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Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm

The Centre for Sustainable Food Systems stewards the UBC Farm, the last working farm in Vancouver. Comprising 24 hectares of cultivated fields, teaching gardens, orchard plantings and hedgerows, the Farm is a unique place for learning, research and community education. Concern about the safety and sustainability of our food supply and growing popularity of both local and organic foods make the Farm a valuable resource for UBC and the community.

Here are a few of the projects that would benefit from donor support:

Sowing the Seeds for the Future

For the past two years, The Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm has offered aspiring growers, educators and agricultural professionals the opportunity to further their education through a practicum in sustainable agriculture.

The Sowing Seeds for the Future program is a part-time, eight month practicum that offers instruction and daily work experience in small-scale sustainable farm management. In a balanced, hands-on learning approach, students work alongside staff in the greenhouse, gardens, fields, and orchard, and attend lectures, demonstrations, and visits to other local farms. They also participate in a variety of practical and reflective educational activities.

“This Program offers students the opportunity to develop skills through daily and seasonal activities like planning, production, crop care, harvesting and marketing,” said Mark Bomford, the Centre’s Director.

The program runs from March until November. During the growing season, the students spend between 7-21 hours a week on the 24 hectare UBC Farm, gaining experience in the production and direct marketing of a wide range of horticultural crop and animal enterprises in a mixed farm setting.

Brittany Buchanan, one of ten students enrolled in this year’s program, has been blogging about her experience as part of her directed-studies learning objective.

“Being a farmer is hard work,’ she said. “It’s a job that demands a huge breadth of skills and knowledge. I wanted to learn more about the inter-workings of an organic farm system, and this program seemed like a good fit for me.”

To read more about Brittany’s experience in the Sowing the Seeds for the Future program, visit http://blogs.landfood.ubc.ca/bbuchanan/2010/04/

Urban Aboriginal Community Kitchen Garden Project

The Urban Aboriginal Community Garden Kitchen Project was founded to help combat high rates of diabetes, and other health and wellness issues, in First Nations communities. In this project, the interdependence of individual, community and ecosystem health come to life.

Participants prepare wholesome feasts with food they have grown at UBC Farm. They gain practical skills and a deeper connection to both the land and each other. The project works most closely with the Musqueam, but increasingly other coastal communities have come to the UBC Farm to preserve their salmon catch in the new smoke house built by a class of UBC Civil Engineering students.

The project has also reached out to residents of the Downtown Eastside with great success. In 2009, more than 700 people from that community made the trek to UBC Farm to participate in the project.

Please visit the UBC Farm website for more information.