Home Place Pastures
In January of 2023, Ole Miss Dining embarked in a new partnership with Home Place Pastures in Como, MS, bringing a whole-animal purchasing program to campus. The Ole Miss Dining and Home Place partnership supports the University of Mississippi's mission of providing a transformative educational experience for its students that fosters intellectual growth and personal development by cultivating a premium, socially, and environmentally sustainable dining experience that promotes the growth and well-being of its students and campus community.
Home Place Pastures is a fifth-generation farm, just 30 miles from the University of Mississippi campus. The company produces grass-fed beef, pastured pork, and pastured eggs without using antibiotics, and operates an on-farm USDA inspected processing facility. Home Place Pastures is among a small number of vertically integrated beef and pork farms in the US who raises and finishes livestock on site under strict federal inspection.
Home Place Pastures is not only 30 miles away, which greatly reduces the carbon footprint of Ole Miss Dining's food procurement, but the farm also practices regenerative agriculture. By not using synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, and prioritizing soil health and animal welfare, the farm tout's a growing body of research to suggest its production practices sequester more carbon through enhanced photosynthesis and composting than the farm emits.
Ole Miss Dining sources two whole pigs and one cow every two weeks (approximately 36,000 lbs. of protein per year) directly from the farm. Our program with Home Place has had a significant impact on our local sourcing volume and carbon footprint. We can measure this not only in terms of percent of meat purchased, but also the impact the program has had on the farm, which supports a network of small regenerative farms producing grass fed beef and pastured pork, and the jobs that this local business creates and sustains in our northwest MS community.
Through this innovative partnership, Ole Miss Dining and Home Place Pastures are proving that closing the loop in local food systems is not only viable, but crucial for the health and well-being of our livestock, farmland, and local economy. We can feed our next generation of scholars and leaders with healthy food that is grown, processed, and packaged right here in Mississippi, adding value to family farms, and creating jobs at each step of the process. It takes commitment, dedicated partners, and a lot of work, but we hope to use this model to create similar opportunities in our food system across the region.
Home Place Pastures is a fifth-generation farm, just 30 miles from the University of Mississippi campus. The company produces grass-fed beef, pastured pork, and pastured eggs without using antibiotics, and operates an on-farm USDA inspected processing facility. Home Place Pastures is among a small number of vertically integrated beef and pork farms in the US who raises and finishes livestock on site under strict federal inspection.
Home Place Pastures is not only 30 miles away, which greatly reduces the carbon footprint of Ole Miss Dining's food procurement, but the farm also practices regenerative agriculture. By not using synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, and prioritizing soil health and animal welfare, the farm tout's a growing body of research to suggest its production practices sequester more carbon through enhanced photosynthesis and composting than the farm emits.
Ole Miss Dining sources two whole pigs and one cow every two weeks (approximately 36,000 lbs. of protein per year) directly from the farm. Our program with Home Place has had a significant impact on our local sourcing volume and carbon footprint. We can measure this not only in terms of percent of meat purchased, but also the impact the program has had on the farm, which supports a network of small regenerative farms producing grass fed beef and pastured pork, and the jobs that this local business creates and sustains in our northwest MS community.
Through this innovative partnership, Ole Miss Dining and Home Place Pastures are proving that closing the loop in local food systems is not only viable, but crucial for the health and well-being of our livestock, farmland, and local economy. We can feed our next generation of scholars and leaders with healthy food that is grown, processed, and packaged right here in Mississippi, adding value to family farms, and creating jobs at each step of the process. It takes commitment, dedicated partners, and a lot of work, but we hope to use this model to create similar opportunities in our food system across the region.
