Student Profile: Sophie Draper, Feeding Growth Assistant
*Disclaimer: The Career Development in Land and Food Systems course is the updated title of the previously-named Career Development in Land and Food Systems Internship.
LFS 496 Feeding Growth Assistant
Supervisor: Véronik Campbell
What do you study and why does it matter to you?
I am in Global Resource Systems in the faculty of LFS as a 3rd year student. The reason I chose this program is because I am very passionate about sustainable agriculture and its movement in the food sector. The changing of our agricultural sector is going to be increasingly important – it is a revolution to come. Food has largely become commoditized and therefore it is not seen as powerful as it is anymore. Food has the potential to bring people together; it is language, culture and community. As we connect ourselves with food, we are healthier, we are happier and we are closer to people around us. But now, we’ve become very disconnected from our food. That disconnect has implications in all the society, in our personal lives, our relationships and our sense of well-being. I’m in this program and chose this internship particularly because I want people to look deeper to our relationship with food.
What was your work placement?
I worked with Véronik Campbell who is the Academic Program Manager at the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm (CSFS). I worked on a program she helps run called Feeding Growth. Feeding Growth is a learning program for sustainable packaged food companies in Vancouver and BC where different entrepreneurs come together regardless the stage they are in. These sessions allow the entrepreneurs to collaborate to grow their business and learn more about different aspects of running a business that maybe that hadn’t had access to before. As an intern, I helped run the events, run our Instagram page and at the end, I got to do profiling of companies which led me to write business profiles of them. These profiles may possibly be put on the website or our social media channels like Facebook and Instagram. Throughout my internship, I got to have a good balance of both concrete tasks and being able to have room to implement my own ideas as well.
What intrigues you about the Food System?
Just how far-reaching food is in our lives. I am constantly drawn into how much food is applicable into our lives and how there is always more to learn. Farming, for example, is incredible given how connected people are to the land. In the past people had their one-family farms and it was a very close unit of sustainable farming. Their connection to the land was much greater in terms of weather, the earth, and surroundings. As they were coming across with unimaginable scenarios, they had to learn from their experiences which makes learning endless. So, that’s what fascinates me about the food system, just how interconnected we are with food or can be and how powerful than can be. We just have to make sure we hold on to that connection and don’t lose it as the food system starts to change.
What was the most interesting thing you learned from your work placement?
Before this internship, I didn’t know where I belonged in the food system. Business, particularly was an area I always distanced myself from. I thought of it as competitive, not about collaboration but more about profit and an individualistic. This internship was eye opening in terms of how business could be community based as well. At the sessions, we had several Kombucha companies. They were competitors but they were also working together in groups to help each other and to give each other feedback. That completely changed my perspective on how business can be community based and a collaborative effort even if you are competitors. It also taught me how I’m inspired by these community efforts. People generally want to make the world a better place and there is a lot of power that brings people to come together. And interestingly, this internship made me realize I am interested in business development and entrepreneurship. It’s a lot of work and requires risks to be taken but I think I’m someone who is willing to do that.
What was your biggest struggle during your work placement?
Feeding Growth is an event that includes multiple entrepreneurs who are almost experts about the food system in BC and I saw this as a great opportunity to learn more about it myself. I’m very passionate about the food sector but I also don’t know much. In order to be involved it their circle, I needed to trust myself to have conversations or to be involved overall. Thankfully, the people at the sessions were so open and friendly that they would come up to me thinking I had a company. Even though I was just an assistant, they would still be willing to engage in conversations. It was a learning experience of both the food sector and also realizing that it is okay to not know a lot – people will be willing to talk you if you are passionate about something. It was a struggle for me to enter their circle until I realized how much people are willing to share with and learn from each other.
What is your favorite plant/crop that grows at the UBC Farm?
Anise.
LFS 496 Student Profile: Carly Koenig, Food Skills Education Assistant
LFS 496 Student Profile: Carly Koenig, Food Skills Education Assistant
Work Placement: Food Skills Education
Supervisor: Seth Friedman
What do you study?
I am currently finishing my Masters in Public Health through Oregon Health and Science University and working on my diploma in Health Education at UBC.
I chose public health as my academic path because I feel that all people deserve health, happiness and safety. I think it is our duty to work with vulnerable people and communities to ensure access to quality food, education, housing, and a safe environment, which are the main factors which determine health.
As a public health student, I am learning how to look at population health and what its determinants are. To support my knowledge of this discipline, my diploma in Health Education is examining how people have access to information about their own health and how we can promote health within our communities. With this internship, I was able to fuse the two programs by looking at the health of our community and how we support and encourage that by offering sustainable living skills workshops.
What was your work placement?
As a Food Skills Education intern, I was supporting Seth Friedman on developing the workshop program at the Farm. The UBC Farm offers a variety of workshops under their Sustainable Living Skills mission. We’ve hosted workshops on canning, soil management, and composting, to name a few. These workshops offer people the opportunity to learn more about foraging for their own food, cooking, or even beekeeping – teaching people to come back to traditional skills.
Essentially, my role was to identify educators within the community, reach out to them, form relationships, assist in organizing workshop specifics and promote workshops through various media channels. I would also attend the workshops as a liaison between the Farm and the educator. This allowed me to identify any gaps we could improve for future workshops.
What was your favourite workshop?
I liked that there was always such a variety of workshops, which allowed everyone in the community to find a topic they are interested in. My favourite workshop I attended was Soil Management. I was pleasantly surprised how engaging it was even though I had no previous knowledge about soil. As much as I learned about soil, I got to see how the workshops are a great tool for connecting people to the Farm. They create opportunities for people to be involved, interact and learn. This experience had also allowed me to assess the future content of workshops from a different perspective. Apart from our mission, I started to take consideration of how they could be relevant to different age groups and education levels.
What was the most interesting thing you learned throughout your work placement?
The most interesting thing I encountered throughout my internship was the importance of developing relationships within the community. It takes time to develop trust and communication with community members, workshop presenters, and even with businesses, but once you do, it is well worth the investment. For example, we offered a foraging workshop and catered lunch to Nature’s Path, a donor and great supporter of the Farm. They had a really positive experience connecting with the space and the work we do at the Farm, and it strengthened our relationship with their organization. The workshop program at the Farm is a great tool for connecting us to the community, and connecting community members to each other through the learning and sharing of skills.
What is the UBC Farm to you?
The Farm to me is a very welcoming, peaceful, beautiful environment. It is a dynamic space where you can come for so many reasons. You could be here to do some hard work, like physical labour, or you could be here to find peace. I, for instance, find a lot of peace in volunteering. You can come here to learn, eat, and meet people. It is a sustainable space that brings the land and people together. We are lucky that Musqueam people have allowed us to share this space and invite the community to enjoy the land. The food system is very complicated, but if we can encourage our community to be engaged in activities surrounding education and food justice, we may decrease the disparities of access to food, and improve the quality of food and the locality of our food. The Farm is involved in this dynamic system as a dynamic setting and that intrigues me.
What is your favourite crop that grows at the Farm?
One of my favourite volunteer shifts was harvesting blueberries. We were invited to enjoy some blueberries while we worked, but I might have overdone it. I left the shift feeling like a blueberry myself. Also, almost anything in the indigenous garden, but particularly oca.
See current work placement opportunities and learn more about LFS 496.
LFS 496 Student Profile: Ian McLean, Farm Management Application Assistant
LFS 496 Student Profile: Ian McLean, Farm Management Application Assistant
Work Placement: Farm Management Application
Supervisor: Zia Mehrabi
What do you study?
This was my last semester of the Bachelor of Computer Science second degree program. I originally studied biology as an undergraduate and graduate student. Since finishing school, I’ve started working as a software developer. Interning here gave me the opportunity to bridge all my degrees together and broaden my options within different disciplines.
What was your work placement?
My internship involved software development work on the UBC Farm application, which is an open source software application being developed at UBC for farmers and farms around the world. This application will be used for farm management tasks (finances, inventory, human resources, etc.), while also incorporating ecosystem management (CO2 calculations, biodiversity monitoring, etc.).
There is currently a gap in the market between farm management software and environmental/sustainability monitoring, and we are hoping to bridge that gap with an easy to use and cost efficient application. My job consisted of one big project, which I broke down into different development tasks, and then I took those individual tasks, and examined what I needed to do, and what knowledge I was missing, to see if I needed to learn something new. I spent a lot of time doing tutorials but once I had the knowledge that I needed, I was able to start writing code and testing it out. The project required a lot of trial and error, which allowed me to learn and figure out the next steps on my own.
What was the most interesting thing you encountered in your internship?
What surprised me the most was how much was required for farm management. I never realized all the data that is involved, and all the problems that farmers encounter on a day-to-day basis. I had a much simpler view of what it was to be a farmer but I was shocked to see the depth of what the UBC Farm application is trying to do. The application has to be able to handle a range of activities, and the scheduling for those activities, as well as numerous calculations and inputs/outputs. The amount of data that is required, and that needs to be maintained and manipulated at different points, is phenomenal. It also needs to ensure ease of use for the farmer, and that they only need to enter a minimal amount of data, since farmers don’t want to have to constantly be entering data or re-entering the same piece of data. Working with the application, I now have a better idea about farm management and the amount of resources that go into it.
What intrigues you about the food system?
Agriculture is quite disruptive in terms of environment and societies but it is also a necessity because we need food. Due to the instability of this problem, we need a controlled way to get food; can we grow more food with less impact, without hurting people and the planet? Bridging agriculture and technology, I believe, will provide us with many answers to this problem. This bridge will create a more efficient way to create a balance between sustainability and agriculture. I recently read an article on how Canada is going to be short a significant number of farm workers and potentially, the bridge between technology and agriculture could compensate for those missing workers, while also creating new job opportunities for different agricultural sectors. I think it sounds very appealing.
What is one thing people should know about CSFS at UBC Farm but don’t?
One thing people should know about the UBC Farm is that it is strong from an academic perspective, as well as industrial. It has multiple research projects going on but at the same time it is a fully-working farm that makes money. I didn’t know about this until I spent time learning about the UBC Farm. I also didn’t know how multi-disciplinary it is. There are more computer science students who would probably love to work on the UBC Farm application and would do it just for a chance to get experience. I’m sure there are business or arts students who would love to get involved with different aspects of marketing and design. Engineering students who would love to build useful farm equipment. There is so much potential for every department to be involved in agriculture in some way. CSFS at UBC Farm is a great point for those people to come together to build and develop good relationships with agriculture and the food system generally.
What is your favourite crop that grows at the Farm?
Blueberries and honey.
See current work placement opportunities and learn more about LFS 496.
Feb. 17: Mapping Community Gardens in Philadelphia with Dr. Craig Borowiak
Feb. 17: Mapping Community Gardens in Philadelphia with Dr. Craig Borowiak
February 17, 2017, 12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. Aquatic Ecosystems Research Laboratory.
About the Talk:
The first hour of this event will feature a talk by Dr. Craig Borowiak on how urban agriculture fits within larger solidarity economies and post-capitalist politics in the U.S. It will include findings from an initiative to create a comprehensive inventory of community gardens in Philadelphia and to map them against racial and class variables as well as land-ownership patterns.
Following the talk, from 1:00-1:30 pm, the Food Systems Research Network will host their kick-off event. Lunch will be provided at 1:00 pm for Food Systems Research Network participants.
About the Speaker:
Craig Borowiak (PhD, Duke University) is an associate professor of Political Science at Haverford College. His research and teaching revolve around political economic thought, globalization, democratic theory, global civil society, and post-capitalist politics. He is currently researching solidarity economies and the spread of solidarity economy movements worldwide. This includes extensive qualitative, quantitative and spatial research in Philadelphia, where he is based. He has developed a spatial database of over 800 solidarity economy entities in the city, including over 470 community gardens, which he has been mapping against demographic and land ownership data. He is also the creator of a web-based national mapping platform for the solidarity economy (www.solidarityeconomy.us) which maps over 25,000 entities across the US.
His earlier research focused on democratic accountability, farmers’ rights, and citizens tribunals, among other topics. He is the author of Accountability and Democracy: the Pitfalls and Promise of Popular Control (Oxford University Press, 2011), and co-editor of Exploring Cooperatives: Economic Democracy and Community Development in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin-Ext, 2016). He has published several articles in major political science journals, including Polity, the Journal of Politics, Political Theory, New Political Science, and Politics and Society, among others.
LFS 496 Student Profile: Sigbrit Jaccard Søchting
LFS 496 Student Profile: Sigbrit Jaccard Søchting
Work Placement: Biodiversity and Perennial Crops
Supervisor: Mel Sylvestre
I am a 5th year student in the Global Resource Systems program in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems with a specialization in Global Health. For me, global health is unfortunately a very economic and political issue. Helping to achieve equity in health for all people worldwide is one of my goals and I want to achieve that not only through medicine or food but by encompassing political, economic and social aspects of well-being as well.
Interning at UBC Farm showed me how food and sustainability are integral to good health which made me see the UBC Farm as a home of solutions for local challenges that can eventually lead to global changes.
What was your work placement about?
Through my internship, I had the chance to work on many different tasks. I worked with various projects encompassing all aspects of perennial crops and herbs (strawberries, blueberries, flower fields, hop yard, herb garden, etc). We also did research trials looking at which crops grew best, so growing different varieties of crops to see which ones had the best outcomes, all to help farmers across BC.
The Seed Saving Project was one of the tasks that I could label as my own role. The Seed Saving Project involves seed germination tests to determine the viability of the seeds that UBC Farm sells. In two months, I was able to learn and take on the project with minimal supervision. Having one large focus allowed me to improve significantly in that part of the discipline. However, taking on other smaller tasks enabled me to become familiar with all aspects in a broader way. It is good to have a focus, like a particular project to hand in at the end of the internship, but at the same time I liked helping with whichever project was happening that day. It was nice to get to know every little piece of the whole system.
What was something that surprised you the most during your work placement?
The most surprising aspect of my internship was finding out how everyone came from different backgrounds. I first pictured the Farm as everyone being an expert farmer, but as I encountered many students, researchers, and other members of CSFS throughout my internship, I saw how they all had their own stories and came from different angles and different lenses.
I see the farm as a very inclusive environment that allows everyone to be involved in some way. Interns or newly graduates may tend to look for jobs that fit their qualifications perfectly, but the Farm is a place for learning and improvements and you don’t necessarily need any specific expertise. You could know nothing and still be able to help and be a part of it.
What intrigues you about the food system?
The linkage between food and urbanization is an intriguing concept for me and it is why I find the UBC Farm quite interesting. I like how the Farm embodies this intersection and is able to bridge these two concepts fully. It is hard to envision a good food system and there are a lot of things that are not going so right. UBC Farm shows us a path to know what we need to work on and how we can have good food systems in cities. My interest in urban farming is what led me to apply for this internship as well as to gain hands-on farming experience.What inspires you?
I am inspired by reading about different places and times. It is how I connect and learn to think about the world. Interning at the Farm gave me a chance to appreciate the importance of learning once again. You never are done learning and especially with farming and food. There is so much you don’t know, like different ways of farming, different cultures and techniques. And it’s constantly growing.
I viewed my supervisor, Mel Sylvestre, as an expert throughout my internship but even Mel feels that there is so much to learn and never an end to it. Being part of a community that grows every day, and part of a land that is always changing, showed me how learning needs to be continuous at all times.
What is your favourite crop that grows at the Farm?
Sunflowers. When they are almost 3 metres tall, they look beautiful.
See current work placement and learn more about LFS 496.
No Ordinary Quest at the UBC Farm
No Ordinary Quest at the UBC Farm
For Professor Maja Krzic the UBC Farm is a classroom for her students. Krzic developed the new Forest Humus Forms Quest app for her students to learn about soil and plants at the UBC Farm, believing this hands-on experience can push students towards a whole new level of learning.
Nov. 10: Saving by Savoring: The Delicious Reclamation of Foods We Love with Simran Sethi
Nov. 10: Saving by Savoring: The Delicious Reclamation of Foods We Love with Simran Sethi
November 10, 2016, 12 p.m.
Acclaimed author, journalist, educator and creator of ‘The Slow Melt’ podcast, Simran Sethi brings together stories of chocolate, bread and wine industries to tell us about our endangered foods.
Oct. 28: The Old Food is the New Food: Indigenous Plant Management Systems of BC First Peoples with Dr. Nancy Turner
Oct. 28: The Old Food is the New Food: Indigenous Plant Management Systems of BC First Peoples with Dr. Nancy Turner
Friday, October 28th, 2017
Thank you for selling out our first event! We continue the 2016/17 UBC Future of Food Dialogue Series with Dr. Nancy Turner on the topic of Indigenous Plant Management Systems of BC First Peoples. Join us Friday, October 28.
Oct. 14: Indigenous, Continuity and Food: A Mo`o Vision from Hawaii with Dr. Manulani Aluli-Meyer
Oct. 14: Indigenous, Continuity and Food: A Mo`o Vision from Hawaii with Dr. Manulani Aluli-Meyer
Friday, October 14, 2017
We are kicking off the 2016/17 UBC Future of Food Dialogue Series with Dr. Manulani Aluli-Meyer on the topic of Indigenous, Continuity and Food: A Mo`o Vision from Hawaii, Friday, October 14.