Status: COMPLETED Summer 2013
The mandate of McGill Feeding McGill is to provide locally grown fruits and vegetables from the Macdonald Campus’s Horticultural Research Center to Ï㽶ÊÓƵ’s Food and Dining services operated residences and the general student community.
In the 2013 year, resources from the SPF were combined with other funds to help: employ students for 5000 hours, employ technicians, employ a non-student truck driver, construct a washing station, purchase reusable plastic food grad bins, purchase seeds and irrigation supplies, pay for land rental and machinery rental.
The mandate of McGill Feeding McGill is to provide locally grown fruits and vegetables from the Macdonald Campus’s Horticultural Research Center to Ï㽶ÊÓƵ’s Food and Dining services operated residences and the general student community.
Ï㽶ÊÓƵ houses and feeds thousands of students on a yearly basis in its various residences downtown. The Macdonald Campus’s Horticultural Center specializes in the growing of fruits and vegetables and is thereby well suited to provide these food items to the University’s Food and Dining Services Department. The use of locally grown food will directly contribute to the sustainability of food services in our community. In addition the use of food grown in our community will contribute in reducing the University’s overall carbon footprint.
The Horticultural Research Center follows an integrated pest management (IPM) approach to growing in order to minimize the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers; the result is produce of an excellent quality while reducing the impact of production on the environment. By developing a working relationship with McGill’s Food and Dining Services Department, the Horticultural Center is able to hire McGill students to work at the Center, providing them with practical experience in sustainable agricultural practices to complement the knowledge learned in the classroom.
The University relies largely on purchasing horticultural produce from exterior suppliers, but McGill Feeding McGill keeps some of the University’s financial resources within the institution with direct benefits for the McGill community and students in particular. This project will also optimize the use of currently available land, machinery and other resources at the Macdonald Campus.
The project strengthens the relationship between the Campuses by opening up Macdonald Campus to visits, and academic and work opportunities for McGill’s students from the downtown campus.
All the above contribute to a clear vision of sustainability: McGill helping itself… to help itself!
Each year the group transplants the greenhouse plants to the field, maintains them throughout the growing season, harvests crops in the fall, and then delivers the produce to the various residence cafeterias.
The SPF acquisition of the Farm Fresh Truck (SP0079) has also greatly facilitated delivery to downtown residences.
See Also: McGill Feeding McGill (SP0002),ÌýMcGill Feeding McGill 2 (SP0038), andÌýMcGill Feeding McGill 3 (SP0074)
If you would like to learn more about this project or reach the individuals involved, please contact the krista.houser [at] mcgill.ca (SPF Administration Team).
