FSNE’s Home at UNH

 

An overhead view of Thompson Hall at the University of New HampshireDid you know that Food Solutions New England, New Hampshire Food Alliance, and New Hampshire Farm to school are all coordinated by the University of New Hampshire Sustainability Institute?

Food Solutions New England (FSNE) emerged in 2010 as a six-state network coordinated by the UNH Sustainability Institute in Durham, New Hampshire. FSNE continues to call the Sustainability Institute our home and we are proud of the University’s ongoing leadership on food, fisheries, and agriculture issues in our region in the domains of education, research, and community engagement.

The UNH Sustainability Institute embraced a comprehensive definition of “sustainability,” from its inception in 1997, that would come to include food and culture just as strongly as the ecological dimensions of the sustainability field.  When FSNE launched as a network and hosted the first New England Food Summit in 2011, the Institute had already been instrumental in helping to develop UNH’s Ecogastronomy program, helping to organize an organic dairy initiative on campus, and designing and hosting many food and culture events during its first decade.

A UNH Sustainability Institute graphic of the core tenets of sustainability

Today, networks like Food Solutions New England, the New Hampshire Food Alliance, and New Hampshire Farm to School enjoy many advantages from being part of the UNH family and from the University’s support for building just, sustainable, and resilient food systems across our region.

  • We are able to connect with cutting-edge research efforts and scholars in food-related fields such as nutrition, business, agriculture, fisheries, natural resources, and policy.
  • Our projects benefit from the participation of undergraduate and graduate students as interns, researchers, fellows, and  “Semester in the City” program participants. 
  • Project staff experience peer-to-peer collaboration across all the Institute-hosted networks and projects which creates synergies and innovations that would not be possible if we were not collectively hosted and coordinated at UNH.
  • Being based at UNH means our projects benefit from a level of organizational and administrative stability without having to dedicate resources to creating and maintaining stand-alone legal or fiduciary entities to meet our networks’ food system goals.
  • In recognition of its commitment to a just food system transformation, the UNH Sustainability Institute continues to provide in-kind support to our projects in the form of office and administrative infrastructure, some staff time, and access to university benefits and amenities that aid in staff recruitment, wellbeing, and retention. All other programmatic costs are covered by FSNE fundraising efforts.