For the past four seasons, The Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm has offered aspiring growers, educators and agricultural professionals the opportunity to enrich their education about farming while living in the midst of a city.
The UBC Farm Practicum in Sustainable Agriculture is a part-time, 8-month program 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, 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 crops and animal enterprises in a mixed farm setting.
Brittany Buchanan, an undergraduate in Applied Biology and one of ten students enrolled in the 2010 program, blogged 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 practicum program, visit http://blogs.landfood.ubc.ca/bbuchanan/
