What can a Student Farm Provide to Students? To Researchers? To a Campus?

In 1977, students at UC Davis created a 20-acre Student Farm on recently vacated agricultural research land. Since that time, the Student Farm has offered diverse programs that focus on sustainable agriculture principles and practices, emphasize in-field, experiential learning, and facilitate student initiative, creativity and exploration.

Both the agriculture the students pursued and their methods of pursing it were considered “alternative” at the time. Looking back, we recognize many of the key features and issues of agricultural sustainability in students’ projects, questions and concerns, from the earliest days to the present. Similarly, we can see that students--and faculty who supported and collaborated with them--created and re-created diverse ways of learning and shaping their learning experiences over the years. In an era when society increasingly recognizes the importance of these issues, students, faculty and staff can use this history to help design and refine ways to explore and learn about agriculture and sustainability.

About the Speaker:

Mark Van Horn is Director of the UC Davis Student Farm, which is a part of the university’s Agricultural Sustainability Institute (ASI). He is also a lecturer in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences. Van Horn's teaching activities have included courses on sustainable agriculture, agricultural ecosystems and organic farming. His publications focus on various aspects of sustainable and organic farming and sustainable agriculture education. He has worked with numerous partners to help farmers increase the sustainability of their operations and to educate children and youth about agriculture, food, nutrition and sustainability. In 2006, Van Horn and two colleagues hosted the first national conference on post-secondary sustainable agriculture education; he is a founding member of the Sustainable Agriculture Education Association and is a member of its steering committee. Van Horn has Master of Science degrees in plant breeding (University of Minnesota) and pest management (UC Davis) and several years of experience farming in California and the Midwest.