About Us
Innovation from field to fork to achieve resilient, thriving, and socially just food systems for all.
The Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm (CSFS) is a teaching and research centre and local-to-global food hub working towards a more sustainable, food-secure future.
Our living laboratory is committed to finding solutions to local and global challenges facing food systems sustainability.
The Centre for Sustainable Food Systems
The Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (CSFS) comprises the research, teaching and cultivation activities at the UBC Farm, as well as sustainable food systems research and teaching that takes place elsewhere, be it across UBC campus, British Columbia, Canada, or around the globe. CSFS associate members work on the development of innovations in agroecosystem management for food security and ecosystem services, while honouring, respecting, and protecting diverse ecosystems and knowledge pathways within Indigenous and agrarian food systems.
Housed under the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, the UBC Farm has thrived since 2001 thanks to the UBC students, faculty and staff who worked tirelessly to demonstrate the need for a dedicated site for food systems learning, research, and food cultivation at UBC. The CSFS was established in 2011 to further this aim as the academic home for the UBC Farm, with a vision to spur innovation from field to fork to achieve resilient, thriving, and socially just food systems for all. The CSFS supports collaborative research, teaching and learning opportunities for UBC students, faculty, and staff as well as local and international academic and community partners.
The UBC Farm
The UBC Farm is the Centre for Sustainable Food System’s main research, teaching and learning space, located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓-speaking xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people.
Situated within a 90-year-old coastal hemlock forest, the 24-hectare UBC Farm was started by students in 2001 and since then our integrated organic farm and forest ecosystem has become a key part of UBC’s agroecology research and education as well as an important Vancouver food hub. The UBC Farm features cultivated annual crop fields, perennial hedgerows and orchards, pasture, Indigenous-led gardens, and forest stands.
The Farm is organically managed, and UBC Farm produce is certified organic through NOOA. We cultivate over 200 varieties of fruits, vegetables, and herbs, and also feature honey beehives.
Our History
To find out more about food systems learning at UBC and the story of the UBC Farm visit our History page and check out our two-episode podcast, Growing a Farm: The 20-year Journey of the UBC Farm to hear the voices of the people who started the UBC Farm and – ultimately – saved and protected it development.
Global and Local Challenges
The CSFS is responding to a global food system facing major challenges: increasing human population growth and global food demand, the threats and impacts of climate change, and the global degradation of arable land. Locally, we are facing the loss of agricultural land to development and the aging of the farmer demographic, with the cost of land representing a huge barrier for young farmers trying to gain a foothold.
In response to these challenges, CSFS is supporting the development of innovations in agroecosystem management for food security and ecosystem services, while honouring, respecting, and protecting diverse ecosystems and knowledge pathways within Indigenous and agrarian food systems.
Vision and Equity Statement
Our Vision
Innovation from field to fork to achieve resilient, thriving, and socially just food systems for all.
Our Commitment to Equity
As a member of the Sustainable Agriculture Education Association (SAEA), we support and subscribe to the SAEA’s Equity Statement.
“The Sustainable Agriculture Education Association (SAEA) affirms, above all, that food systems sustainability requires the realization of equity and justice. It works to support the principles of equality, dignity, and fairness rooted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations. We share these values with the Inter-Institutional Network for Food, Agriculture, and Sustainability (INFAS) network, whose Statement on Equity in the Food System many of our members helped compose. The INFAS statement recognizes the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability. It places an explicit focus on dismantling structural racism in food systems, and on challenging the multiple forms of oppression — class, race, gender, nationality, among others — that serve as interrelated barriers to equity.”
“As an organization whose mission is grounded in higher education, SAEA acknowledges and endorses teaching and learning as a vital means to overcoming systems of oppression. Principles and practices that SAEA promotes include: Actively confronting racism and patriarchy in teaching, research, and the design of educational programs and institutions… [read more]“
Annual Reports
Our Annual Reports capture the achievements and activities of our diverse programs and the milestones we have reached as an organization.
CSFS Annual Report (2021-2022)
20th Anniversary Report (2001-2021)
CSFS Annual Report (2018-2019)
CSFS Annual Report (2017-2018)
CSFS Annual Report (2016)
Cultivating Place (2010)
Strategic Plan
Our Strategic Plan (2016-2020) outlines key priorities for the CSFS to increase research productivity, improve our teaching infrastructure and develop new frontiers in knowledge mobilization and community engagement.
We are currently in the planning process of our Strategic Plan 2024-2029 which will be shared widely in early 2024.
