Strengthening University Local Food Systems: Train the Trainer Approach through Extension, Student, and Food Service Collaboration

Strengthening University Local Food Systems: Train the Trainer Approach through Extension, Student, and Food Service Collaboration

Summary

A train-the-trainer approach was facilitated by the NC 10% Campaign to prepare Cooperative Extension agents on strengthening university local food systems in North Carolina with a Local Food Ambassador Program at 6 Minority-Serving Institutions. The first of a two-year effort – to build, facilitate, and educate university local food teams; understand institutional-level food service; and direct farmers on the regulations and best-practices needed to sell to institutional markets – will be followed by another year of the program and an extension-train-extension workshop so that additional Extension agents can understand the opportunities and challenges of this emerging market for small and mid-scale farmers.

Objectives/Performance Targets

The following behavior-based objectives support the project goal of equipping Extension educators with the knowledge and programming materials to effectively train others in the creation of effective working teams that simultaneously build student demand for local foods and university dining services’ ability to procure local foods.

Objective 1: Extension educators, Local Food Ambassadors, and University Dining Service representatives are equipped to identify the structure and components of the university community dining system and can explain the benefits and challenges of university procurement of local food to a variety of audiences.

Objective 2: Extension educators are equipped with the knowledge and training materials to lead a collaborative and participatory process of building local food supply chains to university dining. Extension participates in an effective university dining –student — producer partnership.

Objective 3: Increase the amount of local food procured by university dining partners.

Accomplishments/Milestones

The NC 10% Campaign is a collaborative initiative out of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) and North Carolina Cooperative Extension that encourages consumers – individuals, businesses, and institutions – to spend 10% of their existing food dollars on NC-grown, raised, and caught food. The Campaign works through a Local Food Ambassador (LFA) Program to strengthen university food systems in North Carolina. The Campaign has focused efforts at six public Minority-Serving Institutions across North Carolina: Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, North Carolina Central University, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and Winston-Salem State University. A LFA team has been started at each of these six schools; participants include: a Local Food Ambassador student, University Dining Services, University Sustainability Office, faculty/staff, local farmer, and county Cooperative Extension Agent. Cooperative Extension agents have helped identify team members from their corresponding university and community, have helped facilitate the team meetings, and have supported the students in their local food outreach and education efforts on campus.

Local Food Ambassador Program Locations

In order to meet our three objectives, the NC 10% Campaign supported a series of activities (meetings, trainings, and events) for the LFA team participants to learn about the benefits and challenges of local foods, and have provided experiential learning opportunities in the first year for Extension agents to increase their knowledge of facilitating team meetings and communications for a farm-to-institution program. The University Local Food Summit provided a networking opportunity between participants with similar roles in other universities and communities; for instance, sustainability offices from all schools discussed how local food indices fit into their school’s sustainability plan; farmers discussed how they have engaged with campuses; extension agents discussed how to to report this local food work in their end-of-year evaluations. Presentations given were: 1) university food service supply chain basics and 2) the various market channels for farmers on a campus community: cafeteria, catering, farmers market, or campus box delivery program. The NC 10% Campaign provided additional training for LFA students to increase their understanding of local food systems and how to run outreach on campus.

     Activities included:

• 2015-2016: year-long organizing and educational events by LFA students
• June – August 2015: LFA Team Meetings at the 6 universities
• June 16, 2015: Sodexo Listening Session
• August 7, 2015: Aramark Listening Session
• October 1, 2015: LFA Student Training
• Nov 8, 2015: University Local Food Summit
• February – April 2016: LFA Team Meetings at the 6 universities

A Cooperative Extension Educator Workshop led by extension agents is currently being planned for November 2016.

A formative evaluation will be conducted in July, 2016, to guide implementation of the program in the second academic year. Training materials are being developed from presentations that have been given during the first year and from information gained from listening sessions and from experiential learning; the training materials will cover the following topics: (1) how to build and facilitate university local food teams, (2) what are campus market opportunities for local farmers, and (3) how do university food system supply chains work.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

The NC 10% Campaign worked with Extension agents to facilitate 12 Face-to-face meetings with the 6 LFA teams, totaling nearly 60 participants; and worked with food service companies to provide listening sessions for 25 food service managers and chefs. Topics covered at all meetings were benefits, goals, challenges, and opportunities of local foods on campus. Forty participants attended a University Local Food Summit where team members networked with their peers from the other counties/campuses. Over 500 students were directly engaged through educational booths, presentations, cooking demos, and campus garden days at the 6 universities during LFA student-led events during the 2015-2016 school year. Surveys of local food awareness have been conducted by LFA students at 2 of the 6 schools and over 200 student signatures have been gathered at a third school to encourage University Chancellor support to bring more local foods to campus. The two LFA campus surveys revealed that some students need for more information on where to find locally-grown foods and on how to cook fresh vegetables.

The following outcomes were articulated from evaluating the LFA teams:

Objective 1:

1. Student Learning

The NC 10% Campaign, with the help of Extension agents, mentored 6 student leaders. The student understanding of local food systems was assessed at the beginning and the end of the school year. The following areas of knowledge were self-assessed by the 6 student Ambassadors:

• I have a good understanding of the benefits to farmers when a university buys from local farmers.
• I am confident in my ability to explain to others the work of the Cooperative Extension in North Carolina.
• I have a good understanding of the benefits to students and other people in the university community when a university buys food from local farmers
• I am confident in my ability to explain to my peers the components of the food system.
• I feel confident in my ability to explain to students how the dining system operates at a university.
• I am confident in my ability to explain the challenges that universities face when trying to buy food from local sources.

The students were the most confident (before and after training) in their understanding of the benefits to farmers and to students/campus community when a university buys from a local farmer. The students were mostly confident in their understanding but may need some additional training on understanding the work of Cooperative Extension in North Carolina and on the components of the foods system. The biggest gains in student Ambassador understanding – following training – was confidence in explaining how the dining system operates at a university and the challenges that a university faces when trying buy food from local sources.

2. University Dining Listening Sessions

The NC 10% Campaign participated in two University Dining Food Service Listening Sessions, one with food service project partner Sodexo and one with food service partner Aramark.  The listening sessions revealed the following:

• Definition of “local” at each school varies and included most often “food grown…:
  • 50 miles from the school
  • 100 miles from the school
  • 250 miles from the school
  • In NC and neighboring states
• Benefits of local foods differs at each university and depends most highly on the university’s requirements of the food service company and the contract language between the university and the food service company
• Challenges to procuring local food included most often:
  • Lack of availability/volume
  • Seasonal availability of products during school session
  • Corporate purchasing policy/vendor compliance
  • Higher price for local
  • Not knowing how to buy local
• Opportunities to procuring local food included most often:
  • New season extension projects like food businesses that provide frozen local products
  • Increasing local food orders from approved vendors that focus on local foods, such as FreshPoint, the schools’ main fresh produce vendor that specializes in local foods
• Needs for procuring local food included most often:
  • Corporate-led training on how to source local foods/sustainability certificate
  • Means to more easily identify the local option in ordering systems and invoicing systems
  • List of NC farmers with GAP certification that have the volume to sell through current approved vendors
  • Guidelines of how local vendors fit into AASHE Stars and Real Food Challenge points systems

3. Cooperative Extension Educator Learning

Pre/post-training evaluations will be collected during the Cooperative Extension Educator Workshop planned for November 2016 to understand the Extension agent’s ability to identify structure, benefits, and challenges of a university system for procuring of local food.

Objective 2:

1. LFA Team Program Participation & Effectiveness

Of the 18 responses from the LFA Team end-of-year evaluation (including responses from Extension agents, University Dining, University Sustainability, staff/faculty, and farmers):

• 61% believed the LFA Program has a positive impact on increasing local food awareness on campus
• 61% believed the LFA Program has a positive impact on the student population on campus
• 71% believed that the LFA Program had a positive impact on the Sustainability Office
• 54% believed that the LFA Program had a positive impact on the University Dining Services
• 54% believed that the LFA Program had a positive impact on the community surrounding the campus
• 85% thought that the Face-to-face team meetings were helpful/extremely helpful in building communications for the LFA teams
• 92% thought that the University Local Food Summit was helpful/extremely helpful in building communications for the LFA teams
• 100% would like to continue participating with the LFA program

These results indicate to the program leaders that more follow-through is needed in the time between the face-to-face meetings; and the 100% feedback on continuing the program indicates that participants are engaged and prepared to work together in the next school year.

2. A formative evaluation will be conducted in July 2016 to guide program implementation in the 2016-2017 school year.  
3. Pre/post-training evaluations will be collected during the Extension Educator Workshop planned for November 2016 to understand the Extension agent’s ability to lead a collaborative and participatory process of building local food supply chains to university dining.

Objective 3:

School administrators have requested from their suppliers the dollar ($) amount of NC-grown produce purchased by the 6 LFA schools during the 2015-2016 school year. In general, identifying NC-grown purchases from distributor invoices is challenging for university food service administrators; therefore, tracking purchases from distributors and suppliers that focus specifically on local products may be the easiest way to quantify local food procurement, albeit at a limited capacity since this would not represent the total spent on local foods from all sources. To help identify more accurate local food numbers for the 2016-2017 school year, 2 of the 6 schools are considering running a robust evaluation of their school’s purchases via the Real Food Challenge Calculator. A promising note is that a small-scale farmer from one of the LFA teams has started the new vendor process with the food service company Sodexo. Sodexo serves 3 of the 6 LFA schools and 7 additional NC universities; once a farmer becomes an approved Sodexo vendor, they will be added to the approved vendor list for all 10 universities in NC served by Sodexo.

Collaborators: