College Collaborative Boosts Urban Agriculture in Seattle

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Agriculturalist Will Allen met with SAgE faculty members in November and discussed where they intend to install an aquaponics system at Edmonds Community College.

Faculty at a triad of community colleges in Seattle, suburban Seattle, and rural northwestern Washington are cultivating varieties of sustainable urban agriculture with an Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grant from the National Science Foundation.

The project aims to develop sustainable agriculture skills among the Puget Sound region's residents who will then be able to spur economic development by making existing small farms more viable, starting new agriculture operations in urban areas, working in new food distribution systems, pursuing agriculture research, or becoming sustainable agriculture advocates.

Edmonds Community College (EdCC) created professional-technical courses on how to grow food crops in urban settings. Seattle Central Community College offers a more theoretical transfer degree in agroecology; while Skagit Valley College focuses on professional-technical courses for small farm agriculture. Washington State University, the land grant college in western Washington, provides its agriculture expertise to the project by providing research opportunities and outreach to diverse populations.

The vision for the SAgE Collaborative, which stands for Sustainable Agriculture Education for the Puget Sound Bioregion, comes from Jason Niebler, principal investigator. He is the founding director of the SAgE Project that started in 2009 at Seattle Central Community College with a $157,375 ATE grant. The collaborative, which received another ATE grant for $899,898 in 2012, unites the urban, suburban, and rural community colleges and pulls together academic and technical departments to make the most of their respective strengths.

"It was such a hit at Seattle Central with the students, even within the city, and beyond that we knew it was something that we should probably continue," Niebler said. More than 300 students took SAgE courses during the two-year grant; many of those students are currently involved in urban agriculture or agriculture advocacy organizations in Seattle.

New Students Fill Newest SAgE Courses

This month the SAgE consortium started three new urban agriculture program courses at EdCC in Lynnwood, a suburb of Seattle. Each of the SAgE professional-technical courses taught by the Edmonds horticulture faculty count toward stackable certificates and toward associate degrees that will articulate to WSU.

EdCC's Horticulture Department has historically focused on ornamental plants. "To marry it with edible plants in an urban environment provides another opportunity for existing entrepreneurs, or people who are already thinking about it, to start landscaping businesses that involve all types of plants, and not just ornamentals … we're trying to push food plants and native plants," Niebler said.

Thanks to the tuition waivers provided with support from the NSF grant, the 24 seats in each class are filled and there is a waiting list.

"We're getting in a whole different group of people," Timothy C. Hohn, chairman of the Horticulture Department at EdCC, said of the SAgE students.

A tuition waiver will continue to be offered for the remainder of the academic year. "To have the NSF support is huge, it's such a great advantage," Hohn said, adding that after this jump start he thinks the high quality instruction and the program's reputation will generate enrollment. One of the instructors is Colin McCrate, an author and operator of Seattle Urban Farm Co., which is known for its installation of edible gardens on rooftops.

The 40 students in the three courses—several students are taking more than one course—are younger than the middle-aged women who are typically the majority of students in the ornamental horticulture courses.

"I've been surprised that some are retired. The youngest person is 16; she's a Running Start [dual enrollment] student. It's really quite a broad diversity," Hohn said.

In the first week he discerned that the students enrolled because sustainable urban agriculture fits their social and political interests as well as their economic goals.

"They seem to have an understanding that being involved in a change to sustainable agriculture—in changing our food system—is a pivotal, a pivotal place to be in terms of changes, of bigger changes, that need to come in terms of developing a sustainable culture. It's very profound to me; I'm excited about that," he said.

Sustainable Ag Certificates "Stack" for Degrees

The three, hands-on sustainable agriculture courses that EdCC launched this winter quarter are agroecology, which is the foundation of the entire SAgE program; the first in a sequence of courses on vegetable, herb and flower production; and the first in a sequence of courses on fruit, nut, and berry production. Three more new courses will be introduced spring quarter, and three more new courses, including one on aquaponics, will be offered for the first time summer quarter.

Students who take the sustainable agriculture courses at EdCC can obtain the short Agroecology (16-18 credit) certificate or Crop Production or Whole Systems (14 to 16 credit) certificates. They may also combine certificates with additional courses to earn an Urban Agriculture Systems certificate (40 to 42 credits) in three consecutive quarters. That means students beginning the program this month could complete the Urban Agriculture Systems certificate by September. All certificates includes a practicum, internship, or research project. Seattle Central Community College in Seattle and Skagit Valley in Mount Vernon have complementary certificate and degree options to meet an array of students' agriculture career interests.

"We really thought that one of our charges was to make the program a quick turnaround ... get in, learn what they need to, and get out and get busy," Hohn said. The courses are intentionally more academically rigorous than the classes agriculture extension services offer to hobbyists.

"What we're trying to do is give people the capability to do that, to get busy growing quickly, but to be in a position to develop their own occupation in a way that is competent. They get the scientific basis," Hohn explained.

SAgE Faculty Recruiting Students & Learning from Experts

Skagit Valley College, surrounded by some of the best farmland in Washington, focuses on small farm agriculture for the collaborative. This area also has a large Latino immigrant population. On Saturday, Niebler spoke in Spanish to a group of 50 adults, who recently completed their GEDs, about enrolling in the SAgE program. Niebler did graduate research in Mexico on tropical agroforestry. While in Central America he also taught university study abroad students and managed community development projects in the Costa Rican cloud forest.

He admires the traditional agriculture systems used in Central and South America, and has incorporated some of their successful practices in the SAgE curriculum. The curriculum also builds on the wisdom of American agriculturalists like Will Allen, founder and CEO of Growing Power, Inc.

Allen won a MacArthur Award in 2008 for his non-profit organization's holistic approach to urban farming and food distribution in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In November Allen spoke at the Snohomish County Focus on Farming Conference in Everett, Washington. Before the conference he toured EdCC and talked with SAgE faculty members about their plans for building an aquaponics system on the campus and offering an aquaponics course. Zsofia Pasztor of Farmer Frog, a partner of SAgE and Growing Power that hosted Allen, is the lead aquaponics consultant and instructor for EdCC.

The SAgE faculty and Allen share the conviction that teaching more people environmentally friendly methods for growing food in urban areas can have long-term health and economic benefits for individuals and communities.

"Everybody has room to improve in the understanding of where their food comes from … everyone has the opportunity to change their life," Niebler said.

Categories:
  • agriculture
  • education
  • environment
  • science
From:
    ATE Impacts

Last Edited: January 30th, 2014 at 5:34pm by Madeline Patton

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