Near the fertile land of the Willamette River is a garden owned and maintained by the University of Oregon. It’s called the Urban Farm and it is where students are cultivating skills to grow their own food and truly live sustainably.
The Urban Farm has been educating students in the importance of food studies for 38 years. The classes are offered within the department of landscape architecture but are open to students of all majors.
The Urban Farm started in 1976 as a group of students interested in gardening. It became a class in 1982 with Ann Bettman as the director. She built the foundation for the program and current director Harper Keeler inherited it in 2007.
The Food Studies program is creating a minor offered to graduate students with a specialization and undergrads interested in food-related matters.
“I would definitely recommend this class to anyone interested in small-scale gardening, local sustainability or being as self-sufficient as possible,” said Morgen Dorsey, a junior digital arts major. Dorsey took the class for her landscape architecture minor and said it inspired her to reconsider the way agricultural gardens can be incorporated into an urban landscape.
Students from over 89 different areas of study have elected to take courses.
“The classes offer hands-on experience where students learn by doing,” Keeler said.
Keeler teaches civic agriculture at the farm. Students learn how to grow food from the ground up while discovering the significance of eating locally through food assignments. Students also help the community by donating the excess harvest to Food for Lane County.
“Each class is broken into teams that work together to grow something. Each team has a leader, who are professors from the university and master gardeners from around Eugene,” Keeler said.
Registration is competitive since spots are limited.
In an effort to address the registration issue, two years ago the ASUO funded an over-realized grant of $42,000 for the farm to expand its program in order to meet the rising student interest. The Columbia Green on Columbia Street and The Grove, next to CASL on Moss and 18th Avenue are both extensions of Urban Farm.
The Grove is a student garden with plots of land available to rent for a small fee. Plots can be reserved for a school year to be utilized for any gardening purpose. The Columbia Green is primarily used as a demonstration garden for classes at the Urban Farm.
The gardens are places where communities are built and also serves well as a buffer from the university setting to the Fairmont neighborhood.
The Urban Farm practices several organic gardening philosophies such as the basic NW French Raised Bed Intensive, Steve Solomon’s approach and Ruth Stout and Uday Balwalker’s composting in situ/no-till method.
Climate Justice League and the Student Sustainability Center have been involved with the expansion and maintenance of the gardens and their preservation. Ultimately the farm will rely on student interest, which has fluctuated throughout the years. Food studies will play a big role in this push for sustainable living and the Urban Farm is the place to learn about it.