In a town of fast-food restaurants, Starbucks runs and energy drinks, SUNY Fredonia has the potential to leave the trends behind and begin to make the community healthier.

Sustainable food is the key to happier campus members, and eating locally and seasonally is the best way to support our farmers, our nutritional health and, in the long run, our wallets. According to an article published in July 2024 by the American Heart Association, “Having to pay for those transport fees, the refrigeration fees, all of those things… really add up and can make the out-of-season foods more expensive.”

Fredonia is located within a 50-mile radius of some of the most farm-heavy counties on this side of the state, yet places such as Sonic and McDonald’s have lines often overflowing onto the main road. How can the campus compete with the ease and prices of off-campus options?

Locally grown and seasonally harvested produce impacts the community in several ways. First and foremost, when produce is distributed within the community, it is typically harvested at peak freshness and eaten within a few hours or within a day or two afterward. This is a stark contrast to produce that is harvested underripe, shipped hundreds or thousands of miles and ripened in transit. Additionally, produce decreases in nutrient density post-harvest, which means that when this so-called “fresh produce” is shipped for weeks before reaching the consumer, it is almost void of nutrients by the time it hits the consumer. Another factor of local produce is that it is dependent on our local climate, which is important because our bodies need certain nutrients based on the different times of the year. For instance, one of the only crops that grows well in our cold Western New York winters is spinach, rich in vitamin C and iron; perfect for the season when our bodies need them most.

From a campus and community perspective, competing with convenience is the biggest drawback of the drive for more locally grown produce. College students are the up-and-coming generation of adults in any community; they are going to hold the power of their wallets or the consumer purchasing power. They have the influence to prop up local businesses and farms in their area and the capacity to make a stand against corporations that take the value out of their towns and cities. How the younger generation decides to spend their money has a ripple effect that can be both positive and negative for our local communities and local economies.

Wendell Maggitti, owner of Maggitti Farms in Fredonia, shared his perspective on the complexities of this “community versus corporation” dynamic in an April 2026 interview. “Wealth extraction by corporations is a big reason why small towns and small businesses are going bankrupt all over America.The industrial food industry is just one of the ways corporations are extracting this wealth from our local farmers and communities,” said Maggitti.

The SUNY system adopted an important initiative in 2025 to support climate and sustainability efforts. The 2025 SUNY Climate and Sustainability Action Plan asks all 64 SUNY campuses to aim for “30% of food purchased [and] produced in New York State.” Following this, Jordan Stephens, then-president of the Fredonia student club FredGrows, met with members of the Faculty Student Association (FSA), the non-profit corporation responsible for food service on campus, to discuss integrating local foods. He worked with Dean Messina, director of FSA Dining Services, hoping the campus could work toward sourcing the 30% target identified in SUNY’s initiative.

In an April interview, Messina shed more light on the plans that were discussed in May 2025. He stated that all of FSA’s ingredients are sourced from Maplevale Farms Inc., and 4% is purchased during the warmer months from Brigiotta’s Farmland Produce in Jamestown. Purchasing from a local business is a sustainable practice, but according to Brigiotta’s wholesale website, “the seasonality in our region requires us to purchase from farms across North America, (but) we have (a) strong commitment to purchasing locally,” a statement that doesn’t align with the SUNY action plan.

The window for more locally sourced produce is very short, as the demand for out-of-season ingredients is unattainable in the non-summer months. This very reason is why, as Messina puts it, our campus hasn’t been able to make the changes that the action plan urges to be implemented by 2027. He additionally attributes the overall hesitance to change being more student-driven than facility-driven. In the past, seasonal options were integrated into the menu but were taken off after a display of low interest. Furthermore, options at cafes and Willy C’s are meant to be stationary, he said, to encourage the default use of Cranston Marché.

Beyond sustainable food, the topic of quality was brought up often in the conversation, as many students are unsatisfied with the food options, enough so to submit formal complaints to FSA every semester. Messina said he believes, “it is more of a consistency problem than a quality problem.” He said that with the majority of FSA workers being students, it can be difficult to have the same level of preparation quality across the board, and he admits that FSA needs to be better at training its student employees. Furthermore, the management at Willy C’s, for example, has recently turned over, and he hopes that improvements will follow. When asked why catered meals seem to be of better quality, such as dinners hosted in the Horizon Room of the Williams Center, he assured again that it is a consistency issue. Certain people, he said, such as Jeffrey Walter, FSA’s Catering Manager, go above and beyond to provide a dining experience, which is why the feel of the meals may seem different, although ingredients are the same.

The interview with Messina ended on one positive note that students, faculty and staff alike can look forward to in the upcoming semesters. With hopes of expanding the student body’s palate, Messina agreed to work alongside Student Government Association to bring monthly “special dinner” nights to campus, and he expressed interest in restarting the pop-up cooking classes that he used to run. As student opinion and demand are what he believes will help shape the future of Fredonia’s food options, he also agreed to have SGA monitor the interest levels to gauge how willing students are to eat more diverse dishes.

Though a compelling argument, is it really the fault of the students’ palates that are holding FSA back from making sustainable changes? Maybe, but it is also no secret that Fredonia’s deficit affects the budget of every department on campus; a barrier that FSA is not immune to either, despite being a non-profit separate from the university. Low enrollment harms meal plan purchases, the very thing that keeps FSA running, and more desirable off-campus options add to that harm.

The closing of Erie Hall in 2013 was just the start of a reduced approach to dining services, and yet again, as stated by FSA Executive Director Darin Schulz, “[it] was strictly an economic decision.” During the Fall 2022 semester, the campus would lose Tim Hortons, the Blue Devil Grill and FREDExpress. The Leader documented these closures and the declining dining options for students, especially post-pandemic, in a series of stories from 2013 to 2022. One article stated, “The reasoning behind these closures is quite simple: FSA was created to serve Fredonia students, and the fewer students there are — due to low enrollment — the less money there is to fund FSA.”

With these “economic decisions” bleeding into the hesitance of local produce purchases, Maggitti says, “The argument of ‘local food being too expensive’ from the higher-ups on campus is only seeing the very immediate bottom lines and is neglecting to have foresight into the impact that promoting local food in their dining halls could have for growth within the student population.”

The competition that the university faces with off-campus dining options can be attributed to convenience, but also FSA’s unwillingness to enact change. Even if in some cases off-campus fast food is of worse quality, it is cheaper and often significantly faster than the on-campus offerings. On the flip side, students often frequent places like Upper Crust or other higher-cost businesses because they’d rather spend their money on better-tasting food than purchase a meal plan with infrequent menu updates. Nonetheless, it begs the question, is it FSA’s job to take responsibility, or the students’ taste buds to reject soggy French fries and protest louder?

Giulianna Lalomio is a senior writing major at the State University of New York at Fredonia.