GROW the ubc farm
HOW THE UBC FARM IS The UBC Farm aspires to the challenge of creating a more sustainable society. It seeks to accelerate conversations on how we can build sustainable food systems by exploring the links between theory and practice. By focusing on food production and the stewardship of our land and water, today’s Farm is emerging as an essential aspect of UBC’s leadership role in sustainability. The Faculty of Land and Food Systems manages and nurtures the Farm as part of its commitment to people. Students, researchers, and community members from all disciplines and backgrounds come to the Farm to integrate their knowledge with the search for sustainability solutions. The Farm is a living lab rooted in the real world, in real time, where results connect to real people.
UBC FARM: ROOTED IN UBC’S HISTORY
THE SHIFT TO SCIENCE
The UBC Farm’s century-long journey begins in the 1910s with the Faculty of Agriculture—one of the three founding faculties of UBC. Back then, the Faculty’s academic mandate was closely tied to the importance of farming and rural agriculture.
As UBC grew to accommodate the post-war boom of academic programs and facilities, the Farm moved to the southern end of campus.
The Faculty of Agriculture coordinated academic activities across various fields on the Point Grey campus and shaped the development of food and agriculture in the province. Researchers and students used the farm facilities extensively, including a dairy farm, a poultry plant, and a cheese factory—providing facilities for agronomy and food science courses.
Farms across Canada were consolidating, and industrialization changed agricultural practices. Many universities, including UBC, began to emphasize laboratory-based specializations and deemphasize farming. In response to this new focus on training scientists, the Faculty reorganized as the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences. By the late 1990s, activity on south campus had declined significantly. Dairy and avian research moved to Agassiz, BC, and old facilities were decommissioned.
CHANGING EVERYTHING We invite you to participate in a truly transformative initiative by supporting the Faculty’s top priority: The UBC Farm Centre with its focus on building sustainable food systems. Through the work of the Faculty and the Farm, UBC is made stronger as a key constituent in the global living lab movement, better able to announce its role in the world as a great place for nurturing learning, curiosity, and solutions on the future of food and the wellbeing of people. The Faculty and the Farm have come through tremendous change, grappling with some of the most complex issues of our time regarding how we will feed our growing populations. It’s time to join together by combining our talent and resources to create the next leap forward in the story of the Faculty, the Farm, and our future as engaged citizens.
REVISIONING THE FACULTY AND FARM
FROM THE GREAT FARM TREK TO TODAY’S UBC FARM
Researchers and students in the Faculty began to ask whether the focus on scientific paradigms could answer all of their questions on how we would live in the future. They transformed the fragmented fields of the Farm into a single farm and forest ecosystem to investigate and cultivate the Earth’s natural ability to sustain life.
When the Faculty asked students to believe that they could go out and change the world, they did. They looked to the Farm as a place to focus their own capacity for action and begin linking theory with practice.
The Faculty refocused its mandate and emerged in 2005 as the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, with a clear commitment to sustaining human and ecological health. It designed new programs to train new generations in building connections between people, food, and the earth’s natural resources.
Students initiated a campaign that called on the university to commit the 60-acre Farm site to green academic space. They successfully mobilized students, faculty and staff, community members, and various levels of government to imagine the future of food and what it would take to create sustainable food systems on a global scale. Because of their work, this area is now secured in perpetuity for the Farm and its academic programs, laying a solid foundation for the Farm’s future.
AND WILL CONTINUE TO
Record numbers of people are coming to the Farm to reconnect to the land. They look to the Farm as a natural partner in developing responses to the challenges in our food systems. Over the last 10 years, 15,000 students participated in hundreds of projects that helped them link classroom sustainability theory with hands-on practice. They came from eight faculties and 14 academic programs. In that same period, the Farm produced 275,000 pounds of food. In 2012 alone, the Farm attracted an additional 600 individuals who contributed more than 5,000 volunteer hours. They joined dozens of community groups that accessed the Farm as an expression of their concern for the sustainability of our food supplies.
TRANSFORM OUR WORLD
With your support, we can raise $20M and transform the vision of a new Farm Centre into reality. The UBC Farm is the improbable farm in the world city. It is the only working farm of its size in a top-tier research university. It inspires people to tap into its unique combination of academic programming rooted in real, land-based results. We have a opportunity to take this sacred space and create something truly spectacular for the benefit of communities around the world. It is now essential to build new facilities for the Farm to activate its role as a global partner in emerging dialogues on how to create sustainable food systems. By working together and combining our resources, we can engage communities in exploring the safety and security of our food systems and show how we can make the improbable, achievable.
FARM CENTR The Farm Centre will capture the heart, mind, and imagination of every person who walks through its doors. It will leverage the best of 21st-century technology with traditional, green building practices to create a unique space that will bridge historical, agricultural wisdom with cutting-edge research and practice. The Farm Centre will provide the conditions where students and the community integrate and apply deep sustainability knowledge with a value system that inspires action. Your commitment to the Farm Centre today can create truly transformative benefits tomorrow. We will be pleased to discuss with you how we can join together to fulfill this vision.
THE FARM WITHOUT BORDERS LEARNING CENTRE A journey through the Farm and the Farm Centre will be a feast of sights, sounds, smells, and tastes —a cascade of Aha! moments that will remind every visitor of their own connection to food, land, water, and each other. As visitors arrive, they will step into the Farm Without Borders Learning Centre where interactive panels will highlight current issues, events, and projects relating to sustainable food systems. Visitors will sample seasonal foods at the café and will take respite in the bright and spacious lobby after exploring the Farm. This will be the place to reflect on insights from the day’s visit with members of the Farm community who are also engaged with broadening their connection and understanding of the world’s land and food systems.
RE FEATURES Community Spaces
Indoor Learning Spaces
• Farm Without Borders Learning Centre
• Children’s Program Space
• Heart and Mind Kitchens
• Fresh Food Processing Area
• Dining Hall and Elders’ Nook
• Dry Food Processing Area • Farmer Training Program Practicum Classroom
Outdoor Learning Spaces
• 40-seat Classroom
• Market Area
• Graduate Student Lab
• Greenhouses
• Field Warm-Up Room and Volunteer Hub
• Shop and Tractor Barn • Bee Hives and Pollination Program
• Meeting Rooms
• Chicken Coops and Poultry Program • Plant Propagation Program
THE HEART AND MIND KITCHENS Two kitchens are integral for achieving the research and learning objectives for the Farm’s academic and community groups. They will draw people’s hearts and minds to the Farm Centre. The Mind Kitchen will be a commercial-scale facility where researchers, students, and food industry professionals test food processes, prepare large quantities of food, and develop new products and training programs. The Heart Kitchen will be a community-scale kitchen where participants from the aboriginal and children’s programs focus on building resilient communities by preparing meals from food they grow and harvest at the Farm. By deepening their cooking skills to better feed those they care for, community members will transform their relationships with each other, themselves, their communities, and their land.
WHAT CAN WE GROW TOGETHER? Your support of the Farm Centre will propel the UBC Farm towards excellence as a global centre for sustainable food systems, community health, and environmental literacy. It will become something all of us can call our own: A destination for community investment and a magnet for attracting researchers, students, and community partners who seek to unlock our collective potential to steward our land and food systems. By working together and focusing our efforts in building the Farm Centre, we can ignite a transformative process that will build a sustainable future for generations to come. We invite you to join us on this journey and explore what we can do together.
Murray B. Isman Dean, UBC Faculty of Land and Food Systems 604.822.1219 | dean.landfood@ubc.ca Ana-Maria Hobrough Senior Director, UBC Development and Alumni Engagement 604.827.4875 | ana-maria.hobrough@ubc.ca
ubcfarm.ubc.ca | landfood.ubc.ca
Design + content: J. Hsu, Faculty of Land and Food Systems, UBC | 06/13 Contributors: J. Root, A. Hobrough, L. Sproul, A. Frye, A. Riseman, N. Glenning, S. Yan. Conceptual sketches: Lori Brown | Photos courtesy of UBC Farm Reference: The Improbable Farm in the World City by Mark Bomford, collected in “Fields of Learning” (2000); eds. Laura Sayre and Sean Clark.