The process food goes through before it arrives at the grocery store is crucial for consumers to understand if they would like to lead a healthy lifestyle, according to members of Assistant Professor Michael Martin’s AGED 330 class.

The class hosted an event Tuesday on the Lory Student Center plaza to educate the Colorado State University community on the production of food. AGED students and members of agricultural clubs came together to answer any questions that people passing may have relating food.

Brett Arnusch, a sophomore agricultural education major and a member of the AGED 330 class, helped organize the event.

“We just wanted to be the administrators that brought all of the ag groups together,” Arnusch said. “If we group as many clubs and as many agricultural groups as we can together, we can actually have a very large voice.”

The class voted on several ideas mid-semester to educate their peers on the food they eat. Since then, the class has worked to bring all the different agricultural clubs together.

“This was a class-driven project,” Martin said. “We had thrown on the board some ideas that we wanted to do related to this. They had this idea and we took a vote, and this was the class idea that won.”

Initially, the class planned on having Cam the Ram with them on the plaza to help attract students.

“It turned out to be smaller due to weather, but we just wanted to show the non-ag students at CSU what’s actually going on in agriculture,” Martin said.

The idea of the project was to look at food production from a new angle: Rather than asking yourself how certain foods ended up on your table, think about how they were produced and in term where they are being shipped from.

“A lot of people talk about farm to table, right now we’re taking the approach of table to farm,” Martin said. “We think it’s an interesting way to have a discussion with people who may not know a lot about production ag, but know a lot about food.”

Several groups ran booths on the plaza to reach out to students. Representatives from the CSU Collegiate Farm Bureau Chapter, Alpha Gamma Rho, Ag Ed Alliance and the CSU Agronomy Club came together to provide nutritional education.

Macy Child, a junior studying soil and crop sciences, represented Ag Ed Alliance as she answered student questions about hormones, pesticides and anything else regarding food.

“We’re here to inform the students and anyone on campus about where their food comes from,” Child said. “It’s a little more in-depth and kind of a backwards twist on what people think is in their food and what actually is.”

Collegian Reporter Veronica Baas can be reached at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @vcbaas.