Sustainable Food Systems Task Force

12/11/13

Summary

Table of Contents

Participants

White Paper Review

Updates, Gary Nabhan Visit

Summary of Conversation Topics

White Paper review

  • Is a way to signal up to the provost office that this group is taking stalk of what’s going on across campus and how it aligns with priorities. Also is one more way we can get people to understand all the things that are going on across campus.
  • It will be important to collaborate with many parties on campus i.e. Joel Seligman from communications and Marketing, John Wraith in COLSA and others.
  • Make sure that the campus understands we are not taking credit for everything in the paper, but taking stalk of what UNH is doing so that we can share it with UNH.
  • Question: do we need to being thinking about beyond marketing are we asking for anything? Or are we trying to position ourselves in terms of there’s more strategic value from a food systems perspective that can provide value to the university.
  • Other than to recognize the value of a coordinated entity like this to facilitate greater communication and awareness across the university that are involved. If we get the inventory part of it correct, that becomes the raw material for a marketing piece, recruitment or whatever it could be used for.
  • This task force could achieve a priority of serving as a backbone. Strategic decisions could be made in coordination with this group. I.e. if there’s one hire, could this group all get behind a few priorities. Not sure if we could get that far or not. All the value that comes from getting a birds-eye view of activities on campus. No one has that view or few of them do.

Gary Nabhan Event

  • Coming on 1/30 5pm
  • Coordinating with Dan Winans and Burt Feintuch
  • Colleen Flaherty of S.I. is point person for the event

Next Steps

The group identified the following next steps (or commitments) during the meeting:

What / Who / By When
Encourage students you know over break who might be good for the ambassador position as Caroline cannot continue next semester: / All / Deadline for applications is January 21st
Draft of white paper / Margaret, Joanne B, El, Jackie / January
Please share the Gary Nabhan visit on January 31st, flyer and information is forthcoming / All / January

Sustainable Food Systems Task Force

12/11/13

Detailed Notes

Participants

1

Sustainable Food System Task Force – 12/11/13 Page

  • Joanne Burke, Nutrition professor, Sustainability Institute at UNH Faculty Fellow
  • John Carroll, COLSA faculty
  • Jackie Cullen, Sustainability Institute at UNH
  • Joanne Curran-Celentano,
  • Tom Kelly, Sustainability Institute at UNH
  • Rick MacDonald, Business Affair
  • Margaret McCabe, UNH Law School
  • Caroline Robb, Task Force Ambassador
  • Becky Sideman, COLSA faculty
  • Barb Wauchope, Carsey Institute

1

Sustainable Food System Task Force – 12/11/13 Page

Facilitator: Margaret McCabe

Content Manager: Jackie Cullen

White Paper Review

Recap of last meeting

  • Where white papers go, what’s the most effective strategy for sending it out
  • We’re close to being able to pull together material that say why SFS at UNH? There will be a mission statement, last time the will of the group was pretty specific that this should be a 1-2 pager max with a grid attached that makes it easy for administrators to see and quickly understand what this is all about.
  • What are Tom’s thoughts on passing this as a task force back to Tom/Sustainability Institute at UNH? How can we think about where it goes as we’re writing it for maximum impact?
  • No real formal process for this kind of thing
  • We should share it with the colleges especially John Wraith’s office because the agriculture experiment station is listed. Make sure they know this group isn’t a credit-claiming entity, just trying to collect the information at UNH.
  • Don’t know where STEM is now that changes in Manchester have happened.
  • The BSC at Manchester is also going to be Law school BSC, STEM is very much still in their strategy over there.
  • Is a way to signal up to the provost office that this group is taking stalk of what’s going on across campus and how it aligns with priorities. Also is one more way we can get people to understand all the things that are going on across campus.
  • Question: When it goes to Deans, Law school Manchester etc. What do we want from them?
  • Want to make sure that we’ve captured everything. Making clear that the goal is to provide a kind of overview not a claim of ownership. Will probably have to say it at the beginning, middle and the end.
  • That’s an important point and one of the reasons we have a task force, not to lay claim but collaborated and tell the story in a way that individual programs maybe can’t
  • Might be good to meet with the new communications staff that replaced Justin Harmon, Joel Seligman. Justin was reporting to the head of the foundation, university-wide messaging was going through him and his team.
  • This white paper could form the basis of a broad-based appeal of coming to UNH for food systems research. Get a birds-eye view of what’s going on here. Could excite students and contribute to enrollment/recruitment for students with that interest.
  • Adding T school programs, integrated agriculture, culinary program, new program at Paul college teaching kitchen
  • Question: do we need to being thinking about beyond marketing are we asking for anything? Or are we trying to position ourselves in terms of there’s more strategic value from a food systems perspective that can provide value to the university.
  • Other than to recognize the value of a coordinated entity like this to facilitate greater communication and awareness across the university that are involved. If we get the inventory part of it correct, that becomes the raw material for a marketing piece, recruitment or whatever it could be used for.
  • This task force could achieve a priority of serving as a backbone. Strategic decisions could be made in coordination with this group. I.e. if there’s one hire, could this group all get behind a few priorities. Not sure if we could get that far or not. All the value that comes from getting a birds-eye view of activities on campus. No one has that view or few of them do.
  • How to other task forces operate on campus? For instance, the bus is currently advertising for Wendy’s. We’re not the food police but what are the mechanisms when you want to have that kind of dialogue?
  • That’s something to ask for probably by doing something.
  • We could propose to meet with Healthy UNH, to ask how this aligns what we’re doing with HealthyUNH?
  • When we send out the white paper, our mission will be on there. Do we also have to educate colleagues about what the group does, how do we educate people at the university across the CORE.
  • The prototype has always been the ETF because it was first. One of its first actions was to do a GHG inventory, that ultimately formed the foundation of a climate action plan that we’re committed to under the president’s climate commitment. Now we have wildCAP and pursue emissions targets through prioritizing actions. Analysis of projects of cost, emissions savings, what should be prioritized, what’s going to save money? Established a revolving energy fund for campus. Very operations focused but do talk about what’s going on in other parts of CORE and is included in WildCAP. Tried here to mimic that with community food profile. That could be another place this paper could go. Could inform a profile or assessment that develops some indicators and targets.
  • Similarly the Ecosystem Task Force has had inventories on parcels of land that Steve Eisenhaure and Tom Lee have worked on. Work on what growth boundaries are, how are we dealing with long-term water supply both in terms of watershed and water quality related to use of salt etc. haven’t been able to really get over the hump to an integrated appraisal that puts the pieces together. Recently UVA faculty member and student developed a nitrogen inventory footprint tool. We have now joined a cohort of five schools on an EPA grant that will be the first cohort to adapt that model to different settings. Because of Agriculture setting here it will be very different from UVA. Will become a very tangible inventory for that group. Hope and expectation that that Nitrogen inventory will be the skeleton that other things will be added to.
  • CAST got vey concrete and through Meghan Howey’s efforts is developing a heritage management plan. Doing a geo-spacial referencing of what’s underground. Creating a plan to prevent simply building without assessing what the archeological conditions are. Not to say you won’t build there but that you value the past. In the development of that plan, met with Ecosystem Task Force and woodlands committee to get their input who are all very supportive of that plan.
  • Question is what’s relatively analogous here.
  • Want to get some proposal and direction about how to quickly collect the rest of what we need. Happy to work with anybody who’d like to volunteer. A couple of structural issues, big picture a white paper is helpful to begin with purpose and scope. Trying to bring forth work not take credit for it.
  • Mission, text of paper, followed by the grid.
  • Last time we kicked around organization. Audience will be deans and others that understand things more through the strategic lens
  • Had discussed going it by subcommittee but not everybody thinks in terms of CORE, also have different audiences on campus.
  • Hopefully what’s collected can be organized in different ways. Start with the administration that can get one version of it completed.
  • Joanne: was running into the challenge of using the new categories, might be a way beginning or end to tie it up in CORE language. Framed using strategies/challenges of university but also can say this is one way of presenting through CORE. Make that link for them.
  • John: to the degree that this is a marketing plan for enrollment are we seriously considering the idea of the 2 and 1 year and bringing larger numbers to UNH for training and certifications and things of that sort who want training? Demographics are not good for the 4 year undergraduates whether affordability or demographics in K-12 schools.
  • Touched on that last time. Rick raised example of link between UNH dining and shorter programs. Need to make sure that what’s attractive to them and that dining for example is available to them.
  • The will of the group, as Margaret perceived it, is to look at different iterations of a revenue stream. The core will be traditional but it has to be augmented in no-traditional ways. Might not have a lot of space to include it but to have at least a sentence or two to open that door.
  • Outline of paper: from Margaret:
  • First sentence/intro, will take suggestions
  • Scope: intended to provide and overview at the University. Highlighting their depth and breadth without taking credit for them or claiming to be comprehensive.
  • Ending with the goal: to initiate discussion and action of how the university can use SFS work across the core to draw students, faculty and other while at the same time advancing UNH as a national leader
  • Mission
  • More detail
  • Discussion
  • Do we want to highlight gaps?
  • Draft is more
  • When we have it all in front of us and we see it do we say “there’s an opportunity we hadn’t though of”. Maybe the word isn’t “gap” but looking for opportunities/integration
  • Next Steps
  • Margaret, Joanne, Jackie, El. Taking a second pass at a draft
  • Look at the grid also, real challenge is keeping as many high value words in this proposal as we can while remaining concrete and focused in moving the needle.
  • Goal would be to have a solid draft by January meeting, have an execution plan for not only distribution, but also thinking about the other kinds of activities we need to do to support the white paper having an impact. Is tom making a presentation and we’re making it with him to Provost Council? Is that part of it. Is there outreach to students with a student forum or discussion?
  • Sustainability Institute at UNH has been doing a call for proposals for liberal arts curriculum in sustainability. Maybe one of the actions that could come of this is a proposal for “x” kinds of courses. Sustainability Institute at UNH could put out an RFP as one example of something tangible that could be done.
  • Is this white paper the place to put in examples like above as tangible actions
  • Need to have some kind of general outline of next steps? Goes back to the question of are we asking for something?
  • Pull it together first and then see what we have and what we might be asking.
  • Length of paper:
  • Should be 2 pages, but we can still have bullets of proposals.
  • Without that, we would get the question of what we’re asking for
  • Might be a good way of floating ideas and see what catches on.
  • Developing the Carsey school, new marine school, do we want to say something about either of those as a way to look at future endeavors and how it factors in?
  • Can also be open-ended questions, questions around opportunities.
  • Should there be strands in schools that pick up SFS work.
  • Part of a set of questions people ask
  • What we’re creating is a tool, doesn’t matter who reads it if it can be used as a tool.
  • Example: Durham master plan: it might just be sitting now but can be used as a tool and is a legal document that can and would come up in a court of law.
  • If this is official university policy that’s something to have as a tool, they will read it at the time they need to read it.
  • Paper on agro-ecosystems has a bit on the larger world involved, trend in programs across the country, usual competitors initiatives etc. Not slated to be in this version. Next step, though, is how do we think forward including a situational analysis in key parts of the external world. First we need to get what’s going on at UNH.
  • Might be a good way of putting it in this paper that this is a first step that this task force is taking for UNH.
  • Question on distribution, Caroline:
  • Students? If students have this it should be in a different form. Students won’t want to read about enrollment growth. Major concern for students is going to be jobs, any way that we can address the kinds of jobs that majors/classes/ and programs can have an impact on.
  • EcoGastronomy: career guidance discussion: originally said more of the advice would be from primary major but found most of the students were treating EcoGastronomy as their primary major.
  • Don't want to forget the possibility of some kind of action plan like WildCAP. Can/will be one of the next steps.
  • Will be a good goal for the task force in the spring, what are we mapping out for the next year or two for big ideas/projects.
  • Part of what we’re trying to do is network people to build a cross-UNH network tied together by this concern and interest for SFS. That isn’t in place right now.
  • Question: is there any kind of topic/focused network like that on campus now?
  • Commissions on campus
  • Would be great in the spring to do a convening of all the task forces and others who are invited but to have a big networking event with plenty of time for casual conversation
  • Extension could have a lot to add too.
  • EcoGastronomy faculty is a good starting place to ID People.
  • Reach out to Amy Oulette and Charlie with an early draft. Charlie already on the engagement subcommittee
  • Meet with Carsey School’s planning process groups.
  • Margaret
  • Taking raw material from here and moving into a single draft

Updates,

Gary Nabhan visit in January

  • Coming on 1/30
  • Coordinating with Dan Winans and Burt Feintuch
  • Colleen Flaherty of S.I. is point person for the event
  • Can we invite him to a dinner or other event for a time to talk further/ask questions?
  • Great to give as much thought as we can
  • New book: “growing food in a hotter, drier land” and is on a tour
  • Invited NH network, Brian Donahue
  • Mention at the NH Process Team meeting on 12/18
  • Encourage all SFSTF faculty to include this on their syllabus for next semester
  • Going to the micro-biology and going to genomic dimensions
  • How to capture the speaker?
  • Hiring video productions, what are his restrictions on video, can it be posted on web?

Updates on FSNE

  • Productive meeting as part of Food Solutions New England core team meeting yesterday
  • Making food justice and racial equity as central part of work going forward.
  • Yesterday’s full day meeting, dug into that topic, was a very interesting and productive conversation discussing some very difficult topics, white privilege how it plays out in the food system and what does that mean for the region.
  • Would love to talk more about how the university in collaboration could do a symposium on food justice. What’s the meaning of food justice? Are a lot of different thoughts about what food justice is?
  • Race and relationship to food will likely be an opportunity when putting together the white paper.
  • EcoGastronomy does have a gap in that regard.

Other updates