Nicholas Benard
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Phone: 602-496-7927
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Mail code: 8204Campus: Tempe
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Nick's passion has always been to better understand food and the culture and history behind it, which has been a continuous work of education and discovery. After graduating from Penn State, he worked in purchasing for a specialty food and cheese importer for almost nine years. While there, he became fascinated with traditional foodways, which brought him to stage at butcher shops in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and learn on-farm slaughter and seam butchery from Christoph Wiesner, President of the Austrian Mangalitza Pig Breeders Union. In 2014, he began to work in professional kitchens, specializing in butchery, charcuterie, and inventory management. Over the years he built several long-standing relationships with local farmers and ranchers, which led to Nick delivering on-farm workshops on topics including raw-milk cheesemaking and whole hog butchery. He lives in Glendale, Arizona, with his wife, daughter, and two dogs. In his free time he likes to tend to their small backyard food forest.
- MS, Sustainable Food Systems, Arizona State University
- BA, English, Penn State University
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Bellon, M. R., Benard, N., Coghlan, J. E., & Merrigan, K. (2025). Towards a More Holistic Comparative Assessment of Plant-Based Alternative Beverages and Dairy Milk: A True Cost Accounting Approach. Foods, 14(13), 2196. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods14132196
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Bellon, M. R., Benard, N., Vizcaino, M., Merrigan, K., & Wharton, C. (2024). True Cost Accounting Using Life Cycle Assessment Methods and Data: A Case Study Comparing Palm, Rapeseed, and Coconut Oils for Sustainability and Nutrition. Sustainability, 16(23), 10366. https://doi.org/10.3390/su162310366
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Benard, N., S. Lip, E. Ross, M. Ryan and K. Seybold. (2022) Sustainability Ranking and Certification Systems in Higher Education Food Service. Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems, Arizona State University. (link)
- Bellon, M. R., Hanley, C. M., Jablonski, B. B. R., Jablonski, K., Garry, F., Rhodes, R., Natarajan, M., Benard, N., & Merrigan, K. (2024). Assessing the contribution of nonmarket factors to the market value generated by cow-calf operations in rangelands of the western USA: A true cost accounting approach. PLOS ONE, 19(5), e0296665. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296665