University of California, Santa Barbara
IN-1: Innovation 1

University of California, Santa Barbara requested that AASHE Staff correct a mistake in this reporting field for the reason specified below.

Previous Value: Innovating partnership In academic year 2005/2006, Residential Dinning Services (RDS) developed a mission statement emphasizing a long-term goal of expanding local, organic produce to 25-50% of their purchases. In support of these goals, Willie Brown, the Executive Director of Housing and Dining Services, increased the RDS food budget specifically to increase purchases of sustainable and organic produce. However, RDS faced the main challenge of finding a supplier that could meet both RDS’s goals for sustainability and the requirements dictated by the infrastructure, budget, and regulations at the University. RDS first explored sourcing directly from local farmers and discovered that information about local farmers was difficult to find. In 2005, the Santa Barbara Certified Farmers Market manager, along with a local farmer, approached RDS to see if RDS could begin purchasing more local produce from the Farmers Market. Several meetings later, both parties agreed that there was not a proper system in place that would make the relationship successful. This highlighted a main challenge for RDS; our current system of purchasing did not support ordering from multiple small vendors. Farmers Direct Produce (FDP), a successful local food hub first established in 2006, was a result of support by RDS, initiated by student activism and supported by the creation of the sustainability goals of UC and UCSB food systems. “The most important ingredient was the commitment of the FDP owners and the RDS staff to creating an alternative to the mainstream agro-food systems. RDS cultivated an unconventional business relationship with FDP: flexible deadlines, personal relations, and an understanding of the constraints and needs of farmers. This relationship has been essential for the success of RDS in increasing the sustainability of their produce purchases" (David Cleveland, Balancing on a Planet: The Future of Food and Agriculture). With this partnership in place, RDS launched a pilot program in one of the RDS dining commons, aimed at creating a completely sustainable salad bar at one of the four dining commons. FDP supplied sustainable produce, and within a year, RDS was placing regular orders with FDP. The Director of RDS established weekly quotas for sustainable and organic produce for each of the dining commons to be purchased through Farmers Direct Produce. We found that the amount of product we were buying was getting us close to the limit for purchasing without an openly bid contract. A "Sole Source" agreement was developed in Fall 2012. RFP's specifications that could be used for competitive bidding were finalized June 2013. In 2012-13 FDP was sold and underwent a name change, and it is now doing business as Harvest Santa Barbara. There have been no changes in the operations. Our relationship continues to thrive, and we are currently trying to reach a 38% sustainable produce goal this year. In forming this partnership and transforming our dinning commons, RDS had to overcome some main challenges: 1. One of the main challenges was finding a supplier that could meet both RDS’s goals for sustainability and the requirements dictated by the infrastructure, budget, and regulations at the University. RDS first explored sourcing directly from local farmers but discovered that information about them was difficult to find. 2. Another main challenge in the beginning was our perception that local produce was often more expensive than produce purchased from large distributors and, therefore, beyond our budget. 3. Other challenges: Turnover in managers, produce that was not local, high prices, delivery scheduling problems, and a lack of infrastructure for delivering to RDS. 4. RDS was also concerned that students might not value local, organic, sustainable produce, and therefore not approve of the increase in the food portion of their bills. For example, some students complained when smaller, local apples replaced the larger ones they were used to, even though the local ones had more flavor, and students could eat as many as they wanted.

Explanation: While the description of the program originally submitted is accurate, we would like to revise it to give proper credit to the professor and students on our campus who have done extensive work documenting how the partnership between local suppliers and UCSB residential Dinning services was formed.