By Doug Bennett

“Join me in a project I’ve long been planning, a Road-Kill Cuisine Club,” wrote Tom Hamm (historian/archivist extraordinaire) in response to my April 1 message about a move to eating locally in Saga (beets, lima beans and Brussels sprouts).

He added, “If interest is sufficient, I’m thinking of opening a restaurant along these lines, to be housed in the former Mr. Happy Burger building in Elwood, Ind. It’s between a monument company and rendering plant, a prime location.”

His was among the best of many responses to my message that went considerably further out the same limb. John Iverson suggested we eat “tortoise rigor mortis,” and several that we consider possum stew.

Amy Mulnix urged we reduce chemical contamination by having students hand pick pests off the plants, and then recycle the pests as laboratory subjects in cell physiology.

Derric Watson thought we should crush the pests, add sap from local trees and market a new yummy protein paste called, not Vegemite but “Earlhamite.”

Andrew Sloin urged us to grow potatoes and onions as well as beets so we can “finally introduce our new minor in Borscht Studies.”

But Jay Roberts voiced well what a number of others echoed: “The ‘sad’ part of all of this is that most of these are actually really good ideas … April Fools?” And one student declared the prank unfunny because we should be moving in the direction of local produce, shouldn’t we? This is not an appropriate moment for humor, she said, but rather for hard work.

In this case, I believe we can have our vegetables and eat them, too: we can laugh about our ideals and also work to live up to them. But it will take hard work over many years.

Like most colleges and universities, we don’t run our own food service. Why? Because it takes a particular kind of expertise that we aren’t good at. Our talents are in teaching and learning.

Every few years we accept bids from a number of companies who want to provide our food service. We currently outsource our food service to Sodexo, a global corporation in food and facilities management.

Sodexo has been responsive to Earlham’s sustainability initiatives. They cooperate with us on composting and recycling, they have worked with us in going trayless and they have even increased purchases of local produce.

To go further with local produce, Sodexo reasonably tells us, will require many more farms growing produce locally, farms that meet their appropriately high standards. Given what’s grown locally today, they are about at the limit of what they can obtain for Earlham nearby.

Going further with local produce is likely to require no less than a revolution in patterns of agriculture around us. We cannot begin to grow enough food on Earlham’s own land, so we will have to change the practices of local farmers, wholesalers, agricultural supply firms, supermarkets, other institutional purchasers of food (the hospital? K-12 schools? etc.) and much more. Land near Richmond that has for decades been planted in corn and soybeans will have to be redirected to growing fruits and vegetables.

Could that redirection of land use happen? Yes. Could Earlham be part of that? Yes, and we should. But we will need allies and partners working with us: others in Richmond and Wayne County who will also want to bring about a transformation in agriculture in this region.

Earlham will bring to this work our impatience to make the change quickly, and we will bring some expertise and buying power. But we will need to respect what others can bring as well: their expertise and their needs.

Those who own land locally will want to know that they can succeed financially if they convert to growing fruits and vegetables. They will want to know who they can rely on for advice and assistance as they make the change. Most of the technical assistance for farmers available today in East Central Indiana supports corn and soybean agriculture, not produce.

Like most social change, this will be hard work, but rewarding and life affirming. Shall we get started?