Bon Appétit Management Company

The drought that struck the United States this year stunted growth of field corn and soy, and as a result, 2013 will be the first time in 38 years where annual beef, pork, and chicken output all decline. We need a resilient food system that can cope with a changing climate and unpredictable conditions such as this drought. How are we going to get there?

Bon Appétit Sous Chef Shirelle Boyd from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, recently launched a garden project with nearby Monticello Middle School, which she had “adopted” through the First Lady’s Chefs Move to Schools program.

I had a wonderful time in sunny California where I visited Whittier College in honor of Food Day, an annual nationwide celebration of healthy, affordable, and sustainable food. My visit kicked off with a luncheon with landscape architect Glen Dake. Glen gave a presentation on how to build landscapes that volunteers both love and are capable of managing. The room was full of students from Whittier’s Urban Agriculture Club that were interested in learning techniques to get volunteers engaged with gardening. The presentation covered everything from how to make weeding assignments glamorous, to what plants can survive without much effort.

As Hurricane Sandy barreled toward the coast, businesses and entire cities shut down to brace themselves for what was to come. But college dining halls don’t have that luxury. College students are already “at home,” and – no matter the weather — need to be fed. And local farmers and fishermen need to be able to sell their harvest.

This year I went trekking in the Himalayas of Nepal. Here are a few of the things I witnessed and how the experience sometimes turned my views on our sustainability commitments on their side.

Students at the University of Redlands spend a week each semester to host fun activities that raise environmental awareness and inspire action on campus. The most recent Green Week coincided with Food Day so Bon Appétit was invited to co-host an event with a coalition of environmental organizations that focused on waste and the food system. Students and staff strung 1,050 disposable to-go boxes around Hunsaker Plaza to show people how much ends up in the landfill every day on campus and the students asked people to pledge to only use to-go boxes when actually on the go.

The idea for the event was conceived when students learned that on average 5,250 disposable to-go boxes end up in the landfill each week and approximately $25,000 is spent on those boxes each semester!

Redlands Conservancy’s Emerald Necklace Program is an ambitious project, long in the works, that will preserve open space as well as Redland’s agricultural heritage. The program kicked off with a celebratory event catered by Bon Appétit at University of Redlands in Redlands, CA.

Missouri was the first stop in the 10-state Young Farmers Screening Series for American Meat, a documentary that looks evenhandedly at both the industrial and the pastoral sides of the U.S. meat system. Bon Appétit at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, kicked off the screening with a grass-fed beef barbecue for 325 attendees, who stayed for a panel discussion and special announcement.

Organized by Midwest Fellow S.K. Piper and students at Carleton, St. Olaf, and Macalester Colleges, the seven-farm bike tour and closing party was completely free for participants, funded by in-kind donations and community grants that Piper helped the student organizers secure, with the food cost being covered by the Bon Appétit teams at the three schools.

Strong local and regional food systems can lead to strong local economies and opportunities for people who are often left behind by traditional economic development. But it takes a while to build these systems. Bon Appétit was proud to cater a recent breakfast fundraiser for the Grow a Farmer Fund at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, which raised $4,270 for Latino farmers who want to raise free-range chickens in rural Minnesota.