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The brightly colored mural of farmers loading fresh fruits and vegetables onto a train illustrates the mission of the city’s newest food co-op: to provide healthful alternatives to junk food while educating the UC Berkeley community about the benefits of sustainable agriculture.

The Berkeley Student Food Collective, where the mural is painted, recently opened across the street from campus on Bancroft Way.

The store is small but has big aspirations. It wants to inform its customers about the environmental, social and political issues related to food, and it hopes to inspire similar student-run food collectives at campuses across the country.

“The idea is for this to be a living classroom,” said Alex Stone, who graduated from UC Berkeley in 2009 and manages the store. She said plans are under way to bring local farmers to the store to discuss their growing and labor practices with customers.

“It’s important to get people to connect with their food and where it’s coming from,” said Stone. “Do you really want to eat chocolate that was raised with child labor?”

Shoppers at the co-op can drink a 50-cent cup of fair-trade coffee while buying fresh produce – all grown within 150 miles – Straus bottled milk, organic eggs and juices, bulk grains and prepared sandwiches. The store will remain vegetarian until it finds a supplier that meets its standards of providing locally and humanely raised meat at an affordable price.

“We want to offer healthy products that are sustainable for everyone involved, including the people who are consuming them, the people who are raising them, the animals and our planet,” said Stone.