Urban Farm Collective

CAP: URBAN AG & FOOD SYS
Urban Agriculture & Food Systems
Instructor:  Nathan McClintock, n.mcclintock@pdx.edu

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.