Student cooperatives are taking food sourcing into their own hands. Victoria Walvis and Dora Clouttick members of York People & Planet explain how they did it.

A consumer society prides itself on choice but when it comes to your food many so-called ‘choices’ have already been made for you. As you peruse the daunting array of products at the supermarket, all flaunting their unique desirability, you may not realise that the selection which makes it to the shelves is the result of a hold load of decision you had no say. Right down the line from the chosen suppliers, to how much of the farmers produce makes the cut (and how much is wasted), to the preferred transport companies, even as far back as the seed stock and species cultivated. You may consider yourself spoilt for choice but in many ways, you just get what your given.

If you care about the world, you probably want to buy Fairtrade and organic produce so that no-one suffers for your gain. But on a student budget it’s way too expensive. And reducing waste is impossible when supermarkets wrap everything in pointless sheets of plastic. As the pressure on oil increases, what about the amount of energy used in food transportation and fertilisers is another thing to worry about. But for some inexplicable reason you can only find apples from New Zealand and wine from California in your local supermarket. And who knows how much oil has been used in the production of fertilisers to feed a field of huge (and often tasteless) vegetables? Basically, supermarkets are a nightmare for people who care about where their food comes from.

So what’s the alternative?

Scoop veg box

Whats the answer? Cut out the middle-man. All over people are taking matters into their own hands. Grouping together and ordering food collectively at wholesale prices and feeding themselves cheaply on ethical produce.

At York University, we have founded our own food cooperative called ‘Scoop’ with an emphasis on sustainable, ethical, local and cheap food. Cooperatives are not just a duty driven enterprise, they’re also a way to get together to share ideals and knowledge, bond with others on a level that supermarkets could never offer.

As a society, we have become seriously detached from our food. Everyone laments that fact that city kids think milk comes from a bottle and bread from a packet. But before you raise an eyebrow, ask yourself: have you any idea what ingredients you need to make pizza? Would you recognise those ingredients when they were growing and know how to harvest and process them in order to create the desired delicious result? Or even just to make them edible?

Lots of veg boxes

You might say that in our fast-food world these are things that we don’t need to know any more. But at York we reckon it benefit everyone to get a bit closer to our food.

Food cooperatives exist all over the globe in all shapes and sizes, from large companies to local community groups. You might have heard of Suma, a wholesaler of vegetarian, organic and Fairtrade foods but there are loads of little operations too. They can be found in churches, school halls, or even in your neighbour’s living room. In short, they can be anywhere there is a group of enthusiastic, like-minded individuals and a space to store food.

Ditching your local supermarket in favour of a food cooperative is a great step in helping to tackling climate change, introducing an aspect of community into our consumption and having a greater appreciation for what you eat.

While it might take a while to adjust to a new routine (wholesale orders can take a little more planning that just nipping to the shops!) but we found that we actually have more freedom than when shopping consisted of sprinting round the aisles and enduing supermarket queues.

A positive future for food must be based on an acceptance of greater responsibility for what we eat, and establishing food cooperatives are a brilliant way to take back control of the food chain!

To find out more about the York student cooperative contact: yorkstudentcoop@googlemail.com

Start your own coop: http://sustainweb.org/foodcoopstoolkit/

World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms is a fantastic way of eco-travelling. Nothing to do with dog-walking, in case you were wondering! My cousin and I were fresh out of our first year of university and needed a cheap way to travel. After hearing about wwoofing, we checked out the website, and subscribed to the list of farms in France.

The farm we chose was in the Cevennes Mountains, and ours was a relatively short stay of just 2 weeks. The family was incredibly friendly, and welcomed us into their home. We worked with them picking onions, usually in the morning when it was cooler. We also took the goats out along the river and over the mountains where they would graze on beautiful-smelling wild mint and other herbs to flavour their milk. We even got involved in milking the goats, and helping to make the “fromage de chevre”. How often do you get such a unique opportunity on holiday?!

The work was sometimes hard, but afternoons and weekends were our own to explore the gorgeous countryside and visit nearby towns and markets. And best of all, it cost us nothing! We ate incredible French cuisine with the freshest ingredients (loads better than any of the restaurants I’ve eaten at), slept in comfy beds, improved our French, swam in the river, and learnt plenty about French culture and countryside lifestyle.

I would definitely recommend it as a way of eco-travelling. Countries from UK to Hawaii have organic farm registers, and you will be helping support a low-impact lifestyle, and learning about a culture whilst having a good base to explore the region you are in.

Check out http://www.wwoof.org/index.asp and do something Awesome!

Maddy at The Wave

2009

September: Back from a wonderful summer spent frolicking al fresco amongst plants and such, the group meets just before term. With all the third years gone, there’s only a handful of us left. Problemo. To start some action, an army is required. So we hit the Freshers’ Fair with full enthusiastic energy and big grins to get as many new students on board as possible. We have no plans for the year yet, no idea where our campaigning adventures will take us, because these decisions are up to all of the members, including new ones.

October: At our first meeting we have tea and cake and talk about why everyone wants to get involved, a lot of people had never campaigned before, and don’t know about issues in depth, but that’s really not important. It’s the enthusiasm, the passion to make things better that keeps a campaign alive. We talk about things going on in and around Sheffield: the fact that RBS, with notoriously dirty investments, are on campus recruiting students, the lack of ethical food at uni, with so little being vegan or locally sourced, about the need for more ethical clothing ranges in the uni shop…..and plant some seeds of plans.

Some genius also has the idea of making recruitment leaflets to give out at every demo, so that everyone knows who we are and how to get involved.

November: We spend the next two months as busy little bees demo-ing nasty companies who dare to show their face on our campus, selling vegan cakes, holding talks about sweatshops, meeting with the catering staff and so on.

While our activities are all fun and good, we soon become exhausted, and we don’t have much to show for our efforts. Sure, every demo raises awareness, and is reported back to the heads of companies, and we have raised some very-much-needed funds for People & Planet, all the while having a whole lot of fun, but we wanted some visible results!!

2010

January: We organise a meeting to talk about ideas for a new campaign. We want to make a difference to the environmental impact of students. We want results that we can see. And so, inspired by Leeds students, we decide to launch a campaign to ban bottled water on campus, and to install free water fountains for everyone. It makes so much sense: bottled water is a crazy waste of everything. For 1 litre of water, 7 litres are wasted in production, 250ml of oil is consumed and 100g of carbon is released into the atmosphere. Add to that the fact that only blah in 100 bottles are recycled and you have a green disaster right there. And that’s not even mentioning all the money wasted!

March: We set to work on our ‘Bottle Out’ campaign.

Step one of our campaign is research: finding out all the niggly details about passing a motion, our university’s water policy and so on. As well as talking to people at the Union and Uni, the P&P office is a gold mine for advice and information on running a campaign…it’s what they do full time! We need to get 1000 signatures to bypass council and for our proposal to go to popular vote at the next election.

Step two is making it happen: we write the motion, design and print posters

Step three is spreading the word. Our recruitment leaflets combined with our high campus presence has been working a dream in getting new people on board and our team is strong. We start a poster campaign to raise awareness of the hidden evil behind bottled water and stick them up all around including in halls, using the same poster on all of our stalls. And, of course, we create a Facebook group to spread the word even further. 1000 signatures are gathered easy peasy.

And step four, getting the bottles out, well, we’re still working on that. Because of the way our union works it won’t be going to vote until September, but we have a great base of support so we reckon it’ll get through, and the plastic will disappear, replaced with fountains popping up everywhere. Added to that is the awesome strong group that we have built, with the skills and stuff to run a campaign.