Like many college students, senior Zach Elfers says he has been trying to figure out what makes him happiest. He found himself wondering, “What do I want out of life?”
After a series of serendipitous encounters, Elfers found his passion in organic farming. Elfers says what started him on his journey was looking at philosophy in respect to farming.
“There is a whole aspect of knowledge that has been lost,” Elfers says. “Farming brings back a sense of place into our lives. So much of what’s going wrong in the world is stemming from disconnection.”
Elfers hopes to regain some of this knowledge through Gardens for Growth, a new program starting this semester.
Although it is still in the early stages, Gardens for Growth addresses sustainable food and food security through three phases.
The first phase focuses on Garden Expansion and Curriculum Integration. The second phase focuses on student farming. The third phase is community engagement and research.
The gardens will provide educational demonstrations, grow food for consumption by the student body, focus on the improvement of soil quality and enable students and faculty to learn and experiment with different ideas and techniques which fall under the umbrella of organic agriculture, such as permaculture and biodynamics, according to their petition.
Initiated by Elfers along with alumni Jason Begany, Jonathan Richardson and Daniel Reyes, Gardens for Growth is a food initiative which aims to involve students in an educational, sustainable and student-operated garden program.
“It’s a really holistic attempt to formally re-engage students with their environment through the medium of food and agriculture,” Reyes says.
Part of the program will focus on permaculture. Permaculture, or permanent agriculture, is an ecological system designed for sustainability. However, permaculture has grown beyond its roots in strategic and sustainable farming into a worldwide movement that encompasses how we, as humans, can utilize and return Earth’s finite resources.
Permaculture is delayed gratification, Richardson says. For example, if you plant a fruit tree, you have to wait for it to grow fruit. Permaculture understands we are not temporary and allows future generations to reap the benefits of our work, Richardson says.
Within the past year the movement for permaculture at the university has grown. Students at the university saw a need for permaculture and started a campaign to begin the program.
The Gardens for Growth program will begin this semester and will offer insight into food security.
Begany says the university’s geographic location was a hub for permaculture.
On the basis that the university was a food desert, an area where affordable and healthy food is difficult to obtain, Begany and his fellow founders reached out to faculty and organizations in order to start building collaborations.
“It’s a program that originated on the principles of emigrating permaculture throughout the interior and greater community of UDel,” Begany says. “Our fundamental principles are experiential learning with a focus on the ecosystem and biosphere.”
In January, the group started a petition on change.org calling the university to endorse permaculture within the community, Elfers says. They surpassed their goal of 500 signatures within a month, Elfers says.
By spring break, President Patrick Harker approved the program, Elfers says.
Their success caught the attention of Mark Rieger, dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, who asked to become a part of Gardens for Growth. Rieger decided to expand the impact by suggesting a collaboration of all campus gardens, Begany said.
“The dean proposed, himself, a community garden program where he’ll grow an organic garden next to an un-organic garden,” Begany says. “It’s totally badass.”
The collaboration expands beyond the gardens.
Gardens for Growth hopes to achieve a minor, if not a major in permaculture within the upcoming years. Implementing a minor or major requires teaching at least five semesters in the field of study as well as student interest.
Currently, there are five faculty members involved in Gardens for Growth: McKay Jenkins, Susan Barton, Melissa Melby, Jules Bruck and Jeff Fuhrmann, Elfers says. Once Gardens for Growth is fully implemented, each professor will teach a course pertaining to permaculture thus providing the program with an interdisciplinary aspect. The courses will comprise a minor in conjunction with the RSO.
Barton and Melby will be teaching the first Gardens for Growth class in the spring. Bruck will help with the construction and design aspect of building a garden, Jenkins will bring an environmental-humanities view through journalism and Fuhrmann will focus on plant soil science and the relationship of soil management methods with the long term sustainability of civilization, Elfers says.
Despite the support of these faculty members, others remain skeptical that the student population is too apathetic and won’t care enough to get involved, Reyes says. The biggest obstacle facing Gardens for Growth is student involvement, Richardson says.
“If we don’t get students to take responsibility, we’ll just be creating another generation of mindless consumers,” Richardson says. “We want to excite people. Permaculture is fun and delicious when you get around to doing it.”
Implementing permaculture produces a more sustainable school which begets a more sustainable world, Richardson says.
“What we’re doing right now is not sustainable,” Richardson says. “We’re buying food from all over the world and marketing it as a sustainable practice because perhaps the farm it came from practices sustainability. For example, Lipton tea comes from India and China and perhaps the practice was sustainable but the fact that you had to travel creates a carbon footprint.”
Reyes says he wants South Campus, the proposed location of Gardens for Growth, to be known for more than just the location of the football stadium.
Gardens for Growth needs one or two acres from the 350-acre farm at South Campus, Rieger says. The farm will be located off of South College Avenue.
“Less than half or one-third of an acre can and has produced 16 tons of food,” Rieger says. “Ideally, we want the garden to be easily accessible and highly visible. Most importantly, we want people seeing what we’re doing and how we’re engaging with the community.”
The land needs to be accessible in terms of solar and physical access as well according to Jules Bruck.
“We need good sun to generate good food,” Bruck says. “As long as we stay within a normal walking distance, students would be more inclined to go there.”
The closer resources on south campus allow the university to grow, produce and feed the community, Begany says.
Gardens for Growth hopes that the food planted could be used in the dining hall.
“One of my frustrations with the university has always been that we’re surrounded by farms, good farms, and we have a farm on South Campus, but it’s not tied into the dining services here and everyone’s always complained about that,” Reyes says.
Susan Barton, professor and Extension Specialist Plant and Soil Sciences, along with Melissa Melby will teach “From farm to table: food culture and nutrition” next semester.
Barton also teaches First Year Experience. This semester she asked her students to reflect on how they were eating differently now that they are a student at the university compared to living at home.
“A number of them said they have trouble getting fresh fruits and vegetables,” Barton says. “Without a car, without access to a grocery store, they didn’t feel like the dining hall had really good fresh fruits and vegetables.”
Students can purchase fresh produce if Gardens for Growth hosts a farmers’ market.
While a farmers’ market visits campus on Thursdays, many students have found fault in their prices and quality, members of Gardens for Growth unanimously agree.
Reyes says the farmer’s market is a sham.
“It’s a joke because it’s not from local farmers,” Reyes says. “It’s seconds, meaning the lower-quality produce that ARAMARK buys at auctions, they put out at the farmers’ market.”
In addition to the production of organic food, the permaculture farmer’s market would provide opportunities such as creating student jobs and improve health, Richardson says.
“It can potentially lower the price of foods plans and lower the amount of people going to the health center,” Richardson says. “A better nutritional diet means you and everyone else won’t get sick.”
Currently there are almost 15 other schools in the nation with programs like this, according to the Gardens for Growth Prezi.
Elfers says the program will add prestige and boost enrollment since there are no student organic farms within the mid-Atlantic region.
“Delaware is right at the eye of this 150-mile radius where nothing else like this program is being implemented,” Elfers says. “If the university promoted that they put in a student organic farm, then more students would want to come here. The enrollment would rise which would boost the endowment for the school which would give the school more money which is what they want.”
Reyes says the program will help students leave with a greater appreciation for the university as well as a deeper understanding of food.
“When people leave here, you don’t want them to leave with just a degree. You want them to leave with a sense of place and a sense of understanding what feeds a campus and what feeds them and what it takes to feed the world of the future,” Reyes says. “We can’t survive on the highly industrialized, globalized food system that we have now. It’s inefficient and it’s failing. We need to focus on more regional economies and support local farmers.”
Gardens for Growth is currently in the process of becoming an RSO. While everyone involved has started planning its implementation, the program still has a ways to go.
“We showed up and we chose to make transformation happen, we needed partnership, collaboration and we needed to act,” Begany says. “Now we’ve planted the seeds that will bear the fruits of tomorrow.”
Source: The Review (http://goo.gl/d5cV6Z)
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