Promoting education and awareness of local foods at UBC

Globalization of our food system has led to many detrimental effects, including a decrease in its environmental, economic, and social sustainability. The problems faced by today’s global food system are mirrored in the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) food system. For this reason, the Faculty of Land and Food Systems has partnered with other campus organizations to implement the UBC Food System Project (UBCFSP), aimed at increasing the long term sustainability of the UBC food system through re-localization. There are many facets to this project, and creating an educational campaign to promote awareness on campus of the benefits of consuming local foods is just one. Our group defines “local” as products produced in British Columbia (BC). Drawing on research, ideas, and proposals from our colleagues in previous years of AGSC 450, we have developed a campaign to educate the UBC population about the benefits of choosing to consume local foods. We propose a set of educational pieces, including logos, a pamphlet, posters, a laminated dry-erase poster, table tents, mini-posters, and a website as tools for our campaign. The campaign also includes an interactive event, Local Food Day, to be held on October 16th, 2006, in the Student Union Building (SUB) concourse. This event will involve campus food providers and community organizations, and will promote local foods in a fun and interactive manner. In order to implement this campaign in the fall of 2006, we suggest that the Faculty of Land and Food Systems hire a work study student. This is a cost efficient strategy as wages are subsidized by the UBC Financial Assistance and Awards Office. A practical timeline for the implementation of the campaign is provided in this paper, along with recommendations to both the UBCFSP partners and our future AGSC 450 (2007) colleagues. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”Land and Food Systems, Faculty ofUnreviewedUndergraduat