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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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Most college kids on their way to a party might pick up a six-pack of beer. But if you had been at Harvard in 2000, you might have run into Josh Viertel heading out for the night with a bundle of radishes in hand. For the past six years, Josh Viertel has run the Yale Sustainable Food Project—the first of its kind in the country—as co-director and co-founder. Viertel helped transform a small student group into a university-funded organization that promotes environmentally sound eating on campus. YSFP runs conferences and events, encourages curricular offerings (Yale now has a concentration in food and agriculture within the environmental studies major), and runs a one-acre sustainable farm on Science Hill. (See Scene on Campus.) But most striking is the project's impact on Yale’s dining halls: now, instead of french fries and chicken strips, you might find honey-glazed turnips and free-range-chicken breast, all produced on sustainable farms. Viertel's efforts have not gone unnoticed. Last month, he was snapped up by Slow Food USA, an international advocacy group for fair and sustainable food, to be its new president. His co-director at the YSFP, Melina Shannon-DiPietro, will continue as director. For
Viertel, the experience of working together is what has made the Yale project
successful. “Experience is at least as important as rhetoric,” he says. “Shared
work and shared food speak for themselves.” But Viertel adds that the job isn’t
over at Yale. Though 40 percent of the food in the dining halls is sustainably
produced, Viertel believes it should be 100 percent: “The right thing isn’t
something you do part way." |
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©1992–2012, Yale Alumni Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Yale Alumni Magazine, P.O. Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905, USA. yam@yale.edu |
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