Urban Agriculture and Food Systems
In this Capstone, we will critically examine the limits and possibilities of urban agriculture’s contribution to the food system through a twin lens of social science and agroecology. Our community partner is the Urban Farm Collective (UFC), an organization establishing urban gardens in N and NE Portland. The interdisciplinary final Capstone project will combine mapping, interviews, and field sampling techniques to help the UFC evaluate its contribution to the food system and environment. The course is both reading-intensive/discussion-driven and hands-on. The course will meet twice a week on campus (Tu/Th, 10 to 11:50). On Tuesdays students will discuss scholarly readings and hear from guest speakers involved in Portland’s urban agriculture movement. On Thursdays students will work on the Capstone project and/or visit UFC sites. Site visits will be a hands-on experience (not simple field trips), where students integrate theory and practice as they learn ecological horticulture techniques while contributing to the expansion and maintenance of the UFC’s gardens. There will also be optional supplemental Saturday field trips to other urban agriculture initiatives.
Instructor: Nathan McClintock, n.mcclintock@pdx.edu
Project
The PSU “Urban Agriculture and Food Systems” Capstone (Spring 2012) partnership with the Urban Farm Collective (UFC) will ideally serve both the course’s students and the UFC’s members and the neighborhoods in which they work. The idea for the final project was developed through conversations between the capstone instructor and members of the UFC. The project is intended to serve both students—by providing them with an opportunity to engage with the UFC’s efforts and to develop research skills—and the UFC—by providing it with data that may help shape programmatic decisions and secure future funding. By extension, the project should ultimately benefit the N and NE Portland communities in which the UFC works, by identifying the ways in which the UFC can better serve them.
Broadly, the project will assess the social and ecological benefits and drawbacks of the UFC’s model of production and distribution in North and Northeast Portland. Working in three primary groups, students will complete an interdisciplinary project that addresses these needs. More specifically, the project will:
- Conduct a baseline assessment of soil quality and develop a protocol for a longer-term assessment at existing and future sites
- Calculate and map the contribution of UFC activities to the local food system
- Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the UFC’s engagement with the surrounding community and recommend ways to expand this engagement in a positive way
