This past year:
We consider how long our food chains are from field to fork, and how far our food travels to get to us. BU Dining Services prioritizes products that are locally produced or locally grown. Food produced closer to campus produces fewer transportation emissions, is fresher and supports local farmers and producers. We work directly with local farmers, ranchers, and processors. In fiscal year 2018, BU Dining Services purchased 22% local food from more than 100 independent producers.

See this map of our local producers from this past year.

We host a Farmers Market in Spring & Fall. The market supports a summer CSA and a variety of local producers and artisans. This past year, we featured a Mexican street corn cart to diversify our food offerings to meet campus preferences. Dining Services collaborated with the Sustainability Office to bring the Farmers Market to Sustainability Festival in September, with Sargent Choice to promote healthy seasonal recipes, and with the BU School of Gastronomy to promote sustainable food studies.

Looking forward:
Dining Services will transition to all local French fries and all local fresh whole and processed tomatoes. We are excited to bring in the following local vendors for these products:

Penobscott McCrum, Maine
Backyard Beauties, Maine
FatBoy Tomatoes, Massachussetts

We will utilize the Aggrag8 online tool to gain immediate access to locally sourced products available for purchase that comply with our advanced menu planning needs.

We want to bring back Chef demos for CSA boxes to promote the CSA membership to campus users. We want to further expand the diversity of market vendors with respect to products for sales and vendor backgrounds.

Local Food and the CSA

Each year we convert the George Sherman Union Plaza into the BU Farmer's Market complete with local vendors, entertainment and educational programs for the BU community. We also partner with Ward's Berry Farm and supply CSA Farmshare boxes full of fresh vegetables weekly during the summer for people to purchase. The CSA box gives members of the BU community an opportunity to enjoy vegetables that were recently picked by Ward's Berry Farm delivered right to campus for them to pick up.