Save UBC Farm--TODAY--and a...

Shout Out to Evi !

The Great Farm Trek ‘09

HOW YOU CAN HELP save UBC Farm. Come to the Great Farm Trek 2009!

Today: Tuesday, April 7

Personal aside: This would have been my beloved grandmother Evi's 98th Birthday. The kids and I had a wonderful dinner and fire ceremony honoring her. In our family, honoring our ancestors involves chocolate, a lot of chocolate. The act of participating in the UBC Farm's trek is a way of us honoring our children and our children's children. I will be there, at least for part of the time. Hope to see you....

okay back to The Great Trek blurb:

The Trek will gather at the Student Union Building at 3:30 p.m. and trekkers will walk to the UBC Farm for a celebration with food and music, and a ceremonial planting. Free parking is available at UBC Farm anytime, and a free bus shuttle will take you from there to the Trek in progress between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.To get involved, email

Come help celebrate the UBC Farm and its future! It has been a great year for the farm, in terms of innovative programming, awards, and media attention. However, the future of the 24 hectare farm is still not clear, so it is time to come together to celebrate the Farm’s accomplishments and show our unified support for a bright future for the Farm! This is a celebratory, family-friendly event. We want thousands to join us as we trek from the UBC Student Union Building (SUB) via the Board of Governors meeting and then on to the UBC Farm.

We invite you to please book off Tuesday, April 7, 2009 from 3:30 p.m. into the early evening to attend the Great Farm Trek 2009! If you can’t make it until after work, we will be shuttling late-comers by bus from free parking areas near UBC Farm directly to the Trek crowd anytime between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. After 6 p.m., the crowds will be located at the UBC Farm for festivities. Come to the UBC Farm, 6182 South Campus Road for free parking (see map) http://www.landfood.ubc.ca/ubcfarm/images/new-farm-directions.jpgBring costumes, music, banners, posters, spirit, kids, moving art shows, farm love, floats, hot air balloons, circus performers, sandwich boards, party favours, whistles, bells, dancers, fire twirlers, clowns, bicycles, novelty cars, trapeze artists, scooters, painted school buses, TV Camera crews, and other sundry fun items. Oh yes, bring snacks, water, and weather-appropriate clothing. The event will happen rain or shine!

During the Trek we will have Vancouver’s own ever-wacky and danceable Carnival Band, the high-energy percussion ensemble known as Sambata, Papa Thom from the Shepherd’s Pie Tour ’09, Agora String Band, and much more! At the UBC farm there will be music (the soul-quakin’, boot-shakin’ bluegrass boys of the Agora String Band, and the hip hop alt country tom waits-sylin’ Blackberry Wood.) As well there will be food, addresses from James Mackinnon (100-Mile Diet author,) Rex Weyler (Greenpeace founder), special recorded greetings from David Suzuki, and the Mayor of Vancouver, and a ceremonial planting

friendsoftheubcfarm@gmail.com if you have questions. For a route map and event location see:http://www.amsubc.ca/index.php/ams/news/ams_great_farm_trek_2009/
Also on Facebook: Great Farm Trek 2009
We can’t wait to see you there! Save the Farm: Join the Trek!

The Schedule
2:30 p.m.: Shuttles and van drivers start running between UBC Farm and SUB (until 8 p.m.)
3:15 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.: Gathering at the SUB
3:15 p.m.: Sambata, fantastic percussion ensemble, performs!
3:45 p.m.: Shane Pointe — Traditional Musqueam welcome
3:55 p.m.: Rex Weyler — founder of Greenpeace
4:00 p.m.: James Mackinnon — co-author of the100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating
4:05 p.m.: Michael Duncan – AMS welcome
4:15 p.m.: Trek departs SUB
4:30 p.m.: Trek passes Board of Governors meeting
5:45 p.m.: Trek begins arriving at UBC Farm
5:45 p.m.: Agora String Band and Planting Ceremony
6:30 p.m.: Mark Bomford — UBC Farm welcome
6:35 p.m.: David Suzuki and Gregor Robertson video addresses
6:45 p.m.: Blackberry Wood
7:45 p.m.: Andrea Morgan — (Friends of the Farm) Closing
8 p.m.: Time to go home


Top
PAST: UBC Farm HistoryAs one of the founding faculties at UBC, agriculture has played a major role in academic and land-use activities at the University. The University was initially established around a 100 hectare farm.


Over time, as the UBC population grew and buildings expanded, the farm was re-located from main campus to mid-campus. After extensive research into the best possible remaining site for a farm on campus, farm activities were re-located again in the 1970s to their current location across 16th Avenue in south campus. During this time, the academic focus of UBC shifted to other areas. Field trials gave way to lab tests, and the importance of integrated sustainable field agriculture was de-emphasized.


In 1997, UBC’s Official Community Plan (OCP) was approved. UBC identified the last remaining on-campus working landscapes (the vestiges of our agricultural heritage in the south and mid-campus areas, including the farm) for housing development. However, the faculty of land and food systems’s curriculum and vision changes in 1999 to 2000 as well as renewed student interest prompted a fresh look at the on campus agricultural land base, focusing on new possibilities for the south campus fields. In 2000, the faculty published a paper entitled,“Reinventing the UBC Farm,” articulating a vision for renewing the existing land base as an integrated farm system focused on hands-on sustainability education.


The development and growth of the UBC Farm, also referred to as the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (CSFS,) during the last nine years follows the general vision first shared in the “reinventing” document, with some refinements to its scope and programs. The strong student leadership that was crucial for the farm’s “re-invention” gave rise to a focus on student-centred learning as the primary mandate of the CSFS. Closely interwoven with an emerging research program and community service activities, the “new” farm can be considered a direct descendant of the University farm first envisioned in 1915.
Over the last century agriculture has left a rich legacy to UBC. As we enter the 21st century with all its associated ecological challenges, the UBC Farm provides a place of rich learning on a many of the key sustainability issues of our time.


Top
PRESENT:The Vancouver Campus Planning process and the UBC FarmIn 2007 the UBC Farm hosted 41 for-credit student courses, over 2,000 students, over 20,000 visitors. The Farm also hosted 35 active research projects from 14 of UBC’s faculties, schools, and colleges on some of the most challenging sustainability issues of our time such as low-carbon food production, alternative energy, nutrient cycling, and honeybee colony collapse disorder, to name a few. It is home to a Saturday farm market during the summer season, and a number of innovative programs that involve residents from the Downtown Eastside, children from various Vancouver schools, academics, youth, elders, and everyone in between.


In response to Campus Planning’s proposals to shrink and move the UBC Farm to make way for housing development, UBC staff, students, and community members have worked very hard during the last year to preserve the UBC Farm and promote a vision for its future. Among other achievements, this year of work resulted in hundreds of letters written in support of the UBC Farm (including a from Dr. David Suzuki) and a motion of support for the farm was unanimously passed by the Metro Vancouver Board. At the November 27, 2008 Board of Governors (BoG) meeting, AMS, GSS, and Friends of the UBC Farm representatives collaborated on a presentation conveying the farm’s importance in helping make UBC a global leader in sustainability. The BoG responded with a media release in which they directed the UBC administration to conduct an academic planning process for the 24 hectare farm to determine how best to make it an “academically rigorous and globally significant” centre for sustainability research and teaching. This represents a positive step forward. Students and the broader community want to make a clear statement before the end of this school year that it is critical to sustainability education at UBC to keep the farm at its current 24 hectare size and location, to provide stable funding for the farm’s programs and operations, and to include key farm users in determining the shape of the farm’s future.


Top
FUTURE: The Great Farm TrekThe AMS decided to organize the Great Farm Trek 2009 to celebrate all that the farm has accomplished in the last nine years, and to send a very clear message to UBC that thousands of people from the academic and wider community support the farm and wish to see it preserved and supported for the future of students and faculty at UBC, residents of Vancouver and B.C., and citizens of the world concerned about sustainability.
This is following upon a long history of Treks at UBC. In 1915, UBC halted construction on its Point Grey campus due to WWI shortages, which left students increasingly cramped on a makeshift campus (now the site of Vancouver General Hospital.) After collecting petition signatures and gaining media and public support, in 1922 1,200 students marched from their makeshift campus to the Point Grey campus to demand the provincial government resume building on the site. The students dedicated a stone cairn as a symbolic foundation for the long-term prosperity of the campus. Under the student and public pressure, the provincial government resumed building.


In that time honoured tradition that has given us our beautiful campus, we will trek to the UBC Farm to show our strong support for its future. With seeds and plants in hand, we will march to the Farm and put them in the ground as a symbol of the desire to grow deep roots at the Farm site for the kind of innovative teaching and research about sustainability issues that future generations will need. Come help us save Vancouver’s last working farm!

for more info, please see: http://www.amsubc.ca/index.php/student_government/sub%20page/category/great_farm_trek_09/