More Action Ideas

INTERNATIONAL SPEAKER: Many organizations sponsor tours with producers or leaders from the global south. If there is a producer coming through your area already on a tour, contact the organization sponsoring their tour and see if you can be a tour stop! Good organizations to contact include USFT, Transfair, Equal Exchange and the International Labor Rights Forum. Check out Leticia Galeano’s speaking tour, organized through the Student Trade Justice Campaign.

FILM SCREENINGS: There are a ton of great films out there on food, agriculture, trade, labor, and climate change. Screen one on your campus. Follow it up with a brief panel discussion or talk about ways your campus can help create a real food system.

POSTCARD SIGNING CAMPAIGN: Join the Student/Farmworker Alliance’s campaign to end exploitation in the fields. Contact organize@sfalliance.org to request a stack of postcards addressed to Subway/Chipotle. Once they arrive, set up a table on campus to encourage people to sign, then send the postcards to the company’s corporate headquarters.

TEACH-IN: Putting on a teach-in at your school is one of the most direct ways of educating a diverse group of people about the issues you care about. Invite folks from the surrounding community and plan a concise workshop on how unreal our food system is, and how we can change it now. Or, recruit supportive professors from a variety of departments to sit on a panel together. Ask them to speak on how food system issues relate to their field of expertise.

TASTE TESTS: Have your peers taste the difference between local, seasonal foods and their industrialized counterparts. There’s nothing like seeing, smelling, and tasting the difference to really hammer home the point that real food is not only better for our bodies, communities, and environments, but it tastes better too. Try honey, veggies, pickles, breads, jams, juices, coffee, chocolate. Have your taste test in a well-traveled area.

FAIR TRADE FAIR: Set up a fair with various fair-trade related events. Examples include coffee sack races, wheels of fortune with fair trade prizes, chocolate or coffee tastings/samplings, vendor tables, and information tables.

HARVEST FEST: Celebrate the fall harvest on campus with music, games, and food. Get a cow or two on campus, set up some cider pong, and play some real food themed trivia.

REAL FOOD COOK-OFF: Think Iron Chef gone LOCO! (uh, LOCAL, that is) Recruit local chefs, farmers, and enterprising students for a wild competition and taste-testing extravaganza. Read more.

FARMERS’ MARKET: Organizing a farmer’s market on or near your campus is a great way to increase access to fresh, local produce. Contact local vendors and farmers (perhaps recruit them from the closest farmer’s market) and invite them to campus for a one-time event. Give the dining halls a little run for their money, and, with a bit of advertising show them how much students want Real Food Now.

FOOD MAP: Make and disseminate a map of your area and mark places where students can find real food. Include farms, markets, shops, restaurants, and maybe even that apple tree or raspberry bush you pass on your way to science class. See Local Harvest or Fallen Fruit for ideas.

MAKE FRIENDS WITH A FARMER: Bring a farmer (or two or three) to your campus to speak about the local food community. Educate your campus about what foods are available in season and how they can work to get those foods in their dining hall.

FAIR TRADE TEA PARTY: Invite people over and make fair trade goodies, like marmalade or scones with fair trade sugar, cookies with fair trade chocolate, or fruit salad with fair trade bananas. Then sit around and discuss fair trade or listen to a presentation while eating and drinking your goodies.

FAIR FOOD FRIDAY: ...or Monday, or Tuesday… take some time to prepare a simple, easily-transportable (burritos are a good option) food item using fair ingredients. Pass them out on campus as a quick, free alternative to fast food, along with flyers or other literature explaining what you’re doing and why.

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