SSA Meeting - Minutes from 4.28.09

Greetings Sustainable Aggies!

Students for Sustainable Agriculture met last night to recap on several activities that have happened in the past couple of weeks and also to talk about upcoming events. Thank you to Katie for taking notes.

We also got a new couch for the office - thank you Ryan!

Maggie introduced the group to a new form of consensus decision making that she learned about while at the Food and Society Conference last week - it is called Fist to Five. SSA will be adopting this consensus voting procedure for meetings.

To read a summary of the minutes - check them out here.

Things are starting to come together for the annual Local Food Week - if you are interested in helping out with the planning, please contact Dani (or email sustainableag@gmail.com). Local Food Week/Celebrating Real Food Week will be May 26-28th this year. Mark your calendars!

The next SSA meeting will take place next week Tuesday, May 5th at 6:15pm at the Student Farm (exact location TBA)! The first half-hour we will be sharing a meal together, and in celebration of Cinco-de-Mayo, I suggest everyone bring a Cinco-de-Mayo themed food!

Please email Katie Cooper (kcooper@ucdavis.edu) any agenda items you may have.

East Quad Farmers Market is Back!

Spring is in the air, and it is time for celebration! Not only for the beautiful weather and the blossoming trees, but also for celebrating the start of the East Quad Farmers Market this spring quarter.

From their website:

"The East Quad Farmers Market (EQFM) at UC Davis is a successful collaboration that has increased access to fresh, local produce for busy UC Davis students, staff and faculty during fall and spring quarters. A 2007 survey of UC Davis students found that 60 percent eat two or fewer servings of nutrition-packed fruits and vegetables a day. By increasing access to fresh produce, we hope to make it easier for students, staff and faculty to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into their diet."

Each week, from 10:00am-2:30pm on Wednesdays from now until the end of the quarter, the East Quad at UC Davis is buzzing with students, local farmers and local producers. The Student Farm also sells their produce out at the market, so for those of you on their year-long wait list dying to have some of the tasty produce - check it out!

SSA members Maggie Lickter, Jennifer Heinlein and Katie Cooper at the
Students for Sustainable Agriculture Table at the East Quad Farmers Market - Weds. April 1, 2009

Students for Sustainable Agriculture tabled at the kickoff to the East Quad Farmers Market today. We support fresh food, a venue for the Student Farm to be known, and also access to healthy food for all too - so of course we welcomed the invitation to help promote the Farmers Market on campus.

Our "Cool Eating Tips Quiz" was given to students, staff and faculty that stopped by our table. In return for taking 1 minute to fill out the quiz, they were entered into a raffle for one of our SSA "100 Ways to Eat Fresh - Eat Local" seasonal cookbooks (.......did you know - our cookbooks are also available in the UC Davis Campus Bookstore!) We also distributed our "10 Cool Eating Tips" cards with seasonal availability charts for the Sacramento Valley Region.

What kinds of questions did we ask our participants?

How many tons of agricultural chemicals are used by California orange growers? (answer: 3000 tons)

How many miles does food travel on average?
(answer: 1500 miles)

An estimated how many plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year?
(answer: 380 billion bags, and it takes 1.6 billion gallons of petroleum to produce this many bags!)

What fractions of all the fossil fuels produced in the US are used to raise animals for food in factory farms?
(answer: 1/3 of fossil fuels in the US are used to raise animals for food)

Spreading the love of a socially just, ecologically balanced, and economically viable food system - one cool eating tips card at a time!

Students for Sustainable Agriculture