UC Davis Student Farm Helping Feed Students Hit By Tuition Hikes, Budget Cuts
DAVIS (CBS13) — UC Davis students in need have a place to get food donations, but up until recently, the food bag only contained nonperishable items.
Students working at the UC Davis Student Farm have changed that.
"Produce is expensive in Davis, unfortunately, even though we are such a big ag community," said Kiko Barr.
The pantry was created in 2011 when budget cuts and tuition hikes hit students hard. Until recently they were only able to get boxed and canned foods.
Barr and a couple of her coworkers on the farm realized some of what they grow goes to waste, and could instead be offered to the pantry.
"A lot of times, because we are students, we're still learning about harvesting," she said. "There's either overharvesting or harvesting of the wrong kind of things. If that's not taken home it gets composted."
Students running the program called Fresh Focus harvest 20 to 40 pounds of surplus and misshapen fruits and vegetables twice a week for the pantry.
"Many students will get full bags full of them and they're just so excited because, you know, a lot of these food items are items they would probably never get otherwise," said pantry operations director Misbah Husain.
Students can get the produce on top of what they would normally get from the pantry.
"It's very cool for them to see, you know, eggplant. maybe they've never had eggplant before. and we can tell them, 'This is how you prepare this.' It's been very very positive so far."
The school says it distributed food for 18,000 meals last academic year.
