Toward Real Food and Climate Neutrality on Campus: Assessing new tools for measuring institutional food system sustainability, transformation, and change

Keywords: real food, institutional food systems, food systems transformation, greenhouse gas emissions, food systems sustainability, environmental justice, agroecology, farm to institution, institutional change, ethical consumption, food procurement, dietary change, food justice
Session Type: Virtual Guided Poster
Day: Wednesday
Session Start / End Time: 4/7/2021 01:30 PM (Pacific Time (US & Canada)) - 4/7/2021 02:45 PM (Pacific Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 53

Abstract

Colleges and universities have the opportunity to advance their commitments to equity, ethics, and sustainability by changing their relationships with, and purchasing practices in, local, national, and global food systems. A variety of institution-based food systems change efforts have emerged to encourage colleges and universities to address the social, health, and/or environmental impacts of patterns of food production and consumption. While many of these approaches have been gaining traction individually, contributions to literature that assess their combined role in food system transformation are rare. Here, we use agroecology to develop a framework for assessing campus-based food system change and then conduct a case study. Like many other institutions of higher education, Santa Clara University (SCU) has pledged to reduce campus greenhouse gas emissions and advance sustainability and environmental justice through campus food purchases. To track progress and identify areas for improvement, researchers at SCU collaborated with the Real Food Challenge (RFC) and the Sustainability Indicator Management & Analysis Platform (SIMAP). In addition to comparing the impacts and cost-effectiveness of several strategies (e.g., increased plant-based consumption, fair trade universities, etc..) for changing institutional food systems, we suggest strategies for integrating environmental and social justice-related evaluation tools. We contribute a perspective on the usefulness and implementation of RFC and SIMAP, insights from combining these tools in analysis, and provide recommendations for their future improvement. A concluding discussion uses our framework to critically assess food systems change metrics, and the degree to which different change efforts are incremental versus transformational.