Research & Partnerships

The UBC Farm site offers a vital microcosm for study and discovery related to regionally and globally significant issues.

For information on developing a project at the UBC Farm, please see Submit a Project Proposal.

“From the molecule to the ecosystem”

While the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems still retains its traditional role as a field site for agricultural science research, the farm’s disciplinary scope has broadened to encompass fields ranging from applied health, medicine, education, and  anthropology to forestry, evolutionary biology, biodiversity, and genetics.

The diversity of the farm landscape offers a gradient ranging from intensively cultivated field areas suitable for plot work, through established perennial plantings and successional hedgerow and managed forest areas, to areas of 90-year old forest stands. The integration of community programming throughout offers many opportunities for social sciences research.

The majority of the farm is managed to meet or exceed standards for organic production as published by the Certified Organic Associations of British Columbia. For field work involving plant cultivation or animal care, these standards allow for a range of experimental treatments and options for ensuring adequate plant and animal nutrition and pest management. Affiliated field sites on and off campus are available for field treatments that may be restricted under organic standards.

UBC's Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy is engaged in ongoing research on place-based ecological education for children

Agroecology guides the farm’s site management strategy. This approach takes into account a range of economic, social, and biophysical goals that are typically long-term and site-wide. To accomplish these goals, the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems operates under a set of overarching principles that are summarized in the UBC Farm academic plan, Cultivating Place.

To learn about undergraduate student-led research and experiential learning initiatives, please see Credit Courses & Directed Studies and Community-Service Learning. For a taste of the diversity of faculty-led research initiatives based at the UBC Farm in recent years, please see the projects listed below:

• Honey bee immunology research by Dr. Leonard Foster, Centre for High-Throughput Biology
• Increasing sunflower diversity through wild relatives for climate change by Dr. Loren Rieseberg, Department of Botany
• Molecular physiology of hybrid poplars for biomass production, by Dr. Carl Douglas, Department of Botany
• Mechanical stability alders, Dr. Steve Mitchell, Faculty of Forestry
• Place-based ecological education, Drs. Jolie Mayer-Smith, Linda Peterat, and Oksana Bartosh, Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy
• Field tests of passive calibration targets for RADARSAT remote sensing, Dr. Dave Michelson, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
• The use of yeasts in poultry manure biofertilizer trials to reduce leaching, Dr. Anthony Lau, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
• Alternative mulch and organic fertilizer trials in blueberry production, Dr. Art Bomke and Wayne Temple, Faculty of Land and Food Systems
• Rhizosphere truffiere research, Dr. Shannon Berch, Department of Botany
• Indigenous research partnerships and plant-based medicine, Dr. Eduardo Jovel, Faculty of Land and Food Systems
• Organic poultry feed trials, Dr. Darrin Bennett, Faculty of Land and Food Systems