Student initiative – ethical and organic food on campus

The project, in which I am involved, is called ‘Warwick Uni Food-Coop’. Food-Coop is a stall run by students which offers a wide variety of healthy, organic and cheap food such as beans, dried fruits, rice, soya milk, chickpeas and many others. We aim to promote a discussion about food, when it comes from and by which means it was produced. All in all, we want to offer alternatives to Warwick students and local people.

Personally, before I was involved in this project, I had not thought about from where, for instance, tomatoes come from. I did not care if they were local, from Spain or Senegal. The most important thing for me was their price and freshness. I think this is typical for most people, too. However, thanks to the Food-Coop I have changed my attitude and I spend now more time in a supermarket thinking about which way the item had to pass in order to get here. I prefer local food, if possible, because it has less impact on the environment pollution. Furthermore, there are also ‘fair-trade’ products which should ensure that the worker got an adequate wage for his job. I am trying to buy more of these products as well.

Another Food-Coop activity are ‘veggie-boxes’. These are boxes full of organic vegetables and fruits, mostly from local farmers, and students have the possibility to get them delivered to their houses. I get veggie box every fourteen days and I find very often there some unknown kinds of vegetables with which I can experiment when cooking.

The last thing I would like to mention about this project is that it is run by students who are also volunteers. We sell products for the prices we get from the producers, thus customers get the cheapest price possible, which is very convenient for us students.

Thanks to Food-Coop I have begun to think deeper about what I am eating and which way the product had to pass to get to me. I see this project as a great way of supporting ecological agriculture and local farmers. It is also a good opportunity to meet people with the same interests.