Incorporating Community Supported Agriculture into Trinity

Trinity works alongside small farmer co-ops in a communal attempt to make a sustainable vegetable consumption easy for its students and staff.

The project’s aim is to reduce the university’s catering environmental footprint by enabling Trinity’s students and staff to reconnect as consumers to producers on three levels. Firstly, college food outlets would gradually shift towards zero-waste and sourcing seasonal produce directly from farmer co-operations (food-hubs), thus shortening the supply chain and valorizing the growers’ contributions as prices would not be mitigated by favor margins of larger corporations. Secondly, farmers would engage with student accommodation by offering weekly subscriptions to affordable veggie-boxes. This incentivizes students to consume responsibly while farmers gain planning security. Thirdly, for added value to campus life, a vegetable market would be held in Trinity’s Front Square for students and staff, especially those living on or close to campus: small farmers can directly engage with consumers, and customers directly see advantages of small communal food systems. Trinity would become an anchor-client that pioneers preserving Irish farmland and rural livelihoods, while communicating the value of collaboration in food systems. The Green Campus Committee showed great interest in this idea’s development. Recent correspondence with the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) have indicated that farmers supplying Trinity would gain independence from market pressure, as this collaboration would enable them to share the consequences of a bad harvest without seeing their livelihood endangered. It must be noted that there is a significant gap between what is a fair price to pay for vegetables and what students can generally afford. Furthermore, the initiative may not be profitable for the farmers before popularity for the market grows. Funds would be allocated to bridging that gap: i.e paying the farmer the difference, thus ensuring affordability and inclusiveness. Developing a collective awareness around the value of locally-sourced vegetables would see a demonstrative step towards responsible consumption, thus reducing Trinity’s catering environmental footprint.

Our project is designed to engulf the entire community of Trinity: the farmer’s market would attract students and staff, particularly those living on campus, during Covid-19 as markets are allowed to remain open, and the veggie-boxes would bring students together partaking in sustainable practices.

Students would be hired for a 2-week period (approximately €150) to approach the benefits of CSA students and staff, while promoting and popularizing the farmer’s market. €200 would be allocated to organizing the first market and the veggie-boxes, entailing costs of administration, equipment and advertisement. Remaining funds would be allocated to subsidization of the markets, to ensure accessibility to students and economic rent-ability for farmers as the project gets off the ground. As this is a pilot scheme, if subsidization remains necessary after the market takes up traction, we’d hope to finance this long-term, funded by Trinity’s Sustainability Fund.

Covid-19 has highlighted that the danger of food insecurity affects us all, food suppliers have not stifled under the crisis, vegetable suppliers operate under all levels of restrictions given their necessity. The ongoing pandemic will thus be less of a barrier and more of a further reason to implement the project now, as during this time there is an increased awareness about the need for a collective effort to adopt resilience in our food system and responsible consumption. The box scheme would create a sense of community, and like the market, contribute to help people maintain a social life. The stalls would be outside, where people could maintain social distance, with Covid infrastructure already in place, and PPE is available where needed. We would trial the project as a pilot scheme, thus it would be beneficial that a limited number of people have access to it initially. It would allow us to revise, improve and adjust before college returns to operating at larger capacity.