Throughout the country, colleges are receiving pressure from students to provide local, natural food options in their dining halls. MU is just one of those colleges.

We applaud the Missouri Students Association for pushing for incorporation of natural foods from local venues, and we applaud Campus Dining Services for actively seeking and receiving such suggestions. The MU Sustainability Office and groups such as Sustain Mizzou have also done well to push for sustainability in CDS operations.

This trend marks a great, positive step forward for the health of students the environmental sustainability of the community. Presently, CDS purchases approximately 15 percent of the food it provides from local sources.

If you’ve tried the beef provided by the local company Legacy Beef and served at the Pavilion at Dobbs, you’ve noticed the sizable difference in quality between Dobbs’ beef and Plaza 900’s beef.

This is just one example of how local food — which often tastes better, is healthier for you and more sustainable for the environment — is being provided by CDS. Yet we ask if Legacy Beef comprises the entire 15 percent previously mentioned because, if not, letting students know where the local food comes from will make great strides in creating a pro-local food campus.

With the arrival of the Real Food Challenge, a national student organization movement working to promote the usage of “real” food on college campuses, now is an opportune moment for students to push for even more locally grown food. The Real Food organization has explained its goal for MU’s dining halls to increase the percentage of locally grown food to 20 percent by the year 2020.

Although CDS might reach that goal, the initiative doesn’t have to stop there — but it does have to start with students.

As supportive of sustainability and local food as CDS might be, it does need to run as a business to function and will therefore ultimately make decisions based on what its consumers want. We, the students and consumers, must advocate for locally grown food if we want to eat it.

We’ve seen how responsive CDS is to MSA. If you are in favor, support the local food initiative and let CDS know just how much you think locally grown food can help the community.