In the United States, the items on a typical dinner plate have traveled between 1,500 and 2,500 miles to get there. That distance has increased by as much as 25 percent over the last 20 years — an increase that comes with a series of consequences for food, farmers, consumers, local economies and even the global climate. Starting last fall on Tufts’’ Medford/ Somerville campus, students had the chance to lower the overall mileage(里程)of their lunches when the dining hall offered apples grown in nearby Topsfield, Mass. Part of the Harvest Food Festival, the "make-your-own-caramel (饴糖) -apple" display featured (特出展示) six different locally grown apple varieties. The popular Tufts Dining Services program was part of ongoing efforts to increase the amount of local produce (农产品) available on Tufts’’ campuses. Friedman School Ph.D. student Melissa Bailey is one of those devoted to the cause. Combining her interests in sustainable agriculture and public policy, Bailey took it upon herself to breathe new life into the Tufts Food Awareness Project, a group launched by Tufts graduate students in the 1990s to raise awareness about the environmental, social and health issues connected to food production. "It was a great start, and there had been a lot of student backing and interest," Bailey says. "But when the students graduate, the idea sort of graduates with them if it’’s not institutionalized as part of the community." So Bailey joined forces with Julie Lampie, nutrition marketing specialist for Dining Services, in whom she found an enthusiastic ally, and secured a grant from the Tufts Institute for the Environment to pay graduate students Bryanna Millis and Georgia Kayser to work on the project. Together, the team works to raise awareness, solve problems and forge partnerships among the primary players: Tufts’’ chefs, major food distributors and local farmers. Bailey and Lampie — who work on the project mainly as a labor of love — also seek to raise awareness among the student body to the point where student demand drives the addition of local produce to Tufts’’ menus. On caramel apple night, their outreach (达到的范围) took the form of informational posters about the Connemara House Apple Farm and Guinee family who plant and tend the apple trees. They also described the personal and global benefits of eating locally grown produce. "Of course the students loved caramel apples, but it also gave them an education," Bailey says. "It’’s not up to me to make an ethical appeal to them, but they need to have the information to be able to make an informed choice." From farm to fork What are the benefits of buying local Obviously, produce the trip from Topsfield to Medford requires less sossil (化石) fuel to get it from farm to dining hall than apples grown in Washington State. Using less gasoline means reducing the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. Shorter trips also require less energy-consuming refrigeration and waste-producing packaging. Some experts estimate that globe-travelling produce can require up to four times as much energy as an equivalent amount of local food and account for four times the greenhouse gas emissions (释放) . Then there’’s the amount of energy, water, pesticides and fertilizers that go into raising produce. "If you grow things that are suited to your climate locally," Bailey explains, "you might not need as many of these inputs on the front end to grow things." Since the terrorist attacks of September 11,2001, homeland security experts have even noted that food is more vulnerable to sabotage (破坏) the longer the distance from farm to fork. Recent decades have witnessed the rise of centralized, corporate agriculture; just 10 multinational companies produce more than half of the products available in the average supermarket. That puts the nation’’s food supply at greater risk for contamination (污染) — whether intentional or unintentional, as with mad cow disease or E.coli outbreaks. Similarly, if the nation’’s transportation systems were ever disabled, many cities and towns would run out of food within a day or two. But as the interest in consuming locally grown produce blossoms, the number of farmers’’ markets in the United States has doubled in the last decade. That means a safer and more constant food supply for people lucky enough to live near these 3,100 markets. The Worldwatch Institute estimates consumers are spending some $1 billion annually at local fanners’’ markets, pouring that money into their regional economies. A large institution like Tufts buying locally grown produce is a boom to the Massachusetts economy. "The local farms will increasingly benefit, given the volume that we use," Bailey says. "The Guinees love farming apples, and they just saw this as a great community partnership." But even those of us who don’’t always think quite so globally still have reason to choose locally grown foods. Many varieties of fruits and veggies have actually been bred for features that will help them survive the trip, not necessarily enhance their flavor. Double-blind taste tests show people simply find local foods fresher, tastier and more appealing. Bailey says that Tufts’’ dining staff have been enthusiastic partners, too, rising to the creative challenge of creating menus based solely on what’’s locally available. "The chefs Julie [Lampie] works with were great," she says. "They came up with new recipes (食谱) using local butternut squash to make soups." Winter of our discontent With all the attractive reasons to serve local foods in Tufts’’ dining halls, there is one, long, cold problem. "The limitation is the winter, basically," Lampie laments. "There is so little available for the majority of the school year, which is really frustrating. The California schools have a huge advantage." In New England, the growing season is short. From June through September, Massachusetts farmers produce everything from apples to watermelons. But after September, only October’’s apples, cranberries, cabbages, potatoes and squashes remain for chefs to work with until early veggies like asparagus come up in the spring. "The next step would be twofold: One, to find out what the earliest produce would be and when we could get them, and, two, give the chefs time to prepare," Bailey says. "It’’s up to them to integrate the information into their menus, but we need to provide it first." Another issue is food preparation. When foods like potatoes or butternut squash come from national vendors, they arrive in cans pre-peeled (预先削皮的) and cubed (切成方块的) . Lettuce often arrives washed, chopped or shredded. Industry insiders call these prepped and ready-to-go bulk foods "value-added." But neither the local farms nor Tufts has the labor and facilities to process, say, Maine potatoes this way. "For Tufts, the labor costs of having the staff peel hundreds of potatoes," Bailey says, "it’’s just not feasible (可行的) ." "That’’s something we’’re investigating. Maybe it should be a student job to pick up the produce once a week and bring it to the dining facility," says Bailey. "There are obstacles, but I think there are lots of opportunities to overcome those obstacles when you consider the resources we have at Tufts." Consumers’’ spending on the local food can help to boost the local economy.