Hey, CSAs Could Use a Little Support at Fordham University in NYC

At the Civic Garden Center's "Flavors of the Garden" event on Saturday, September 17 (which was a great event, well attended, with lots of good food from local gardens), the Enright Ridge table was next to one from CAIN (Churches Active In Northside) that was manned by an Americorps worker who had helped get a community garden organized and active in supplying fresh produce to an area food pantry, as well as providing some of the produce sold at the Northside Farmers' Market--a local farm success.

So I was particularly disappointed to read in the New York Times on Monday morning about a successful CSA run at Fordham University in New York City that had been shut down by the powers that be at the university. A law student, Michael Zimmerman (in the picture above, by Angel Franco of the NY Times) had started Farm to Fordham about 18 months ago, and it was a popular and successful community-supported agriculture project. Every week, a farm in central New York state delivered fresh produce to the campus, where students, staff, and faculty who paid $150 per semester received their share. They usually had about 100 lbs of extra produce they donated to a local soup kitchen.

Victims of their own success, the university's administrators decided it was a nuisance, and set about trying to shut it down last April, when guards were first told to refuse the delivery from the farm. You can tell the administration was flailing; first they said the organizers needed a one-day catering permit every time there was a delivery, but when they tried to apply for one, the city told them they weren't a catering operation (which they already knew), and would not give them one. Then the university said there was construction going on, and they couldn't safely take the deliveries (the construction was not in the area where the deliveries were made). Then they said they couldn't take a chance of an "infestation" from the produce, although all pickups were done outside; the produce was never brought into a university building.

After six months of wrangling, the university's lawyer sent Farm to Fordham an e-mail that said "We cannot be placed in a position to break the law," harking back to their claim that the group was operating without a catering permit. Fordham’s director of communications was quoted as saying the permit requirement was “a Catch-22.” But then he threw one more reason to shut them down, hoping something would stick--he said there were concerns about honoring the university’s food service contracts, again a specious argument, because the CSA did not prepare any food on the premises.

Perplexingly, the program is still featured on the Fordham website as a good work at the university, at the same time a university spokesman made a statement that "Given the cost-benefit here, we’re not doing enough good to justify letting this go forward." Zimmerman says that he's resigned to the fact that the CSA is not welcome on campus, and hopes to find an alternate location to continue the program.

And the university officials encourage him in that--the communications director said "This is what we do. We encourage this stuff." Yeah, right. You can read the whole article about the Farm to Fordham program online.