interventions such as those listed above. Of course, carbon footprint is only one part of the
story about food’s impact, and it would be an amazing though impractical project to
72
catalogue the impact of such interventions on biodiversity, soil health, water health,
farmer’s rights, consumer health, and community thriving. Additional areas of research
include analyzing the impact of CSA participation on the local farms producing the shares
and on the students who are participating. In another vein, further research could explore
how DDS could better serve students in their desire to cook more (kitchens, utensils,
cooking classes, recipes), how to make CSA produce more approachable for students, and
how to better incorporate food sustainability issues in Dartmouth’s curriculum and campus
awareness.
73
Bibliography Anderson-Gips, Rose. 2008. “Decoding Food Labels.” Tufts University: Office of Sustainability.
Summer. http://sustainability.tufts.edu/decoding-food-labels Barber, Nancy L. 2009. “Summary of Estimated Water Use in the United States in 2005.”
United States. U.S. Department of the Interior. U.S. Geological Survey. http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2009/3098/pdf/2009-3098.pdf
Barlett, Peggy F.. 2011. "Campus Sustainable Food Projects: Critique and Engagement."
American Anthropologist 113.1: 101-15. Web. Beaudreault, Amy R.. 2009. "Natural: Influences of Students' Organic Food Perceptions."
Journal of Food Products Marketing 15.4: 379-91. Web. Bloom, Jonathan. 2010. American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its
Food. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press. Born, Branden, and Mark Purcell. 2006. "Avoiding the Local Trap." Journal of Planning
Education and Research 26.2: 195-207. ProQuest Social Sciences Premium Collection. Web.
Breyman, Steve. 1998. "Sustainability through Incremental Steps? the Case of Campus
Greening at Rensselaer." Greener Management International 23: 117. Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management. Web.
Campbell-Arvai, Victoria, Joseph Arvai, and Linda Kalof. 2014. "Motivating Sustainable Food
Choices the Role of Nudges, Value Orientation, and Information Provision." Environment and Behavior 46.4: 453-75. Web.
Cone, Cynthia A., Andrea Myhre. 2000. “Community-Supported Agriculture: A Sustainable
Alternative to Industrial Agriculture?”. Human Organization 59 no. 2: 187-97. Dahlberg, K. A.. 1979. Beyond the Green Revolution. The Ecology and Politics of Global
Agricultural Development. Plenum Press. Davis, Donald, Melvin Epp, and Hugh Riordan. 2004. “Changes in USDA Food Composition
Data for 43 Garden Crops, 1950-1999.” Journal of American College of Nutrition 23 no. 6: 669-82.
Defenders of Wildlife. 2005. “Comments for the Development of USDA Recommendations for the 2007 Farm Bill” 70 Fed. Reg. 35221. June 17.
EPA. 2012. "Managing Nonpoint Source Pollution from Agriculture." November 16.
74
<http://water.epa.gov/polwaste/nps/outreach/point6.cfm>. EPA. 2013. "Agriculture and Food Supply Impacts & Adaptation." Last modified September
9. http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/impacts-adaptation/agriculture.html
EPA. 2015. “Overview of Greenhouse Gases.” Last modified May 7th. http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html
Fields, Scott. 2004. “The Fat of the Land: Do Agricultural Subsidies Foster Poor Health?”
Environmental Health Perspectives 112 no 14: A820-23. Franklin, Remy, and Jasmine Kumalah. “Real Food Survey.” Survey Monkey PDF results.
2012. Friedland, Andy. 2012. “Environmental Studies 2 Lecture.” Dartmouth Professor of
Environmental Studies. Fall. Gustavsson, Jenny et. al. 2011. “Global Food Losses and Food Waste: Extent, Causes and
Prevention.” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/suistainability/pdf/Global_Food_Losses_and_Food_Waste.pdf
Guthman, Julie. 2004. Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California.
Berkeley: University of California. Print. Harrison, Danielle (Dartmouth Sustainability Office Fellow). Interview by author. In person
discussion. Dartmouth College, May 22 2015. Hesterman, Oran B.. 2011. Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All. ‘
New York: PublicAffairs. Print. Kingsolver, Barbara, Seven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver. 2008. Animal Vegetable Miracle.
New York: Harper Perennial. Print.
Krotz, Daniel. 2011. “Small Farms and the Farm Subsidies Scandal.” Huffington Post, March 25. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-krotz/small-farms-and-the-farm-_b_81786 9.html
Macias, Thomas. 2008. “Working Toward a Just, Equitable and Local Food System: The
Social Impact of Community-Based Agriculture.” Social Science Quarterly 89 no. 5: 1086-101.
McWilliams, James E.. 2009. Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly
Eat Responsibly. New York: Little, Brown. Print.
75
Minaker, Leia M., Kim D. Raine, Pat Fisher, Mary E. Thompson, Josh Van Loon and Lawrence
D. Frank. 2014. “Food Purchasing From Farmers’ Markets and Community-Supported Agriculture Is Associated With Reduced Weight and Better Diets in a Population-Based Sample.” Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition 9 no. 4: 485-97
Musco, Jenna (Program Manager at Dartmouth Sustainability Office). Interview by author. In person discussion. Dartmouth College, May 22 (2015).
NFWM. 2015. “Low wages”. National Farm Worker Ministry Website. Accessed May 22.
http://nfwm.org/education-center/farm-worker-issues/low-wages/. Ostrom, Marcia Ruth. 2007. "Community supported agriculture as an agent of change: Is it
working." In Remaking the North American Food System: Strategies for Sustainability, edited by C. Clare Hinrichs and Thomas A. Lyson, 99-120. University of Nebraska Press.
Pohlman, Lucia G. 2012. “Modern Farming and the Farm Bill: How Policy Shapes our
Environment and our Food.” Final Research Paper for Urbanization and the Environment with Professor Jackson.
Riedl, Brian. 2007. “How Farm Subsidies Harm Taxpayers, Consumers, and Farmers, Too.”
Heritage Foundation Executive Summary Backgrounder no. 2043. June 19. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/06/how-farm-subsidies-harm-ta xpayers-consumers-and-farmers-too
U.S. News. 2015. "Dartmouth College: Student Life." U.S. News & World Report Education. http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/dartmouth-college 2573/student-life
USDA. 2013. “Irrigation and Water Use.” Economic Research Service. Last Modified June 7 2013. http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/irrigation-water-use. aspx
USDA. 2015. “Organic Agriculture.” United States Department of Agriculture. January 9th.
http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentidonly=true&contentid =organic-agriculture.html
Weber, Christopher L., and H. Scott Matthews. 2008. Food-miles and the relative climate
impacts of food choices in the united states. Environmental Science & Technology 42 (10) (March 4, 2008): 3508-13.
Weber, Karl. 2009. Food, Inc.: How Industrial Food Is Making Us Sicker, Fatter and Poorer --
76
and What You Can Do about It. New York: PublicAffairs. Print. Wharton, Christopher and Alison Harmon. 2009. “University Engagement Through Local
Food Enterprise: Community-Supported Agriculture on Campus.” Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition 4 no. 2: 112-28.
Worthington, Virginia. 2001. “Nutritional Quality of Organic Versus Conventional Fruits, Vegetables, and Grains. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 7 no. 2: 161-73.
77
Appendix 1: Student Survey
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
Appendix 2: Do File from Stata Data Analysis
86