Students and community members tour local sustainable farms
All photos by Professor Anthony Crider.
by Marlena Chertock, April 27, 2010
In November, an Elon University BioBus was filled to capacity with students and community members who wanted to learn about eco-friendly T-shirts. April 25, students, faculty and community members boarded a BioBus again and took the 15th annual Piedmont farm tour. The tour, sponsored by the Carolina Farm Association, is made up of only
sustainable farms and is the largest one if its kind in the country.
Elon’s Center for Environmental Studies and Company Shops Market, a co-op and locally grown grocery store opening in downtown Burlington, cosponsored one of the BioBuses for the tour. There was room for 30 students. They left campus at 1 p.m. and arrived back at 5 p.m.
“This is my first year going,” associate professor of physics Anthony Crider said. “But I was anxious to go and get students, faculty and members of community involved in this.”
They visited the three closest farms to Elon. Each farm specializes in a different aspect of sustainability. Turtle Run Farm is organic, Millarckee Farm grows organic vegetables and Cane Creek Farm has grass-fed animals.
View Crider’s photos from the tour here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/acrider/sets/72157623806914709/.
Crider said he hopes the tour will raise awareness of locally grown and organic food. He said it is important to know where food originates.
“We’d like for students, faculty and the community to be aware of basic things,” he said. “The (food) options, what the idyllic farm is like and what the cost is. They might be willing to spend a little bit of extra money for that satisfaction and security of knowing where it came from and having a sense of what’s in it.”
Sustainable food is important for the maintenance of the environment, according to Crider.
People have not looked into the impact on the environment of shipping food during times of the year when it is not naturally grown. Crider said he believes that people should focus their eating habits on food that is grown locally because it is better for the environment and that buying food locally has multiple benefits.
“Sometimes you just feel better that you’ve not shipped things in and spent a lot of gas money to fly or boat or drive food to you,” he said. “And some people feel better supporting the local economy. But sometimes it tastes better.”
Crider buys his milk from Homeland Creamery. The skim milk doesn’t taste as watery as it would in a regular grocery store, he said. The fruits and vegetables he buys locally are also fresher.
“You have some sense of community, you know who you’re buying this from,” he said. “It’s really cheap to produce meat and vegetables in a way that’s not in the best interest of the people or the animals or the person that’s going to end up consuming the food. So the only bottom line there is the profit. But I think the concept of the triple bottom line of profit … people involved in the process and the planet as a whole is critical.”
All photos by Professor Anthony Crider.
Raising awareness of locally grown food is worthwhile, according to Crider.
“Ultimately, as capitalist as it sounds, sometimes we vote with our vote and sometimes we vote with our dollar,” he said. “To spend the extra money to say I want my food to be produced honestly, I want to pay a fair cost for my food and not just get whoever happened to be able to produce it the cheapest, that’s worth something.”
Company Shops Market will be a stop on the BioBus line next year allowing students without cars to access the shops.
“I think it would be great to increase the number of options on campus for students,” he said. “I’m curious to see how the presence of (Company Shops Market) on Elon’s BioBus line will increase demand by students for that kind of food on campus.”
Elaine Durr, the sustainability coordinator at Elon, said students who want to see more locally grown food on campus should talk to ARAMARK to make their interest and desire known. She also suggested students work with SGA.
I f you want locally grown food now “you have to know people,” Crider said. “My wife buys her beets from some guy on a street corner. It’s a beet deal going down.”
The Weaver Street market is another co-op grocery store in Carrboro.
“It’s not just a grocery store,” Crider said. “It’s a place you go to eat. There’s music and families. It turns into a community in and of itself. And I’m hoping that’s what we develop here. People that care about their food and care about their neighbors. Because ultimately if as a society we don’t pay the price of food now we’ll pay for it later.”