Press Releases

Agriculture Commissioner James Comer speaks to students and dignitaries during a ceremony to induct Asbury University into the Kentucky Proud Farm to Campus Program. (Kentucky Department of Agriculture photo)

 

Commissioner Comer welcomes Asbury University into Kentucky Proud Farm to Campus Program

For Immediate Release
Thursday, October 10, 2013
For more information contact:
Ted Sloan
(502) 564-1138
Brad Johnson
(859) 553-3797

WILMORE, Ky. — Asbury University became the first private institution of higher learning in Kentucky to enter the Kentucky Proud Farm to Campus Program in a ceremony today in front of the school’s Johnson Cafeteria.

“By your university being committed to buying more local products, that helps our economy, and that helps build the infrastructure for family farmers to get started in the business of food production,” Agriculture Commissioner James Comer said. “On behalf of all the farmers in the state of Kentucky, I want to say a big ‘thank you’ to Asbury University for being our newest university in the Farm to Campus initiative.”

“Asbury University and Pioneer College Caterers, our food service, are together making an institutional commitment to buy more locally and to serve more Kentucky Proud products in our cafeteria,” Asbury President Sandra Gray said. “Locally produced food is fresher and healthier and, as an institution, we want to help promote healthy eating for our campus community and emphasize the importance of being good stewards — being good stewards of our bodies, and being good stewards of the environment.”

Commissioner Comer said Asbury’s entry into the Farm to Campus Program helps the local economy by keeping more food dollars in the community while enabling Asbury to serve more healthy local foods to its students, faculty, and staff.

Asbury joins Eastern Kentucky University, the University of Louisville, and Morehead State University as members of the Farm to Campus Program. More announcements are planned later this year at other Kentucky colleges and universities.

Under the Farm to Campus program, the Kentucky Department of Agriculture partners with Kentucky colleges and universities to help with their buy-local efforts. Over the next two years, the department will target college campuses to put more shelf-stable Kentucky Proud products in their bookstores and gift shops, and more farm-fresh Kentucky Proud products in their cafeterias and food service systems.