Old McHarvard had a farm
I was leafing through the latest version of Harvard's Allston development plans when I came across some elegant color renderings of a farm. It's all very bucolic: fat macoun apples dandling from leafy branches; carefully manicured rows of Brussels sprouts and cabbages; serried lines of fruit trees stretching into the horizon. Peachy!
The notion of a Harvard farm has been kicking around for a few years and has not been officially approved. "Right now it's just a concept of what a 21st-century sustainable landscape would look like," explains spokeswoman Lauren Marshall. "We're thinking of a one-acre orchard and a one-acre garden, as part of a greenway that would return some of the urban landscape to its natural vegetational state."
Sustainable is the mot du jour at Harvard, where president Drew Faust has been marching in lockstep with Green Grad Number One Al Gore. Just last week Gore was on campus, braying that "Crimson is the new green" to anyone who would listen. (Speaking of food, isn't it good to see that Al has ditched the Atkins diet? He's looking more substantial every day.)
Here's the exchange I imagine taking place inside Massachusetts Hall, the throbbing omphalos of power at the World's Greatest University:
President Faust: Well, we can either give [famed stem cell researcher Doug Melton] another 200,000 square feet to cure diabetes, or we can grow organic bell peppers for rich kids from Lake Forest and Shaker Heights.
Chorus of faceless minions: Bell peppers! Bell peppers!
Faust: In Allston, we have a choice - We can build a special museum wing for the priceless artwork that Mrs. Pulitzer gave us, or we can raise goats in a dung-filled hollow to make artisanal cheese.
Minions: Artisanal cheese! Artisanal cheese!
If Harvard had any economists in its employ - any economists who weren't upsucking 24/7 for a job in the Obama administration, that is - these experts might explain the folly of trying to grow food on expensive urban land. (See: doctrine of utility and substitution; "highest and best use," etc.) If they had any climatologists not busy penning op-eds decrying global warming, these experts might explain the folly of expecting the New England climate to produce food, year-round. If they knew anything about Allston, they might remember that the neighborhood's shuttered body shops made it the world capital of midnight dumping.
But I digress.
Here's the part that really grates: Yale.
Down at the World's Second Greatest University, thanks to some savvy footwork by the admissions office - they accepted the daughter of Berkeley-based food goddess Alice Waters - they've been drowning in free publicity for their Sustainable Food Project and on-campus farm. The Atlantic eulogized Yale's innovative cuisine in 2004: "Even the chicken breasts taste like chicken." The New York Times quickly piled on, marveling at Yale's "fair-trade coffee and . . . fresh-cut potato chips from organic potatoes grown in Connecticut." USA Today even found a student who picked Yale over Harvard because of W2GU's commitment to sustainable agriculture. Talk about yield!
As it happens, it was idealistic Harvard grads who traveled to area code 203 to put the Yale project in the ground. "I needed to come to Yale to start this program," says the university's sustainability director Melina Shannon-DiPietro, who graduated from Harvard in 2000. About a hundred Yalies till the university's one-acre demonstration farm behind the Forestry School. "Lots of Harvard students come here to visit," says DiPietro, who adds, graciously: "We're certainly prepared to help them get their own farm up and running."
One thing is for certain: These kids are eating well. Harvard Dining Services, which makes up to 25,000 meals daily, is more than equal to the task of alimenting the Whole Foods generation. HDS serves only "cage-free, organic, locally raised and certified humane" shell eggs from Monroe, N.H.; yes, artisanal cheeses from New England; Bear Naked granola; Tommy's natural sodas from Brighton; and so on.
Yale brings plenty of artillery to bear in this academic farms race: They've got certified organic salsa, Vincent Kay's Swords Into Ploughshares honey, and "ecologically grown apples and pears."
All for only $50,000 a year! With a side helping of education.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 