02091 The Permacultured College’s Food System

I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while—just once in a while—there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the world 'wisdom' mentioned! — J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

John woke up late in his bedroom at Any State University. Fortunately, he had some bulgur wheat cooking overnight in the thermos on his night stand. The night before he brought it to a boil with the hot plate and filled the thermos, flavoring it with cinnamon and honey and some raisins. He added a dollop of cream from the school dairy on top and spooned it in as he scanned the incoming email and checked his FB.

Mary, on the other hand, woke up early. She went to eat at the dorm cafeteria where she found a lot of choices. There were whole wheat sourdough pancakes, made with flour ground on-campus from wheat provided by the Any State Wheat Growers Association. Other choices were sourdough toast, bagels, English muffins, and raisin muffins. Eggs and dairy ingredients were from the school’s own flocks and herds.

At the Egg Bar you could get eggs and omelets prepared “however you like ‘em.” There wasn’t any avocado, there were tomatoes and hot peppers from the school’s greenhouses and other campus buildings. The cereal section had a variety of choices made in the campus kitchens, using more of the donated wheat and corn. And then there were the steamed bulgur puddings and cooked oatmeal.

Mary was a vegetarian, of the lacto-ovo denomination, but the campus omnivores found plenty to eat. Breakfast sausage, ham, and bacon were on the menu, again from the school’s own production activities. Vegans had breakfast sausages made from seitan produced in the cafeteria kitchen from the local wheat. And Mary enjoyed her vegan sausages — made in the cafeteria kitchen — with her tomato, onion, cheese, and hot pepper omelet. There was an abundance of dried fruit, dehydrated on campus from the college orchards the previous fall.

There was so much good food to eat, she didn’t even notice that there wasn’t any tropical fruit available. The campus food system did make citrus and bananas available on occasion. They were not available year-around, since the campus was not in a citrus and banana growing areas. They had agreements with cooperatives in those growing areas, and a few times a year would bring citrus and bananas north for everyone to enjoy. They had the same kind of deal with cooperatives of coffee, chocolate, and tea growers.

When Mary finished her meal, she dropped her plate off at the washing window, removing any leftover food and scraping her plate over the compost tub, as required by cafeteria policy. She placed her cloth napkin in the napkin bin and the plate and cup in their appropriate racks for washing.

Depending on the volume of scraps and the needs, the food waste went to one of three places — the vermiculture project, compost piles, or the methane digesters.

The methane digesters provided gas for cooking, back-up heating of buildings, and some back-up electrical power generation. The amount of supplemental heat required these days was much less than was necessary in days of yore. When the school permaculture project began, one of the early projects was to cover every building on campus with a thick insulating foam. They covered this with stucco. The end result was to effectively insulated the buildings to R-50 on their walls and roofs. All of the campus windows had interior insulated window shutters installed. Each building acquired passive solar collection structures on their south faces. The roofs got solar collectors that heated both air and water. This changed the look of the campus considerably. Folks considered the new look to be extremely attractive.

Wind generators and a solar thermal system generated electricity. Backup generators burning biodiesel and methane were available if needed. LEDs replaced conventional light fixtures.

Each building had methane digesters in the basement, gravity fed by pipes from the rest rooms in the buildings above. Additional material, such as surplus food scraps, or animal manures, could be added outside of the pipeline system. Finished gas fueled building systems or went via pipes to a central storage area for distribution where needed. Additional digesters were co-located with the campus dairy, pig, and egg operations.

This diverse combination of site-located energy production and harvesting resources made it possible for the campus to completely disconnect from the natural gas and electrical grids. The sustainability of the campus food and energy systems were bragging points in the college’s publicity materials.

The campus vermiculture project provided high grade fertilizers for use in the potting soils of the campus greenhouses and container growing systems. Every campus build grew food all months of the year. Thus, the students could have green salads in January, even though there was snow on the ground outside, and the greens were locally and organically grown on campus.

ASU buildings were like buildings on any campus in the early 21st century. They were way bigger than they needed to be, so there was lots of room for growing things. Campus employees and student volunteers tended the plants. The container gardens provided easy snacks as students would often break off a leaf of lettuce or a rib of celery to nibble on while on their way to or from class. Some buildings had grape vines and strawberry beds, columns, and barrels. Those were popular when fruiting and little of that fruit made it to the cafeteria. This was part of the design. The school grew the vegetables to benefit the students and faculty anyway, and if they ate it out of hand on the spot — that was several less things for the campus food service to worry about (cf. picking, transporting, serving).

The greenhouses were modeled after the insulated greenhouses first used in northern China, whose concepts came to North America via Manitoba growers. They required no back-up heat during the winter, and produced a plethora of salad greens and pot herbs.

The campus compost system provided fertilizers for the school’s extensive garden system. Over time, nearly all of the annual outdoor garden beds had been replaced with edible plants, both annuals and perennials, and overall about 60% of the lawns on campus had been converted to food growing. The remaining lawn areas were pastures for the campus dairy goats and cattle. Weeder geese roamed freely. The livestock were quite tame and integrated well with the students. The school raised catfish and tilapia in ponds as well as in tanks in the campus greenhouses.

John got out of his biology class just as the noon bells began to peal across the campus from the central clock-tower. Not wanting to go across campus to his dorm cafeteria, he stopped at a food cart and picked up a lunch time burrito consisting of a tortilla made fresh that morning, beans and hamburger cooked fresh that morning, salsa made by the cafeteria, and cheese from the campus dairy. He got two deviled eggs as a side dish and a large whole wheat snickerdoodle cookie for dessert. He couldn’t believe how good the eggs were at this campus. He had never had such eggs in his entire life. That was pretty much true for the whole food system on campus. It boggled his mind but he didn’t worry too much about it as he chowed down on his lunch.

All of the beef on campus came from the ASU herd. When the school went into raising its own beef, alumni donated all of the original herd. John filled his mug with a nice hot steamy herb tea made with mints grown on campus. When he finished, he returned the plate to the cart. If there were leftovers, there was a bin for that on the cart too. He took his covered mug with him because it was, after all, his mug. And carrying it with him was as much a part of his day as anything else he did. This campus did not have refrigerated water fountains. It had water taps and students carried their own cups and mugs with them. Each water tap had a small supply of cups for visitors on campus. All students and faculty brought their own cups with them to campus.

If he had gone to the cafeteria, he would have found luncheon meats (made without nitrates at the campus food processing center), campus-made breads and cheeses, and a variety of soups that suited the season. There was a deviled ham or deviled roast spread made with leftovers from campus dinners, and yes, deviled vegetable spreads for the vegans. Mary and John were really fond of those spreads. They were filling and extremely savory. From the viewpoint of campus food service, they were an inexpensive (and popular) way to avoid food waste.

Dinner that night for the omnivores was pot roast, with root vegetable side dishes, a green salad from the campus food system, gravy, homemade breads and rolls, cornbread, and dried apple cobbler for dessert with real whipped cream. That cream was so sweet it didn’t require any additional sweetening when whipped, that’s the power of pastured dairy right there in real life. The vegans had seitan chops with an Asian-inspired peanut sauce, vegetable side dishes as the rest, as well as vegan breads and dessert.

This must be an expensive food service plan, you may be thinking. It actually turned out to be less expensive than the old way of doing things. ASU used to contract with an outside vendor. The meant it not only had to pay for the actual cost of delivering food to the students, it had to support a bloated corporate leadership bureaucracy. As a result, ASU prices paid by the students were high and it was pretty standard institutional-grade junk food. The vertical integration and systems thinking that went into the design of the campus food system ended up actually reducing the students’ cost since the energy operating costs declined significantly. Alumni donated all of the capital costs via a special capital appeal.

The students, faculty, and leadership of Any State University were happy with their permacultured campus food system. The State Board of Regents for Higher Education enjoys the reduced costs at the school and they intend to extend the “ASU Plan” statewide.