Dear Danny

Mm mm good.

I’m not the only one who saw it. People swarmed to it. The palpable air of intrigue hung around it, accentuated by gasps of excitement. Some students were unsure at first, but they quickly figured out how it worked.

The farmers’ market is here.

Every Wednesday from now on, Penn Diningwill sponsor afarmers’ market in between Harnwell College House and 1920 Commons on Locust Walk from 3 to 7 p.m. Now, all the students who live in the high rises can walk right past fresh, local food on their way back from classes. If any one else is like me, they took a second look at some freshly baked pies, stopped to buy some delicious red bell peppers, or put off that trip to Fresh Grocer.

Everyone has heard about the benefits of eating local. The shorter the distance between farm and market, the less (carbon based) energy expended to move the food. Supporting nearby agriculture means supporting the local economy. And smaller, locally focused farms use far fewer pesticides and wreak less havoc on the natural environment than the factory farms Fresh Grocer buys most of their produce from.

“Penn Dining and Aramark have been interested in bringing some form of
produce market into the core of campus for quite some time,” said Barbara Lea-Kruger, Director of Communications and Project Management at Penn Dining in an e-mail interview. “We worked with an organization called Farm to City to extend the operating hours of the farmers market that was already located at 36th and Walnut [streets] and have the farmers move onto the Locust Walk location at mid-afternoon.

But here’s the kicker - students can buy the goods with dining dollars.

Penn Dining deserves major props for this decision. Not only did they bring this local food to campus, but they made it very accessible to their customers. Hopefully this commitment to sustainability and fresh produce continues to find its way into the dining halls as well.

As long as this farmers market keeps going strong, I just might be able to forgive Penn Dining for putting salt instead of sugar in their apple pie last week.

Dear Danny appears every Monday and Wednesday.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.