For Students by Students: U-M’s Campus Farm Produce to be Found Across Campus
By Caroline Skiver

A fifteen-minute drive away from the University of Michigan Central Campus, you’ll find a community of students busily working together with dirt under their fingernails. The students are workers at the Campus Farm at Matthaei Botanical Gardens, a living, learning laboratory for sustainable food systems work at U-M.
On any given week, hundreds of pounds of produce grown by the students will be loaded up in large blue bins and delivered from the farm to MDining’s cafés and halls.
Currently all nine dining halls are receiving produce including spinach, kale, lettuce mixes, and assorted cherry tomatoes once a week. The Farm gives a list of their available produce to MDining, and then staff selects their items.

Program Manager Jeremy Moghtader particularly likes to have crops such as delicata squash, salad mix, and cherry tomatoes available, as these are showpieces for the farm.
“We want to highlight foods from the farm,” Moghtader said. “Greens or cherry tomatoes at the salad bar stand out, as opposed to onions being put in a soup. We’re focusing on things we can grow well that can be highlighted when they’re used in the residence hall.”
While the farm sold $70,000 worth of produce to MDining last year and is shooting for $100,000 this year, it comes from humbler beginnings. In its first year of selling to MDining and fifth year of existence, the farm sold $35,000 worth of produce.
The Campus Farm began in 2012, and for the first four years was run by a mix of students and summer interns. Moghtader was hired in 2016 to add expertise, create continuity, and help guide the students in the realization of their vision. The farm secured USDA Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) certification in 2017, allowing it to begin selling produce to the dining halls.
Hoop houses, new fields, and fencing have been added as the farm continues to expand. The farm’s continuing growth has created more opportunities for student management and engagement. There are now nine student managers, each with a clear role, one post-grad Farm Management Fellow, and over ten additional team members on the farm crew. Together they hope to advance their mission of creating educational and research opportunities in sustainable food production. In addition, they work to provide food grown by students for students to the greater U-M community.
Carly Sharp, a recent U-M grad who worked with the farm for four years, sees selling to MDining as a turning point for the farm: “Once we started selling to the dining halls we could actually make money, hire more students, and grow more food,” she said. “So I think that really spurred our expansion.” Previously, any produce grown was often sold at the M Farmers Market, donated, or given to volunteers.
The farm’s first delivery was 100 lbs. each of kale and chard. This year, for the first week of Fall semester about 1,000 pints of assorted cherry tomatoes were available across all dining halls. Becca Harley, a junior who works as the Food Safety and Orders Manager, directly works with MDining chefs to get their orders placed.
“We talk to the chefs and it’s a really collaborative relationship that we have with them, because we don’t want to be growing a bunch of stuff that they don’t have a need for,” Harley said. “But we also want to be growing a diverse enough crop selection that we’re still getting the engaging experience that students can have with their food systems. So, we just want to keep a balance between producing things for MDining and keeping this like a living learning lab.”

There are obvious benefits for both the chefs using the farm’s produce and the students eating it. Frank Turchan, MDining’s Executive Chef, finds that the produce lasts longer. He also believes it has a unique flavor, saying, “to taste a vegetable that’s not mass-produced and has care and thought into it — not saying that mass-produced doesn’t — but just for flavor it’s totally different.” Turchan also values the students’ interaction.
“The coolest thing is that we have students who work and volunteer,” Turchan said. “There’s that full circle connection that they were just planting or weeding, and then they come in and see and eat the lettuce that they just harvested.”
In addition to the student staff, the student organization Friends of the Campus Farm holds semi-weekly workdays so that students can engage with the farm. Students carpool from Central Campus to spend two hours performing tasks like planting, weeding, and harvesting.
Sharp and Harley echo the sentiment that student interaction with the farm is crucial. Sharp believes it offers a unique way for students to learn: “I think working as a student farm manager was a very hands-on way for me to learn, because I was always interested in sustainable food systems but I didn’t really know what that looked like. Having the Campus Farm gives students the ability to learn more about food systems than they typically would.”
Harley agrees, saying that “working as a student manager gives actual knowledge of farming. You have this more specific understanding of how your food systems work, and you can develop this great intricate relationship with food.”
When asked how they would like to see the farm continue to grow, both Sharp and Harley hope to increase academic integration and awareness of the farm on campus.
Students who would like to eat food grown close to home can look out for Campus Farm produce at MDining’s halls and cafés, the Maize and Blue Cupboard, and the M Farmers Market.
Students interested in getting involved with the Campus Farm and coming out to workdays can email campusfarm@umich.edu for more information.
