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This weekend, the 35th annual NOFA- VT Winter Conference will be taking place at UVM. The theme for this year is, “Beyond Borders: Our Role in the Global Food System.” The NOFA-VT Conferences focus on the local food system on an individual to state scale, but with the theme this year, we can expect see workshops and discussions pushing conference guests to take lessons from a global scale.

A few sessions stand out as a link between Vermont and the global food system. On Saturday, the workshop “The Milk with Dignity Program: Worker-Driven Social Responsibility” will give insight into the work being done in Vermont to ensure protected rights for farmers and farm workers in the dairy industry. Representatives from Migrant Justice and the Milk with Dignity Standards Council will be speaking to this. On Sunday, the workshop “Global Food, Local Food: Stories and Crops from Vermont Resettled Refugee Farmers” will share some stories of Refugees who have started farming since moving to Vermont. These are just a few of the many perspectives to be shared. 

To explore more of the global food system, two distinguished guests will be presenting as Keynote speakers, Dr. Fernando Funes Monzote and Dr. Vandana Shiva. From Cuba and India respectively, Monzote and Shiva will be speaking about their work in sustainable agriculture. Linked above are their conference bio’s, illustrating some of their groundbreaking work.

As always, the NOFA conference provides a space for those interested in organic food and a thriving local food system to come together and share ideas. The weekend will be filled with workshops, roundtable discussions and presentations that celebrate the work of organic producers and consumers.

Eva Sherman, UVM Dining Sustainability Intern

In mid-June, UVM hosted the 5th Annual UVM Food Systems Summit, engaging attendees in conversations regarding “what makes food good?” including topics of food security, GMO’s and food waste. From the UVM Dining perspective, that last topic was where we turned our focus. While UVM has been donating edible food and composting the rest for years, this year’s event was a chance to take a closer look at operations and audience engagement.

With the topic of wasted food growing in local and national conversations, there was a chance for the Summit to not only feature panels as part of the agenda, but to invite the attendees to participate in a zero food waste event.  What better group than those passionate about creating healthy food systems could we aim for a “zero food waste” event?

The term “zero food waste” does not mean that there is no crumb of food discarded at the end of the day. Rather by following the tiers of the Food Recovery Hierarchy from the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, food is channeled to alternate end uses before being composted. Before the start of the Food Summit, we adapted the Food Recovery Hierarchy to illustrate the specific steps being taken at each level to reduce the food waste at this event. This graphic was displayed at the Summit to educate attendees about how the food waste accumulated at the Summit was being managed.

When thinking about excess food, turning to compost seems like the most sustainable option. However, it is important to prioritize reducing the need for composting as an end use and to capture the food that was intended for consumption to more productive channels. The highest priority on the Food Recovery Hierarchy is source reduction. This entails minimizing the potential of having excess food and can be done in a variety of ways. For the UVM Food Systems Summit, source reduction was made possible by the intentional menu planning and ingredient sourcing by the UVM dining chefs.

“The menu for this event included many high quality, locally sourced ingredients that we did not want to see going into the compost. By choosing ingredients that could be easily adapted into future meals, we were able to greatly reduce the potential for food waste,” said Sarah Langan, Executive Chef.

Chefs Sarah, Steve and Adam carefully minimizing and repurposing trim waste. The strawberry tops were used to infuse a lemonade and turnip peels were turned into crisps and offered as a salad topping.

The Summit attendees were also informed of the zero food waste efforts through real time data reporting at the end of lunch on both days. Conference attendees were given updates on the amount of food being repurposed into other conference meals, donated where possible, fed to chickens on UVM’s Catamount Farm, and composted. Providing updates during meal time was an intentional way to encourage attendees to be mindful to avoid creating food waste when serving themselves and share credit for collectively working to prevent wasted food.

After source reduction, the Food Recovery Hierarchy aims to channel the already produced food to those who need it. All excess food items that were prepared, but did not leave the kitchen for the event, were either repurposed for other meals at the Davis Center Marketplace or donated to the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf. All vegetable and grain prep waste was donated to the UVM Catamount Educational Farm as feed for chickens. The last step before composting is industrial uses, for example sending out used cooking oil to be turned into biofuel.

Bins of fruit, vegetable, and grain scraps that were collected and donated to the Catamount Farm for chicken feed. 

Food scraps that could not be channeled into the top tiers of the hierarchy were composted. At UVM all compost is collected, weighed and sent to Green Mountain Compost. During the Food Systems Summit, the weighing of the compost happened a few different times in order to measure how much was being composted from prep waste in the kitchen to scraped plates and excess from the buffet line. The catering team devoted time to separately weigh the scraped plate and buffet compost after breakfast and lunch both days.

Chris Charron of UVM Catering made note of the difference. “In my opinion, the amount of food waste after the meals at this Summit was significantly smaller than what we would usually have at an event of this size. I would say there was around 75% less scraped plate waste and around 50% less buffet excess going into the compost bins.” An additional aspect to prevent waste from the event was a choice to use durable cutlery rather than compostable; an element that further reduces what needed to be hauled offsite for processing.

Before the food even reached the event, charts were put up in the kitchen for the chefs to track the end use of different food scraps accumulated during prep. After compiling the data, we found that 50 lbs of food was able to be repurposed for future meals,  25 lbs of food was donated to the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf,  31 lbs of food was donated as chicken feed and only 21 lbs of food was composted. This data shows that apart from the greater amount of food being donated as chicken feed than being donated to people, the numbers follow the path of the Food Recovery Hierarchy, success!

One of the charts posted in the kitchen to track the prep waste from cutting board to compost.

With the support of the UVM Dining chefs and staff, the 2016 UVM Food Systems Summit was able to serve as a pilot in the opportunity to manage excess food and food scraps in the most sustainable means possible. This zero food waste initiative fit closely with the themes of the Summit and was enthusiastically received by the attendees. Those who were at this year’s conference not only shared delicious locally sourced meals together, but were mindful of their own impact within the local food system. Collectively, this conference served to gauge how the pre-event planning in partnership with UVM Dining, technical assistance from the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources and event coordinators combined with active audience participation can raise the bar of sustainable eating; an integral component of what makes food good. 

A plated lunch from the 2016 UVM Food Systems Summit, made with locally sourced ingredients and topped with repurposed fried turnip skins.

Thanks to @uvmdining, Chris Bratkovics, class of 2018, Computer Science/ Business major got a free water bottle!