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| 5630 Dunbar St. at 41st Ave. 604-684-4613 |
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UBC Farm Trek 2009 |
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On Tuesday, April 7, thousands of students, faculty, staff, friends and families gathered outside the student Union Building at UBC to march past the Board of Governors meeting and the Trek to UBC farm to draw attention to the fact that the Farm is still listed as zoned for future housing. The event began with short, enthusiastic speaches. Shane Pointe of the Musqueam First Nations really got the crowd cheering with a traditional greeting. Rex Weyler, a founder of Greenpeace spoke with emphasis on the concept of sustainability and James Mackinnon, co-author of the100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating spoke with some humour on the need for maintaining the Farm. With banners and brass bands, the multitude marched West toward the location of the Board of Governors meeting on West Mall. From there, they zig-zagged across campus to Thunderbird Blvd and East Mall, down to 16th Ave to Wesbrook Mall to the Farm. The last stretch passed the rapidly developing condos of Wesbrook Village. |
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As one of the founding faculties at UBC, agriculture has played a major role in academic and land-use activities at the University. The University was initially established around a 100 hectare farm. Over time, as the UBC population grew and buildings expanded, the farm was re-located from main campus to mid-campus. After extensive research into the best possible remaining site for a farm on campus, farm activities were re-located again in the 1970s to their current location across 16th Avenue in south campus. |
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 During this time, the academic focus of UBC shifted to other areas. Field trials gave way to lab tests, and the importance of integrated sustainable field agriculture was de-emphasized.
In 1997, UBC’s Official Community Plan (OCP) was approved. UBC identified the last remaining on-campus working landscapes (the vestiges of our agricultural heritage in the south and mid-campus areas, including the farm) for housing development. However, the faculty of land and food systems’s curriculum and vision changes in 1999 to 2000 as well as renewed student interest prompted a fresh look at the on campus agricultural land base, focusing on new possibilities for the south campus fields. In 2000, the faculty published a paper entitled,“Reinventing the UBC Farm,” articulating a vision for renewing the existing land base as an integrated farm system focused on hands-on sustainability education. |
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| The development and growth of the UBC Farm, also referred to as the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (CSFS,) during the last nine years follows the general vision first shared in the “reinventing” document, with some refinements to its scope and programs.
The strong student leadership that was crucial for the farm’s “re-invention” gave rise to a focus on student-centred learning as the primary mandate of the CSFS. Closely interwoven with an emerging research program and community service activities, the “new” farm can be considered a direct descendant of the University farm first envisioned in 1915. |
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| Over the last century agriculture has left a rich legacy to UBC. As we enter the 21st century with all its associated ecological challenges, the UBC Farm provides a place of rich learning on a many of the key sustainability issues of our time. The Farm, however still remains on the books for proposed housing development.
In 2007 the UBC Farm hosted 41 for-credit student courses, over 2,000 students, over 20,000 visitors. The Farm also hosted 35 active research projects from 14 of UBC’s faculties, schools, and colleges on some of the most challenging sustainability issues of our time such as low-carbon food production, alternative energy, nutrient cycling, and honeybee colony collapse disorder, to name a few. It is home to a Saturday farm market during the summer season, and a number of innovative programs that involve residents from the Downtown Eastside, children from various Vancouver schools, academics, youth, elders, and everyone in between. |
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| In response to Campus Planning’s proposals to shrink and move the UBC Farm to make way for housing development, UBC staff, students, and community members have worked very hard during the last year to preserve the UBC Farm and promote a vision for its future. Among other achievements, this year of work resulted in hundreds of letters written in support of the UBC Farm (including a from Dr. David Suzuki) and a motion of support for the farm was unanimously passed by the Metro Vancouver Board. | ||
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At the November 27, 2008 Board of Governors (BoG) meeting, AMS, GSS, and Friends of the UBC Farm representatives collaborated on a presentation conveying the farm’s importance in helping make UBC a global leader in sustainability. The BoG responded with a media release in which they directed the UBC administration to conduct an academic planning process for the 24 hectare farm to determine how best to make it an “academically rigorous and globally significant” centre for sustainability research and teaching. |
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| This represents a positive step forward. Students and the broader community want to make a clear statement before the end of this school year that it is critical to sustainability education at UBC to keep the farm at its current 24 hectare size and location, to provide stable funding for the farm’s programs and operations, and to include key farm users in determining the shape of the farm’s future. | ||
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| The AMS decided to organize the Great Farm Trek 2009 to celebrate all that the farm has accomplished in the last nine years, and to send a very clear message to UBC that thousands of people from the academic and wider community support the farm and wish to see it preserved and supported for the future of students and faculty at UBC, residents of Vancouver and B.C., and citizens of the world concerned about sustainability. | ||
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| This is following upon a long history of Treks at UBC. In 1915, UBC halted construction on its Point Grey campus due to WWI shortages, which left students increasingly cramped on a makeshift campus (now the site of Vancouver General Hospital.)
After collecting petition signatures and gaining media and public support, in 1922 1,200 students marched from their makeshift campus to the Point Grey campus to demand the provincial government resume building on the site. The students dedicated a stone cairn as a symbolic foundation for the long-term prosperity of the campus. Under the student and public pressure, the provincial government resumed building. |
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| In that time honoured tradition that has given us our beautiful campus, we will trek to the UBC Farm to show our strong support for its future.
With seeds and plants in hand, they marched to the Farm and put them in the ground as a symbol of the desire to grow deep roots at the Farm site for the kind of innovative teaching and research about sustainability issues that future generations will need. Help us save Vancouver’s last working farm! |
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| All Nations did a newsletter about UBC Farm last year. For more information about the Farm, visit their web site. For more information about what's being done to help save the Farm, visit the Friends of the UBC Farm web site. Sign the petition to save the UBC Farm. | ||
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Newsletter #173 |
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