Adriane Dellorco (CDS local foods coordinator) interviewed by Oberlin Grape reporter Hanna Wheeler
--On Tue, Oct 24, 2000 3:21 PM -0400 Hanna Wheeler
<Hanna.Wheeler@oberlin.edu> wrote:
Hi,

This is really last minute but I wanted to write an article for the
Grape on local foods in CDS. I've been told that you were mostly
responsible for the sucess this project has had so I was wondering if you
could answer a few questions about the project. Wednesday night is the
absoloute latest I can have the article written so please reply as soon as
possible. Thank you so much!

1. how largely has the local food been incorporated into the dining
service (is it
all local food now, is there a local food section, is it produce or flour
and eggs, etc. as well?) how does students know if they are eating local
food or not? whre does the non-local food come from?
(Adriane responds)
Right now there is no local food in CDS, but there is organic. (i'll
tell you why there is no local in question 4) Stevenson now has a pretty
dinky organic salad bar that is pretty hard to see that is separate from
the normal salad bar. It offers maybe four or five different veggies, and
it seems like they often aren't refilled. It is definitely not as inviting
or impressive as the normal salad bar. The De Cafe also sells organic
produce now, and they apparently have an organic foods shelf, too. Just 2
weeks ago, CDS started buying from the Federation of Ohio River
Cooperatives (FORC), which is a food distributor that specializes in
organic and health foods that the co-ops purchase from. Each CDS manager
buys what they want, so I'm not sure what they have ordered yet. I know
that they were intending to buy organic salad dressing for the organic sald
bar in Steveson. I am also a CDS recycler, so that's why I know about all
this.

2. why is it important to use local food?

see attached document. Also it would be good to point out that small farms
are quickly diminishing in this area because small farmers simply can't
make it anymore due to financial pressures, or they quit because it is not
worth it financially and sell their land to developers who turn good
farmland into homes. If CDS could purchase from local farmers, it would
give them a tremendous boost because of the huge quantities CDS purchases.

3. from which farms does the food come?

the organic food most likely comes from farms in CA, so it is not as fresh.

4. what process did you go through to get local food in the dining
service. any difficulties?

Alright, big question. The whole idea for local foods in CDS came from
Hillary Stainthorpe in the Sustainable Ag Exco last year. We decided to
start pursuing it as a group project in the class, but didn't get very far.
Then last semester, Ty Moore (who led the Marriott campaign) started
talking to me about it again and I became reinspired to pursue it in more
depth. An ad hoc group of students was formed to work on the issue. I
also attached a list of those members. We did a shit load of research on
other schools with local foods programs, met with people from the Oberlin
Sustainable Agriculture Project (OSAP) (Ken Sloane, president, Gerry Gross,
head farmer, and Brad Masi, project coordinator for the ENVS dept) and met
with people from Reslife (Michele Gross, head of dining, Dave Jensen,
Marriott rep) and met altogether. I think the Reslife people took us
seriously and really worked with us because we had really done our research
and knew what we were doing. They were amazingly receptive to us, because
in the past when students tried to do this, they didn't seem to care that
much. But they definitely put a lot of effort in to make it happen. If
you read the attached document you can read about the biggest obstacle
being the liability insurance. Since that paper was written, a few things
have happened. OSAP was going to pay for the insurance. Then, their
season was so crappy this summer that they didn't think that they would be
able to afford to pay it, so they weren't going to sell to CDS. Then
LoPrestis, a food distributor that CDS buys from, agreed to cover OSAP's
insurance by buying from OSAP, and then selling OSAP stuff to CDS. BUT,
OSAP's season was so bad that OSAP didn't think it would have enough
product to sell to CDS so they didn't go through with the deal. We totally
could have had OSAP stuff in CDS this year, but the bad season just ruined
it.

5. are you working to expand this project and how?

YES! I took the job as CDS recycler this year so I could continue to work
on it and continue contact with Reslife and CDS. I just got accepted into
the Shouse Non-profit Leadership Program in which I have access to money to
fund projects. Next semester I hope to secure money to subsidize local
farmers to pay for the insurance in order to sell to CDS. I hope to work
on forming a co-operative of local farmers that could be treated as one
entity and have just one insurance bill. Look at the attached document to
see why a cooperative would be good. The ad hoc local foods group that we
formed last year decided to become a chartered campus organization called
SLOP (Supporters of Local Organic Produce) that would have the mission of
educating people about local organic foods, increasing their accessability
to people, and supporting small farmers. I haven't been able to start the
group up again this semester, but hopefully I will next semester to work on
forming the farming cooperative.

also, do you know of any CDS or college type people i can talk to?

thanks again so much. if you have any questions, please call me at X6508.
michele.gross, dave.jensen, kenneth.sloane, gands@eriecoast.com (Gerry
gross), Brad.Masi
influential students involved were amber.mcmillan, hillary.stainthorpe,
sasha.yurgionas, cambria.hamburg, John.stratton, nathan.tobin,
nathan.sutter among many others. Curiously enough, all the people involved
except maybe two were co-opers.
I hope I answered your questions in an understandable way!