Middlebury

 

Food Facts

  • 20% of food is sourced from Vermont
  • Fair-trade coffee is served in dining halls
  • We compost 300 tons of food each year!
  • Middlebury belongs to the Terra Madre slow food network
  • 47 local vendors provide food to Middlebury

Student Involvement & Learning Opportunities

Dinning Services works with faculty and students to further learning opportunities related to food. This collaboration includes working with the organic farm and assisting in a project to map the distance food travels to reach Middlebury dining halls.

Since 2003 Dining Services has worked with the Middlebury College Organic Farm. This student-initiated garden sells small quantities of freshly harvested produce throughout the growing months to Dining Services, who continue their operations for the renowned Language Schools offered at Middlebury throughout the summer.

Dinning Service’s has partnered with Champlain Orchards to explore the use of greenhouses to provide local fruits and vegetables during winter months, and offer students a resource for research opportunities.

Linking academics to operations, Dining Services worked with students and faculty to map the distance food travels from farm to plate. Using Google Earth, this group mapped the ingredients of specific Middlebury meals, including the chicken parmesan dinner.

Other classroom links to food occur in the Environmental Studies Senior Seminar (ES 401) projects. Recent projects focusing on locally grown food include:

  • Eating Local in Addison County: A Cookbook and Directory
  • Local Food and the Cornwall Elementary School
  • Got Local? The State of Local Food Production and Distribution in Addison County
  • A Multimedia Production and Economic Analysis in Support of Local Foods for Institutions

In addition, the posters in the dining halls that showcase Vermont-based farms and food manufacturing sites were developed by students in a 2002 ES 401 seminar.