Food

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Program

• Each year UofL invites students, staff and faculty to connect directly with local farmers through our CSA program. Direct questions to Mitchell Payne, 852-5155, mitchell.payne (at) louisville.edu.
• At a spring fair the UofL community can meet area farmers and choose from a variety of weekly local food delivery options with campus drop-offs.
• Customers subscribe to a CSA in the spring, providing farmers with much-needed income at the beginning of the growing season, and then share in the bounty of the harvest.
• Options for farm-fresh food baskets include not only fresh vegetables and fruits, but mushrooms, meats, cheeses, eggs, and more.
• Full shares start as low as $22 per week. Lower-cost/quantity half-shares starting at $12.50/wk are also available, or consider splitting a share with friends!
  
• All UofL staff, faculty, students, and the public are welcome to participate. Participating CSA farms for 2012 include:

1. Joe Trigg's Farmers2City Connection (F2CC) CSA (Glasgow, KY - Barren Co.)
   
2. Courtney Farms CSA (Bagdad, KY - Shelby Co.)
3. Harmony Fields Farm - certified organic CSA (Shelbyville, KY - Shelby Co.)
4. Lucky Clover Farm - (Richmond, KY - Madison Co.)
5. Grasshoppers Distribution (Louisville distributor for multiple area farms)
   

• Get full details about all of the CSA options for 2012 here.

• Connect with other subscribers and find more information at the UofL CSA Facebook Page!

• The program helps support our local economy, promotes healthy eating, and reduces the environmental impact of transporting, processing, and packaging food from far away.
• Louisville Community Supported Agriculture - lists other area Farmers' Markets and CSAs.

Gray Street Farmers' Market

• 10:30 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. every Thursday from May through October no matter what the weather. In 2012, the market opens May 17th and will close October 25th.

• Located at UofL's Health Sciences Center on the 400 block of E. Gray Street, between Preston and Jackson streets. Directions.
• Featuring a wide variety of local vendors, offering hot lunch items, fruits, vegetables, eggs, meat, cheese, honey, bakery items, canned goods, crafts and flowers.

• More information about the farmers’ market here.
• There are dozens of farmers' markets all around town just about any day of the week, some year-round, others seasonal: Louisville Farmers Market Directory.

Basic Pantry

Basic Pantry offers healthy grocery store tours

Campus Health Promotion's Basic Pantry Program provides cooking workshops, shopping guidance, and tasty recipes to help students learn the basic arts of stocking a pantry and cooking. Whether you are a novice cook or expert cook, a poor student or a rich entrepreneur, a well-stocked pantry makes it easier to create quick and nutritious meals. The food you have on hand largely determines how healthfully you will eat. So wisely stocking your pantry is a step toward your good health! Learn more.

Kentucky Proud Products

UofL is Kentucky Proud! Our campus bookstores and The Nest convenience store in Louisville Hall feature Kentucky Proud products made right here in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Take some home today or get them for a loved one - Kentucky Proud products make great gifts!

Fair Trade

All of the coffee served at UofL's campus dining facilities is Fair Trade certified. Fair Trade certification ensures that producers are treated fairly and paid a fair wage for their products. Fair Trade also involves a more direct relationship between the producer and the purchaser, to reduce the amount of profit absorbed by middle men. UofL supports Fair Trade and we seek to provide even more Fair Trade options in the future. If you'd like to get more involved, check out the Fair Trade U of L campaign.

Campus Dining

Look for the “L” sticker on sandwiches and wraps at “Simply to Go” refrigerated kiosks around campus - they contain meats and cheeses produced in Kentucky!

UofL works closely with Sodexo on a variety of campus dining sustainability initiatives:

1. Local Purchasing: We support local farms and businesses, with roughly 20% of all food purchases sourced from within 250 miles of campus, including produce, dairy, meats, breads and baked goods. In the second half of 2011, 21.7% was sourced locally.

Directly support UofL sustainability initiatives by purchasing the new Go Green Meal Plan!
Help start a Farm to College program with!

2. Trayless Dining: We offer trayless dining at The Ville Grill, our new all-you-care-to-eat resident dining hall. This helps to reduce the amount of food waste on our campus, as well as the amount of water that would be used to wash the trays.

3. Healthy and Vegetarian/Vegan Dining: The Ville Grill at 3rd & Brandeis provides numerous healthy options, including a salad bar and the Wild Mushroom vegetarian & vegan station with a menu dedicated to serving protein and nutrient rich vegan and vegetarian meals at every meal.

4. Nutritional Information: New online menus include nutritional information about every item. You can choose which meals to view and do a comparison to help you plan a healthy, delicious meal.

5. Food Waste Composting: In 2010, we began a pilot pre-consumer food waste composting program in our main campus kitchens. Over 1000 pounds of kitchen waste was composted on campus each week, turning a waste product into valuable organic fertilizer for the campus vegetable garden and landscaping. In 2012, we went full-scale and now send as much as 6000 pounds/week of both pre- and post-consumer food waste to a composting facility in southern Indiana.

6. Food Donation: When available, we donate left-over food to The Lord’s Kitchen and Wayside Christian Mission. We also have a donation box at our convenience store, The Nest, that allows students to purchase non-perishable foods to donate to our local food bank, Dare to Care. Once a year, Sodexo sponsors an event called Helping Hands that raises awareness about hunger and accepts student donations for our local food bank. Last year students and faculty at the university teamed-up to donate nearly 7,000 pounds of food to Dare to Care.

7. Recycled Napkins: We use recycled content napkins at all of our dining locations on campus.

8. Reusable Mug Program: We sell reusable bottles and mugs at many of our dining locations and offer discounted refills when customers use these, or their own, reusable mugs.

9. Fair Trade: University of Louisville Dining Services by Sodexo is committed to a Better Tomorrow. One way we are actively supporting this commitment is through Fair Trade coffees on campus (see below). Read this to find out more about Sodexo's Better Tomorrow Commitments and our campus coffee partnerships.

Garden Commons

UofL's Garden Commons at the Cultural Center on Belknap campus is a community space for learning about organic urban agriculture, more sustainable food systems, and building resilient community. Learn more here.