good morning welcome to changes the program on sustainability i'm susan gregory the coordinating producer of the show and today's host is celia white the healthy communities coordinator from vi you who's going to give us an overview of sustainability initiatives that will take place this year on campus good morning celia good morning and you have a guest on the phone because yes i'd like to welcome leah snowball in who is representing the campus food movement she was a past campus food movement coordinator at you when the group first began hi lisa good morning so to begin i'd like to explain what the campus with mint is it's started back in two thousand and eleven i believe and we're a group of stakeholders so anybody involved in food work on campus whether it's the food services manager students who are interested faculty who are farmers on the side or who have a specific passion or interest in food and we're a group that meets about once a month and works on any food related or sustainability related issue involving food on campus so you were  been coordinated for the first year can you explain how you became involved in food issues in your life or on campus yeah so personally i became in involved the food issues through my education of you i took i did a bachelor's degree in global studies and we focus on global global issues to do with the economy to do with environment the whole gamut and the one thing i really realized was the best way that i could effect positive change globally was on a local level and i really food issues really resonated with me because i think it covers a lot of different areas i think we can tackle economic issues environmental issues social issues through food and through growing food and sharing food so that's where i became personally interested through my global studies degree  and myself were in global studies together and i had a similar experience where after most global studies classes especially in first and second year students would leave feeling just very depressed because we're learning about all of the environmental and social extra analogies of our actions and how there are innumerable problems that we face in the world and that we contribute to and food became an outlet for me through my education  effect positive change or to have more control over how it impacts the world whether that be positively or negatively so you already covered this but i'm wondering why do you think food among other issues that people may get involved in is so important for our community we deal with food every day food is an essential part of our daily lives that we need to live when it survive so we're interacting with food every day of our lives it's a great opportunity to make great choices for ourselves and for our community and once you get your hands on the growing your own food it's  and just a healthier healthier life that's that's a beautiful answer i would say personally when i go home and garden it's like the highlight of my day and there's nothing quite as profound as standing in my bare feet in the dirt and i'm not sure if i mean that that relates also to connecting with nature and camping and exercise all of those things are really healthy for our bodies but there's also seemed the products of our labor it's really powerful and it's really inspiring and motivating to have so much control over such an important facet of our lives because as you said everybody eats it's it's something universal and it's generation of people coming up that don't just don't understand the work and environmental necessity for healthy soils that takes to produce our food and not only do people not necessarily understand that food is coming from the earth but i think there's also a lot of ignorance around how our food affects other people in the food chain or in the food system so when i use the term food system i'm talking about this really complex network or pathway that food travels through to get from the ground or from the compost to our plates and that includes producers distributors brokers there's  hundreds if not thousands of people who participate in each and every meal that we eat and it's very easy to be blind to all of these people and the consequences that we have on them by choosing certain foods over others or being involved in our food system in certain ways by participating with our own hands or by participating in relationships with people in our food system  the campus food movement only started a few years ago and i'm wondering if you can explain a little bit about the context of the use environment or via use participation in food systems issues before the campus food movement existed so the campus food movement started through there was you celia and and i and other gentleman jesse and we were all part of a group called solutions on campus which is an organ group of students that been involved on campus for several several years before we were involved and they've always focused on sustainability issues whether it was bottled water energy conservation or alternate transportation and we are a group that just the students come with ideas and different sustainability issues and whatever they want to pursue we pursue it so we chose to pursue some funding that was issues at the time that we were aware of at least i think there was little there was little pockets of different things that was happening on campus but nothing really uniting all those different there's different programs different projects different ideas so we really wanted to try and create a center for all of those different ideas and different people involved in different issues of food to come together and share these ideas and work together to affect some larger more larger bigger projects on campus and there's actually many professors and staff on campus that are farmers or that are that are somehow involved in food sustainability projects but all of these projects were very compartmentalized people have used the metaphor of silos so there's amazing projects happening but no umbrella unification process and so when jesse and i first were delving into this project of creating the campus food movement our vision was to unite these projects so the campus food movement started as a national initiative a national pilot project and the funding came from meal exchange which is a national youth led organization that first began as a project that took leftover food from cafeterias unused food and delivered it to food banks or to students in need who couldn't otherwise afford it and meal exchange has since transformed into a more holistic organization that approaches food sustainability access to food and food literacy and it's all run by students and young adults across canada and the other funding our organization is this year youth coalition and this year you the coalition works more broadly in sustainability related topics and food is is a large portion of that so these two organizations banded together and funded a project known as the campus food systems project and one aspect of that so there is there's a lot of acronyms here coming up so the campus food systems project is c s and one aspect is campus food strategy groups c f s g so you applied to be one of the campus food strategy groups and in the first pilot project year meal exchange and this year youth coalition selected five universities across canada and many more than five applied so via you was extremely fortunate to be selected and we were selected because of the context of our campus because there was so much already happening and a demonstrated need in a demonstrated interest in food sustainability and yet a great lack of solidarity or great lack of a unified vision so we had an ideal context to be part of this program and within the first year our strategy group so that the members the stakeholders in the food system the members that all came together once a month to sit down to discuss what we wanted to happen to y were our successes what were our greatest obstacles we decided that all of these acronyms were far too complicated so we would call ourselves the campus food movement which is why it's now the c f m instead of the c so since then five more universities across canada have been selected and one i believe has dropped out so there's there's a consortium of nine universities across canada that work directly with meal exchange and this year  coalition and there is even more campuses that work in directly with these projects whether it be through developing curriculum to relate to food sustainability or working in strategy groups that focus on access to food food literacy community food centers so via you by participating in this project has basically this really powerful network at our fingertips of student leaders across canada food services managers across canada and resources where people have have already invented the wheel of how to do certain projects and we simply learn from them and develop our own initiatives to share back coming back to  u i'm wondering when you think of back to your experience as a coordinator what were some of the biggest successes that you experienced in the campus food movement i think some of the biggest successes was just we we had such a great response from the staff and students at the i you we had twenty ten to twenty people coming to each meeting excited with different ideas and wanting to participate and wanting to work together and just to create that dialogue and to start to get people sharing ideas on projects people or had the same ideas for projects but and we're doing them in little bits in different ways but when you brought them together it made such such a more powerful powerful dogs example when you can when you can have more people working together towards a common goal so i think just getting that dialogue started was one of our great successes for sure and one example that comes to mind for me in building these bridges or connecting these silos was formalizing their relationship between horticulture and  arts are no sorry aquaponics and colin are it's so vi you have this amazing aquaponics greenhouse at the very top of campus and if anyone has not visited it i would highly encourage people to do so it's absolutely beautiful and it's an amazing example of what can be grown using aquaponics systems and i hope onyx systems are using fish instead of soil to grow food or plants so in the so called products green house on campus we're growing a lot of greens and herbes and it was simply used as research and the campus food movement said why not sell these this food these greens and herbes to colin arts and then feed this food grown directly on campus to students so when it was it was extremely effective to sit down as a group with these various stakeholders because everybody brought to the table a different perspective and a different knowledge base to say why don't we link up these formerly compartmentalized issues and and think bigger so we were able to connect with cullen arts and now weekly herb's and greens are delivered from the top of the campus to the bottom of campus where the cafeterias and the greens are used in the colony arts program and that are sold in the cafeteria within our meals which is pretty cool like it's a simple project and it's a very simple idea but it has such an enormous effect in terms of health benefits in terms of reducing greenhouse gas use because it's grown right on campus and in terms of giving students the opportunity to have tangible change on campus so these the students arts programs are seen the results of their own work being consumed by students right next to them which is pretty cool so often when we read school we were just we're writing our reports for doing our homework we're doing our projects but we don't see what they're up that application to be outside of our own learning out of our own classroom but to actually have to witness the things you're working on in school actually being used outside of the process room is is a great learning is a great learning lessons a great opportunity to see that it's things that you're learning to do actually at application outside the classroom no i'd like to talk a bit more about the context of applied applied learning or experiential learning in the bet but first suzanne here is going to interlude with some upcoming community event thinks syria first of all will remind our listeners that you're listening to c h o y i want to one point seven f m your campus and community station based in downtown and imo but heard wherever there's an internet connection at c h l wired dot ca where we stream live and  podcast and i'll have the podcast of today's show up as soon as i can so that if you missed any part of the show you'll be able to listen to the whole thing at your convenience and we do have some though interesting the enough the food related events coming up this weekend actually saturday august thirtieth from ten am to two pm and this actually happens every saturday and till the thanksgiving weekend i didn't know this but there is a farmer's market and honeymoon bay and they call it the honeymoon bay outdoor market it's a weekly producer's market meaning as with all farmers markets that they grow harvest bakes so photograph paint pickle craft etc everything that's available there for sale so it's crafts as well as food but there's an interesting element to this is well in that they say what started eight years ago as a collection of tents has grown which is the usual farmer's market right has grown into a frontier town a collection of themed shelters made from recycled materials this i have to see if it's sounds really interesting it takes place at the honeymoon bay coffee mill and community garden on south shore road in honeymoon bay and of course honeymoon bay is on the side sure of co n lake so you go out to the town of lake cowichan and then keep going along the south shore of the lake for more information that you can email via honeymooners at shaw dot c and that is a marvelous place to go actually if we've got a nice labor day weekend that's a really good trip to make but there will be further saturdays as well because another thing that's happening saturday august thirtieth and that's just this saturday is the lighthouse country annual fall fair so that's in the other direction from now on imo here that takes place said a day aug thirtieth ten am to four pm at the bowl hornby a community club which as at two forty lyons way and quality and it will feature home art such as painting wine making canning baking floral vegies hobbies sewing and craft woodworking and much more there's something for all ages admission is five dollars for adults and it's free for children and for more information on that you can check triple w dot community club dot ca a nd finally for the whole labor day weekend port alberni is going to be hosting its annual salmon festival so that's friday the twenty ninth right through monday september first and it will feature things such us world famous barbecue salmon and also a bavarian garden rotaries having a ten thousand dollar raffle there will be a celebrity dunk tank use sorta get the picture there's lots more and this will all take place at clue tessy haven marina which is at fifty one zero four river road in port alberni and for more information you can check salmon festival dot c  the program that you were listening to on c h o i want to one point seven f m is changes and today celio white who is the healthy communities coordinator from vi you is talking about food and all of the really fascinating food initiatives that have taken place at vi you over the last few years there was something that you wanted to continue with yes so we were leo was mentioning the impact for students in experiential learning and in incorporating tangible food related projects in their curriculum or in their in their research so another great success that we experienced in the first couple of years was curriculum development or also known as applied student research a s r so we approached different professors and faculties who had formerly been interested in food issues or had already made space in their classes in their curriculum to study and research food systems and food sustainability and we suggested more tangible projects so one one professor imogene lim who is quite the expertise on food issues on campus she works in the anthropology department she offered to create an entire class around community based learning in food systems so this means that instead of just reading from books or reading papers that only your professor ever reads students are able to take more more of an impactful role in their learning so the outcome is tangibly seen on campus or in the community so in the early phase of the class we took field trips to local farms we volunteered on the farms we visited then i'm a food share and i'm a community kitchens and we were able to gain more of a holistic understanding of what not imo is food system looks like and what what the culture of food is in and imo so with that basic understanding students then divided into groups or took on solo projects of food related research projects or community based projects so some students took on projects that included writing recipe books for students and residences so these recipes included food that was inexpensive and accessible to students that they would be able to cook in their limited kitchens in residences another student made a promotional video about the campus food movement that we have used ever since to help people understand what it is that we do because sometimes it can be confusing and complex another group of students wrote a survey that has since actually been used vi you to ask students what do they actually want out of their food system do they care about certification such as organic  fairtrade do they care about animal welfare are they willing to pay more for certain food in order to in order to have the the guarantee that food is sourced locally or sources are sourced humanely so these impacts have reverberated quite quite immensely over the over the years so this one survey that students made wasn't able to be distributed within the  semester that the class ran but in the next year it was taken up by use survey expert and was distributed by and celery services and the results were really exciting so we asked students how much more they'd be willing to pay for certain standards and what standards they were so specifically interested in and students were most interested in healthy food options followed very closely by locally sourced food options so from coming from vancouver island and then a high third was actually sustainable seafood and that's a little unusual compared to other campuses but i think it's because we have such a prominent seafood culture here and obviously it's a it's a big part of our lifestyles and our environment being so close to the ocean so this data and this evidence will now inform via use purchasing manager and food services manager to change our procurement policies to respond to the student desire and obviously as as is the same at universities all across canada and i'm sure all across the world price is the number one concern for students and we can't get around that so m as via you help the community communities coordinator is to come up with innovative and creative ways to respond to these needs and desires without actually raising the price in the cafeteria so we'll get into that a little bit more later but framing back to the question that i asked these applied student research projects were some of the biggest successes that we saw on campus among creating a culture of of food activism on campus and creating a solid group of stakeholders that are invested and interested in food issues what impresses me enormously about all of that is that it was not only multi disciplinary all of the things that were done but also then ended up involving the campus administration on the purchasing so it's it has permeated everything it seems a lot maybe everything but several layers of the campus and a lot of different it connects to it seems to connect to several different possible programs and subject areas yeah and actually the interdisciplinary nature of it i see as being very important because it's easy to get entrenched or insulated in one discipline i even experience because i was i went through the global studies in anthropology streams from my undergrad i took an elective in my last year in another discipline and i had a really difficult time writing papers for that specific style and it was it was a refresher for me to be reminded of how entrenched i had become in my own way of thinking in this discipline that i'd been taught of how to think and how to see the world so it's so valuable for students to participate in these projects where they can interact with students from other disciplines and think outside of the box of their one faculty in their one discipline as well as participate in something that is actually relevant and useful to the campus or to the community or to the country or to the food that they're eating so when it's when it's useful it encourages students to transcend jargon transcend a discipline and transcend  limited way of thinking so as someone who's transitioned in and out of the campus food movement you were you started the project on campus and you've since graduated from via you and graduated as a coordinator do you think that projects like the campus food movement have potential to make systems change on campus to have like real long term effects rather than just superficial changes absolutely i think he said because it wasn't just students the students come and go from a campus but it was the faculty it was  the administration it there was so many layers of people involved in this project and are ongoing can continue to evolve in this project one person i'd like to acknowledge that you have to help me with last name was melissa townsend towns and yes  from the food services department she was very involved very active and very excited about this project and and she really welcomed she had a very large workload she really welcomed the opportunity to get input from students and from faculty to work collaboratively with these people to come up with new ideas for our cafeteria and our food system on campus so to have someone like that involved she's  on to be ongoing involved and and working to make improvements continuously and to make changes that the students want to see i think absolutely that has just been changing impact you can't go back from that you know do you get excited and there's momentum and it just keeps going and it's really great to see and it's really interesting actually to it's interesting and so inspiring to work with  administration and the staff and the faculty who are really supportive of these projects because in speaking to other universities across canada some of the biggest barriers to making in change on campus is that the administration are not interested or not supportive or don't have the time and that is not the case that you it's it's really rewarding to have the job that i do and to work with really high administration from the the director of and celery services to the vice president academic to the food services manager to the purchasing manager and all of these people participate with great motivation and great passion in the campus food movement and i see it as a symbiotic relationship where the students students are enormous drivers of social change universities are an ideal environment for for creating and creating really impactful relevant change in the world because there's lots of bright young passionate people who are all gathered in one place we're learning we're worse stretching our horizons and we have resources at our fingertips to to make real change happen we're not dispersed in our various careers we haven't lost momentum in our passions and so we have the energy and we and we also well in theory maybe not in reality have the time like i often would sacrifice my homework to work on these projects that i was really passionate about because i didn't really have the time but i made the time  and the relationships that we hold with administration these individuals who don't have the time because they're absolutely small in their every day job they benefit from the time and passion that we provide and we benefit from their support and their willingness to adapt and to create real systems change so most of townsend is an amazing example she's use food services manager so she controls use food services and she is willing every single day to adapt to to this new culture of of the national food movement that's really lovely to  think something like the cafeteria thinks of as a kind of institutional thing actually is open to having new ideas come in the local food that's actually produce the faculty is directly involved with the food purchased in the food production at our university and the students are directly involved and makes a lot probably easier than other camps of what some of the other groups they had a really hard time because they were working with larger corporations that come in to run their cafeteria and so there was more they were much more financially and french that way  corporations had a lot more control and their bottom line was friends and not necessarily responding to the student community and their desires so we are really fortunate that we have such a excellent take over from the very beginning that really worked with the corner sparkman and the community the cat food with meant to see these changes come about so it was a really wonderful opportunity for us you i'd like to cite some other universities that have seen amazing impact from student involvement so the first strategy group and creating a curriculum for students to apply their learning to food systems change and identifying where the greatest opportunities were for creating tension will outcomes to create a more sustainable and healthy food system and in one of their classes they developed and devoted the entire curriculum to work on becoming certified as an entire university in a sustainable seafood standard a sustainable seafood certification so within that class they they researched all of the sort of occasions that existed what they meant how legitimate they were how it would impact the campus and what the steps were to becoming certified as an institutional body or as a university so mcgill has since because of that course because of that research has since become certified with the marines to re and that means that a certain percentage of their their procurement of seafood is rated very sustainably is rated very highly by marine storage ship certification and following on that same path u created an entire course to do the same thing and they chose the certification that comes out of the vancouver aquarium it's it's totally lost me right now what it's called ocean  vacation and now u b c as an entire institution is certified with ocean wise and their procurement of seafood is legitimately and standard legitimately sustainable in a standardized and uniform practice so the power of these simple student research projects is incredible and unprecedented as well these sort of things don't often happen in undergrad settings and they don't often happen in history where students are actually able to take such control and have such influence over the institutional oper operations of a university where not only students were change makers and were not only passive learners were were we're active formers of water education looks like and what our world looks like and i think that's really powerful so my vision is to stand on the shoulders of of these other universities that have had such great experiences and such great impact and not to reinvent the wheel but to learn and learn from them and use their resources and i'd love to see you develop an entire course around becoming sustainably seafood certified and i've also been approached by an administrator via you who has suggested that you become fair trade certified so a research course could look at what does that actually mean to be certified as an institution by fair trade canada does it mean that all of our purchases must be fair trade from our clothing to our food to our textbooks or does it mean that a certain percentage must be or does it simply mean that we've been trained and make an effort to purchase fair trade to so all of these research questions can be integrated into curriculum and the result can be following the example of these other institutions across canada so i'd like to talk a little bit about my job and how it originated out of the campus food movement so i graduated with a little over a year ago from undergrad at value and global studies and at their apology and i was working alongside other students like and just alexander who were we were the the inaugural team of the campus wouldn't have meant and once my role as a student coordinator ended i wanted to continue working in food sustainability but as i'm sure many listeners are aware it's difficult to find a relevant job after graduating in social sciences if not after graduating from anything in undergrad i don't think that we should lie to ourselves about the the availability jobs for undergrad science students even so i sat down after being asked incessantly what i wanted to do with my life and i finally decided to just write out what my dream job would look like and i wrote that i wanted to continue working in my community i wanted to continue working in food systems work i wanted work that had ten jubal outcomes that i felt really positive about that reflected my own personal values and basically it's a job that looks very much like what i'm doing now and an opportunity arose to apply for a grant to through the vancouver foundation actually which is a philanthropic organization that donates money to various projects of social change and a large stream of their funding goes into food work so i applied i applied for this funding in partnership with you n b c university of northern british columbia and prince george and a fellow recent graduate and i decided to both create positions of the same type at you n b c and via you and we were successful in getting the funding however it was a grant that required fifty percent matching funds so we both approached our respective schools to ask for an additional fifty percent of funding and you n b c interview you said absolutely that they saw such relevance such success significance and such importance in these positions in this work that they would be more than happy to fund these positions so my work started in november and my roles include supporting the continuing efforts of the campus food movement and also taking more of an institutional perspective on this work so where is the campus food movement has become more invested in getting student engagement off the ground in running celebrate tory food events in connecting with our community such as connecting with loaves and fishes food bank and i'm a community kitchens and i'm a food share my work will be and is focusing on institutional change so i'm helping to write sustainable purchasing policies for the cafeteria and that means i'm doing a lot of research on how other universities are writing these sustainable purchasing policies on defining terms like what does it what does local actually mean is local really important what are our priorities between saving students money or pain more for certain standards or prioritizing things like fair trade or local or sustainable seafood where do all of these things fall into place in the bigger picture of accessibility for food so students are actually able to afford to eat but also afford to eat healthy and sustainably sourced foods and another big portion of my job is as i mentioned before finding creative ways to respond to student needs so the research that i did is largely based off the student survey that was run the survey that asked students what they cared about what they wanted out of their food system and the results were quite inspiring lean that students are interested in food sustainability but need food to be affordable and healthy so i spend a lot of time talking to other universities across canada sometimes though i've heard the word used called champion so there's these champions that exist around the world and and across canada of people who have had great success in creating change food systems change one such person is that ryerson university her name is josh  she is the executive chef at ryerson and the assistant to the food services manager and she is so incredible it's it's inspiring simply to be in her presence i i had the opportunity to speak with her actually last week i was in toronto for a food conference and she was there presenting on what she called a good food story so the successes that she's had on campus in increasing the percentage of locally in sustainably sourced food in the cafeteria so i learn from people like this and then i take their ideas and i take their resources and i implement them on campus so some of the projects that i'm starting are i'm helping to run a farmer's market on campus the farmer's market was started by craig evans who is a farmer and an employee  he started running a pilot project farmers market last year to see how successful it would be and there was an overwhelming response of people being really supportive of it obviously it's farmers markets are are just happy places to be people are drawn into them people want to participate people want to eat the food that looks so amazing if it's sitting right on their campus and it's and it's so excessive and beautiful and we're going to be running a farmer's market now twice a week  tuesdays and thursdays between eleven and one we haven't decided the exact location but were suggesting that it's going to be near the cafeteria and in a central location on campus and one of my ideas to respond to this need greater access to affordable food was to encourage farmers who participate in the v a use farmer's market to sell what we call seconds so seconds or are types of food that don't look very nice maybe they're a little bit old maybe there are weirdly shaped they can be a little bit grotesque but they're still entirely edible and this relates back to issues of food waste so i don't know the exact percentage but it's exorbitant i think i'm sure it's above fifty percent of food is a wasted before it ever reaches our plates and then even more so after it leaves our plates what we don't eat or what we we throw out so a lot of this food is thrown out because it doesn't look nice because grocery stores won't accept it if the carrot isn't completely uniform and looking like exactly all of the other carrots on the shelf so if we can sell these seconds at the view you farmers market they're going to be at a very reduced price and not only is that going to increase the accessibility to affordable food it will also give farmers the opportunity to make money to make profit off of these types of fruits and vegetables that wouldn't otherwise have been sold so these are the types of projects that i'm constantly challenge to come up with in my job which is really exciting i love what i do it's it's a creative position and it's a rewarding position because no matter who i'm meeting with people are always happy to be talking about food sustainability and they're they're always happy about the projects that we're working on together another project is starting to food bank on campus so most universities across canada actually have food banks because students often are in great need of money that they do not necessarily have access to there are grants available there are scholarships available but at certain times in the year grant money runs out students can't necessarily be expected to juggle both job and work sorry both job and school and students need to eat in order to perform on campus in their in their pedagogical activities so food banks come in really handy and via you doesn't have one so we've partnered with and imo loaves and fishes to explore what that might look like and we're currently looking for a physical space on campus to house a food bank to increase access to free food for students and my vision is to not just stop at the idea of a food bank but to think more holistically and more broadly in terms of something called a community food center so research has shown that food banks are not effective in solving issues of poverty or in fall or in solving issues of food access they are simply a bandaid they can often entrench people into deeper systems of poverty and dependency so projects like community food centers on the other hand offer a more holistic approach is to to access to food so they would offer cooking classes for people so that people can understand more how to use their food how to cook on a budget where to find healthy and affordable foods they would offer classes to learn how to garden so people can have more control over growing their own affordable foods and that would be in partnership with a food bank so we're tackling many issues at once instead of just offering a bandaid so all of these visions are slowly coming into fruition on campus and it's it's an amazing and inspiring time to be working at b y u because there's so much momentum there's so much traction with people's interest in these projects and there's so many resources at hand in terms of administration offering their support students offering their time and energy and the funding being being offered for my position to to look strictly at how to make a more healthy and sustainable food system on campus so it's a great time to be and then i'm going it's a great time to be y my work will be connected to this radio program about once a month and i'm helping to run an educational campaign on campus because a lot of the food purchased by the coen ari sorry by the cafeteria is locally sourced and is sustainably sourced but people are not aware of this because we don't do a good job promoting it for example all of the chicken in the cafeteria comes from vancouver island farms but we've never advertise this so people don't realize so we're going to be running a big educational campaign that identifies what was already doing well that promotes the new programs that are running such as the farmer's market and a new green club on campus that started so when i come into the radio station once a month i will be talking about the various themes of this educational campaign so the september theme is explaining how to use the cafeteria so i'll be talking about the programs that existed of yeah you when when it's the best time to buy cheap meals on campus so what are the best deals that exist where can you find free food because there is a lot of free  exists on campus you just have to know where to get it and how to find the healthiest and most affordable options so that's actually next week and i'll be speaking with melissa townsend the food services manager so to wrap  up i'm wondering if you can speak at all to why the listeners out there should care about food sustainability maybe you can talk about why you care about it why why is it an important part of your life and if it's not already an important part of the listener's lives why should it be like we touched on so much today already food food is a part of everyone's everyone's lives and it's it's such a global a globally entrenched system so where our food comes from whether it's flying across the world who is growing it how it's being distributed the greenhouse gas emissions the cost there's there's so many ways that food is affects so many facets of our lives and it's such an easy i think it's an easy way to be involved in our global community it's an it's a way that everyone can find opportunity to make positive change so whether it's going to a local farmer's market and supreme local farmers in supporting our local economy whether it's growing your own food in your backyard so that your kids can see how a tomato plant grows and can understand the importance of healthy soils in order to produce food i think there's so much opportunity for people to really have a positive impact in their own lives and in the lives of others through food and and it's a wonderful experience to to share food like you said a farmer's market is a beautiful place to be there everyone is smiling at a farmer's market even if you're standing in line for twenty minutes for tomatoes which often happens because they're really good  maybe it's there's not only is it about a positive impact in the world but it's also about healthy eating good healthy nutritious food that could fuel your fuel your body to to be of the a healthy happy person in your life it's it's powerful to be involved in something as simple and also as complex as food because it's simple in that we eat it and it dramatically affects our body and how we feel and we have in theory control over that we don't necessarily always have control in terms of what we have access to or what's available to us or what we can afford but that's something that our world is working on and that we each as individuals can work towards having more food sovereignty and it's it's powerful also in that it's complex so when we vote with our dollars when we interact with a farmer when we learn about the complexity of what makes help you so oil and the countless living organisms that live in our soil and that need organic farming practices to thrive in to produce thriving flourishing plants to to support our environment and to support our bodies there's there's so many different levels that we can participate in the food that we eat and in the food system so that whatever capacity a person has is the capacity they can perform at if it's just cooking well or if it's something as in depth and involved as as volunteering with the campus food movement and working on a campus food bank and and research team food sustainability there's there's so many ways to get involved in there they're all important and they're all powerful and i think a big part of it is taking back control of our food right now there's large corporations around the world they have they're taking over control of our food system they control what's being grown what varieties are available to us how it gets to us the quality and and what don't control our food we're we're handing over our light our lives to these corporations to feed us and i think it's very important that we start taking back some that control and make sure that we can take care of ourselves without without these corporations dictating to us  when and and what state we are giving our food i learned you know what i'm going to say this even though i can't remember the exact number but at this conference i was out in toronto somewhere between ten thousand and thirty thousand i can't remember i learned there were somewhere between ten thousand and thirty thousand varieties of corn that exist that are currently propagated and that was such a shocking reminder of how much control these these massive businesses have over our food system not only in terms of what we eat but in terms of what we understand in terms of what we're privy to know so we walk into the grocery store and there's one or two varieties of corn and cucumber as are all green and long and yet you go to the farmer's market and there's lemon cucumber is which is like my ultimate favorite snack because it looks like a lemon and it tastes like a cucumber and it's the best and having more control over what we know when what we can eat and the diversity of the food on our plates is is maybe one of the most important things that we can do in our lives so i think that brings us to the end of the hour thank you so much for calling in on your holiday it was it was lovely to speak with you and and i'm looking forward to this upcoming year of of more food work and thank you so much for having me and thank you so much for the wonderful work you're doing if you you know it it's really great to see that ongoing work you're doing and the passion that you bring to it and you very lucky to have you and  and thank you celia vi you healthy communities coordinator we'll see you again next week with some tips on how to use the cafeteria how to navigate the good deals that sounds like a really great idea and that's our show changes as heard every tuesday morning at eleven here on c h l white check us out on facebook and on behalf of our production team thanks so much for joining us