Food grown by students, for students: new campus garden feeds NAU community

Recent graduate, Kendra Petersen, hopes to bring organic, local and, most importantly, accessible produce to Northern Arizona University’s campus.

Petersen’s organization, CHEFS, stands for campus health, education, and food sustainability. She hopes the program will establish a classroom, lab and garden. This garden serves educational and practical purposes; most, if not all, of the resulting vegetables will be available for students’ consumption.

“I hope to inform students and engage them in their learning as well as provide local, organic produce for the school,” Petersen said.

The Green Fund, to which every NAU student pays $5 fee, awarded Petersen $10,546 towards the project in February.

“The Green Fund actually supported the startup costs of the garden. This includes a new shed, drip tape, seeds, wheelbarrows and shovels,” Petersen said. The costs of the garden will, ideally, lessen over time, as more produce is sold to the university.

Planting will start in early June, weather permitting. The program has access to a variety of vegetable seeds, including kale, corn, squash, onion and peppers.

While there are three fertile gardens already on campus, there are specific requirements for producing food that students will eventually consume. Sodexo, the food distributor that NAU contracts with, provides the School Garden Guidelines for food being grown on any campus that might end up on a student’s plate.

“Food safety is, of course, a humongous issue, and it is the biggest barrier for us getting local [food] and things like that,” Casey Fisher, the director of strategic planning and marketing for Sodexo, said.

Additionally, the garden must meet Coconino County Health Dept. standards. To prevent any contamination, the garden will be somewhat secluded from the general public.

“The garden’s location is going to be on south campus,” Petersen said. “We’re hoping to make it so that it is available for students that are interested in volunteering, but a little bit concealed to the public so it is more secure for food safety reasons.”

According to the School Garden Guidelines, the garden must have a fence and be far enough away from parking lots. This is because water run-off might contain oil and other toxins.

Fisher expressed that as long as the garden met the safety requirements, funding would continue.

While the vegetables in the CHEFS garden cannot meet the demand of thousands of students alone, it will supplement meals already made on campus. There will be a slight cost difference in meals with wholesale versus garden-grown vegetables, despite students paying the fee to the Green Fund.

According to Consumer Reports, organic food is on average 47% more expensive than non-organic options.

“There are definitely people asking for [organic food],” Fisher said. “But the question is how committed they are…. Most people that we’ve surveyed said they loved it, but they wouldn’t pay extra.”

Still, Sodexo sees value in the CHEFS garden. Many of their initiatives at NAU, such as Real Food, Real People and the S.L.O.W. Meals campaign, has highlighted the importance of supporting local farms, food distributors and transparency in food production.

Despite NAU students’ reluctance to pay extra for organic, a 2010 study determined that, in comparison to other generations, Millennials (the first to come of age in the new millennium) are among the most likely to choose organic over non-organic.

With the new CHEFS garden, NAU student volunteers gain insight into the complexities inherent to food production, but also reap the many benefits.