Current Initiatives
Veggie Donations
During our growing seasons, we regularly donate produce to various campus and community outlets. Community partners include Taproot Kitchen, an organization that provides work opportunities for adults with intellectual disabilities and uses gleaned local produce in their dishes. Campus partners like the Lion’s Pantry, Penn State’s student food bank, and White Course Apartments, Penn State family housing for students, ensures that students have access to Student Farm produce. By donating produce, we not only can get more food to more people but can help lessen waste on the farm caused by produce surpluses!
Food Recovery Network
Penn State’s Food Recovery Network (FRN) chapter was started in 2023 by four students who were interested in mitigating food waste in the dining halls and fighting food insecurity. A national organization with chapters all over the country, FRN aims to rescue meals leftover from dining hall services and give them to people who will use them. In just two semesters, our FRN team was able to recover over 2,500 meals and deliver them to student and community members who need them. Student volunteers pick up and deliver meals to campus and community partners, including the Lion’s Pantry, Abba Java (a free student coffeehouse), St. Andrew’s Community Café, and Out of the Cold homeless shelter. To learn more about FRN and get involved, visit their website!
Feed the People Market Stand
Our Feed the People Market stand is bringing fresh produce directly to campus for student, faculty and staff to enjoy all season long. The Dr. Keiko Miwa Ross Student Farm and the Lion’s pantry partnered to offer a pay-what-you-can farmers market that was set up in the HUB Main Lounge every Wednesday this past semester. Meaning, no payment is required but customers are invited to pay what they can using cash, check or LionCash. Produce varies throughout the year but typically vegetables such as lettuce, zucchini, tomatoes, chives, herbs, and squash are sold here. The farm stand is a part of Penn State’s greater mission of eliminating nutrition concerns among the campus community.
Meals on Wheels of State College
The Sustainable Food Systems Network established a new partnership with Meals on Wheels in 2019. State College Area Meals on Wheels prepares and delivers nutritious, affordable meals to the elderly and disabled living within the State College School District to help maintain their quality of life and allow them to remain in their own homes. Our former AmeriCorps member Emma Keele is featured working on this project.
Our bucket gardens project was started in 2019 and has continued through 2023. Student Farm members grew seedlings on campus for Meals on Wheels participants to select and have delivered to their homes in five-gallon buckets. Each recipient got to choose between a tomato, pepper, or zinnia plant. Check out this great article on Statecollege.com about the impact the bucket gardens have had on the recipients. We are so thrilled to be able to support our community in such small but mighty ways!
Youth Education
Our Youth Education Project Team allows students to engage with local children and discuss topics that are at the root of the Student Farm’s mission at Penn State. We strive to provide classes with educational, hands-on activities that will help them to be more aware of where their food comes from and the choices that they’re making, because they are the future of the planet and its prosperity. Using the Farm and our experiences with it as teaching tools, we can demonstrate these topics, and many others, to the youth of our community. Our youth ed team also works to support local school gardens and growing spaces by donating seedlings each spring and summer.
You can learn more about our youth education programs in the blog posts below.
- Elementary Educational Programing
- 5th and 6th Grade Sustainability Education
- Volunteering at a PASA Conference
If you are a school or group interested in an interactive farm tour, a presentation in the classroom, or both, we have lectures that include topics such as agroecology, vermiculture, food waste, sustainability in agriculture, and mindfulness. Contact studentfarm@psu.edu to set up a tour.