Document Type
Policy Brief
Publication Date
2020
Abstract
Two undergraduate students at Santa Clara University were hired to work as Food Systems Fellows from April to October, 2019. This position was co-sponsored by the Center for Sustainability and the Auxiliary Services division. The goal of this work was to explore the Santa Clara University food system’s impact on the environment from both an ecological and a social perspective and identify opportunities for improvement.
The Fellows utilized standards and core values from The Real Food Challenge, a national non-profit dedicated to leveraging the power of colleges and universities to increase equity and sustainability in food systems. The Real Food Challenge provides student researchers with rigorous standards and procedures for identifying products that qualify as ‘Real’ (standards are detailed below). Research teams work with university dining service providers to analyze all or a representative portion of purchases from the year of interest. Real Food Challenge connects researchers with full-time staff members who can support throughout their analysis. This report contains the results of the Real Food Challenge analysis at Santa Clara University for the 2018-19 academic year.
The Center for Sustainability, the Food System Fellows, and the faculty mentors at Santa Clara University have additionally added the Sustainability Indicator Management & Analysis Platform (SIMAP) climate emissions analysis for university food systems to investigate the carbon and nitrogen footprint of SCU’s food system for the first time. The combination of year-to-year trends in the Real Food data and this new climate emissions data provides the finest resolution to date of the ecological impacts of the University’s food system.
Recommended Citation
McCurry, Emma and Whittaker, Paige, "Real Food Challenge and Climate Impact Assessment: A Food System Analysis at Santa Clara University, 2018-19" (2020). Sustainable Food Systems Fellowship. 4.
https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/sfsf/4
