Good, Fresh, Local

By Mitch Paine Walking into the first GFL dinner at my dorm’s cafeteria, I didn’t know what to expect. I knew is that GFL stood for Good, Fresh, Local and that the night’s meal was an Italian Dinner. What I didn’t know is that the meal would be all local and fantastic! GFL started as a local food movement at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Dining Services. In the spring of 2005, Pam Edwards, the assistant director of dining services, received an e-mail about the Yale Sustainable Food Project. The Yale Sustainable Food Project was a student-led effort to slowly incorporate local and sustainable foods into the menus of the Yale dining centers. It was also an effort to educate students about agriculture and sustainability. Edwards and her staff thought that since Nebraska has very strong roots in agriculture and a large part of our university is devoted to agriculture, a similar program would work here at UNL. Initially Edwards formed a group of producers who met after the farmer’s market and discussed options for purchasing local products for a big undertaking. The farmers reacted positively and the group moved forward. That September of 2005, students at the Cather-Pound-Neihardt Dining Center sat down to the first GFL dinner with an exclusively local meal, perhaps the first all-local meal on a university campus in the Midwest. The farmers came to share their story and to teach the city-dwellers about agriculture. The producers were met with enthusiasm, and for the rest of the year student attendance skyrocketed at the dinners. The popularity continues even today. The resident assistants on each floor make the GFL dinners a social event with upwards of 20 people at each table in the dining hall. Typically, outside the dining center there is no line to get in. But at my first GFL dinner I was amazed that I had to wait in line, just to get in, for almost 10 minutes. Hundreds of students and the public come out to the Cather-Pound-Neihardt Dining Center for the GFL nights. The turnout of students for a fantastic meal is promising, but less promising are the phrases that I hear in the dining hall of “what does GFL mean?” and “what does local food mean?” Edwards and the dining centers staff knew that education was a strong part of a local foods movement at the university. Soon, table tents, flyers, posters and information became available for students to learn more about why local food remains an important part of “sustainability.” This year, UNL Roots & Shoots (a program of the Jane Goodall Institute) came forward to help in the education component of GFL. The group will be expanding outreach to inform students of the importance of local food and small farms and answer the questions that students have. Edwards says that part of the mission of GFL is “to expand awareness of the variety of agricultural products and of smaller farms in the state.” The Dining Services didn’t stop at just one meal per month at one dining center. In 2007, the GFL dinners expanded to another dining center on UNL’s East Campus. The Dining Services also wanted to incorporate local food items in meals everyday. After receiving a grant to do so, a number of items became daily GFL items (always marked with a distinctive yellow tag). Some of these include granola, salad dressings, eggs, potatoes, bread, muffins and pizza. For the future of GFL, Edwards hopes for a further integration of local foods into all of the five dining centers’ menus daily. The GFL staff also wants to maintain relationships with the community. Edwards says, “I hope that GFL continues to grow and we work with more and more farmers and producers.” The progressive movement within the Dining Services extends even beyond GFL. Currently, the Dining Services is one of the largest sectors of UNL campus in terms of recycling products. Every possible item is recycled and the recycling profits are reinvested into the university system. Also, UNL’s Dining Services is, over time, converting a significant percentage of the purchased seafood into sustainable seafood, as outlined by the Monterrey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program. In a time when the “impending environmental doom” makes headlines daily, one entity in the state is making huge steps forward. The University of Nebraska has over the years improved its reputation of being sustainable, and the Good, Fresh, Local program is one of the many aspects of campus life that has been delving into the idea of campus sustainability. Small steps forward make huge strides in the right direction, and as Jane Goodall always says, “Every individual makes a difference and every action has a consequence.”