It’s an arduous journey from farm to plate.

The average vegetable travels 3,000 miles to your dining hall, spending up to a year locked in near-freezing storage chambers. By contrast, the diced squash served in the dining hall last Friday was raised on a small New England farm less than 250 miles from campus.

As households nationwide increasingly turn to local farms for their produce, Harvard undergraduates are lobbying for more culinary choice. But Harvard still lags behind some of its peers in serving up locally grown food.

Jessica S. Zdeb ’04, coordinator of the Food Literacy Project run by Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS), said that more students are aware of local foods this year.

“This fall is the first time people have been very interested,” Zdeb said. “I think food and the environment are just in a bigger place in the news right now.”

Just a few weeks ago, students munched on locally grown organic apples in the Thayer Hall basement to plan the campaign for Slow Food Harvard, a new group that aims to promote sustainable eating habits among students.

“It’s a cause that people come at from the environmental side, from a gourmet side, from a labor side,” said founder Francesca T. Gilberti ’10, who is also a Crimson magazine editor. “It’s all-inclusive.”

LOCAVORES UNITE

Popularized as the “locavore” movement, the trend of buying local has swept the nation over the past several years. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of farmer’s markets across the country grew by more than 7 percent between 2005 and 2006.

“It’s one of the biggest food trends I’ve seen in my lifetime,” said Mollie Katzen, a bestselling cookbook author and adviser to HUDS.

Katzen pointed to both culinary and environmental benefits of eating local, since produce shipped from far away is usually picked before it’s ripe and requires the use of fossil fuels for transport.

Eating freshly picked produce brings nutritional benefits as well. Vitamin C and other antioxidants break down quickly after harvest, according to Lilian W.Y. Cheung, lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Cheung said that the storage methods involved in shipping over long distances can decrease vitamin C content in green peas by 15 percent and by 77 percent for green beans.

HUDS made buying local products a priority five years ago in an effort to connect students with the origins of their food, to become more environmentally sustainable, and to support local businesses. HUDS defines local farms as those situated less than 250 miles away from campus.

“I think we’ve come to a greater understanding as a populace about why local is valuable: the environmental impacts, keeping money in the region, continuing to support the regional character of the land,” said Crista Martin, director for marketing and communications for HUDS. “Where appropriate, we always source locally.”

FROM FARM TO FAS

During the fall, local growers supply HUDS with one-third of its produce, including apples, cranberries, squash, and potatoes, according to Zdeb.

In the early spring, only 6 percent of HUDS food is produced by local farms because harsh New England winters limit what can be grown.

HUDS receive cartons upon cartons of local produce from Costa Fruit and Produce Co. Instead of relying on smaller farms in New England to meet Harvard’s 25,000-meals-a-day demands, HUDS turned to Costa to send loaded trucks from its 24-hour warehouse in Boston to Harvard’s dining halls every morning.

While there are significant benefits to local produce, it is often 10 to 15 percent more expensive than goods bought from conventional sources because of the limited scale of their operations, according to Barry T. Milanese, director of sales and marketing at Costa.

For example, this year Harvard looked into buying local beef for the grill once a week, a decision which would cost $100,000 more per year, according to HUDS data.

But despite operational challenges and high prices, local farmer Jim S. Wilson, who supplies produce to Costa, is optimistic about the prospects of the local movement.

“The interest in local foods is tremendous,” Wilson said. “People are understanding that local produce is more in touch with you, and more healthful.”

NOT A ‘TOP PRIORITY’

While the locavore trend is gaining traction on campus, students at Harvard still appear to be less active in these efforts compared to their peers at some other universities.

The Yale Sustainable Food Project, for example, runs an organic farm partially staffed by student interns that provides produce for some student events and a New Haven restaurant.

At Middlebury College in Vermont, 30 percent of the College’s food comes from within the state, according to Middlebury’s 2007 Sustainability Report Card.

“Other students are more active on their campuses, working with their dining services, going out and researching farms, and figuring out how much more it’s going to cost to change something,” Zdeb said.

A HUDS survey this fall found that only 17.1 percent of Harvard students said that offering local foods was a “top priority” for them.

Jeremy R. Steinemann ’08 said he has noticed HUDS efforts, but that he has not seen a tangible difference.

“I think it’s important because it supports the local economy, it means you’re not wasting energy,” Steinemann said. “But at the same time, I don’t think it has any effect on the taste or quality of food.”

Ted A. Mayer, executive director of HUDS, said that student preferences and choices are important to the success of HUDS initiatives.

“You can increase the number of local products, but are our students really willing to eat squash seven days a week for three or four months?” he asked. “Part of the Food Literacy Project is to, along with listening to student interests, [let] students know what’s going on.”