Better veggies for Canadian organic farmers

May 28, 2019

Better Veggies for Canadian Organic Farmers

A new Canada-wide project led by the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (CSFS) will help organic vegetable growers find plant varieties better suited to Canadian climates and environments.

Postdoctoral Fellow Alexandra Lyon and Professor Hannah Wittman are leading a new five-year research project called Canadian Organic Vegetable Improvement (CANOVI). Funding comes from the Organic Science Cluster 3, supported by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Canadian Agricultural Partnership. The Bauta Family Initiative on Canadian Seed Security, a national group, has joined the project as an industry partner.

CANOVI focuses on participatory plant breeding of peppers and carrots – two crops identified as top priorities for organic vegetable growers in a survey the CANOVI team conducted last year.

“Most carrots are grown in a few intensive production regions like California, which means there’s not as much incentive for the private seed sector to breed varieties for Canadian climates,” says Lyon. “Organic growers are a smaller proportion of the market in terms of who’s buying seed, but they still need varieties that are well-adapted to their systems. So there’s an opportunity to improve the productivity of organic farming through public plant breeding.”

Some of the biggest challenges that organic carrot growers report in B.C. are carrot rust fly, diseases like cavity spot, and finding fast-growing varieties with good flavour and appearance. This spring, Lyon and her team are making crosses between commercial carrot varieties and experimental lines developed by public plant breeders at the University of Wisconsin. Together with local farmers, they will select a new variety out of the crosses that hopefully combines the desired traits for organic growers.

For peppers, CANOVI is supporting a similar collaboration between a public plant breeding program at Cornell University and several Ontario farmers who have been selecting sweet bell peppers with a key trait for the North: a pepper that ripens earlier than any other on the market.

“At the end of the day, the goal is to develop several varieties or populations of peppers and carrots that Canadian farmers and seed growers can continue to adapt and improve upon in their farms,” adds Lyon.

The CANOVI project takes advantage of an on-farm variety trialling network that Lyon helped establish in a previous project, the BC Seed Trials, where she collaborated with local non-profit FarmFolk CityFolk.

The CANOVI team includes Loren Rieseberg, Professor in the Faculty of Science, Andrew Riseman, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, and Marney Isaac, Associate Professor from University of Toronto.

Lyon and CANOVI’s collaborators are just getting started, but are optimistic that they will change things for Canadian organic farmers – one carrot and pepper at a time.

Find out more about CANOVI on the CSFS website at ubcfarm.ubc.ca.

From Backyards to City Parks: Preserving Green Space

May 28, 2019

From Backyards to City Parks: Preserving Green Space

Camil Dumont (MSc Integrated Studies in Land and Food Systems 2017) is well into his first term as Park Board Commissioner for the City of Vancouver, a city that prides itself on its more 200 beaches and parks, including the historic Stanley Park. It is here that Dumont regularly attends meetings that are open to the public, and where many of the decisions regarding public space are made.

“If you had asked me a few years ago, I never would have thought that I’d be a politician today,” Dumont said.

In 2015, he was working as head farmer and executive director for Inner City Farms (ICF), a non-profit society he founded six years earlier. ICF partners with home owners and local businesses to convert their front and back yards into productive vegetable gardens, the produce of which is made available to the community through a harvest share.

“ICF grew from my passion in growing my own food,” Dumont said. “Unfortunately, private green space was a luxury I did not have, and that’s typical for many people living in Vancouver. ICF offers the opportunity to turn underused green space on private properties into working produce gardens, while creating a community around local food and sustainable practices.”

Dumont was introduced to Instructor Will Valley and Professor Emeritus Alejandro Rojas, who encouraged him to return to UBC for graduate school. “The Integrated Studies in Land and Food Systems program was the academic home for the theory I was already practicing at ICF. I focused my research on the history of sustainable food in Vancouver, and graduated with a better
grounding in science and food systems.”

The City of Vancouver held municipal elections in November 2018, and Dumont saw this as an opportunity to take his work at ICF and UBC even further. “If we want a sustainable future for our kids, I believe that my generation needs to step up and take the lead. And because most of the world now lives in cities, parks have become our direct experience with the natural world.”

Since the election, Dumont has approached every decision on his desk with a climate lens, looking for any opportunities for a greener future and city.

“I am grateful for the opportunity to do this job,” Dumont reflects. “It has opened doors to communities that I haven’t had the chance to work with before, and seeing different groups of people overcome differences to preserve green space in a city is inspiring.”

Photos of Camil Dumont courtesy of Adam Blasberg

A Bold Voice for Change

May 28, 2019

A Bold Voice for Change

Christine Boyle (BSc Global Resource Systems 2007), a first time Councillor for the City of Vancouver, isn’t
afraid to take on big issues. When announcing her decision to run, she decided to focus her campaign on tackling the growing wealth gap, housing affordability, and on strengthening community engagement.

Boyle has been a passionate activist for social and environmental justice issues for many years, including during her time as a UBC student. She helped organize the early FarmAde concerts, and was a part of the student advocacy to save the UBC Farm when its future was uncertain. “My experiences in community activism at UBC have informed much of the knowledge and relationship skills that I bring to my efforts on city council to create positive social change.”

After graduating, Boyle spent many years in frontline community support roles. She then went on to complete an MA in Religious Leadership for Social Change from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and became an Ordained Minister in the United Church of Canada.

Boyle has volunteered for campaigns of leaders she’s looked up to in the past, and is a strong supporter of having more underrepresented groups run for elected office, such as women and people of colour. When she was encouraged to run herself, she did it for all the reasons she’s encouraged others to. “We need different types of leaders, people who will be brave in taking on inequality and climate change.”

Less than three months after the election, Boyle has taken a major step to do just that.

In January, she introduced a motion before city council to declare a climate emergency. It passed unanimously, and has set the stage for the city to bring forward stronger proposals. “It has been incredible to move this forward, and we’re already beginning to see the impact. We now have the mandate to dramatically strengthen Vancouver’s climate plan and to take action, on everything from infrastructure to sea level rise to reducing our carbon pollution levels in line with what the science requires.”

Ultimately, Boyle believes that building a social movement is needed to pressure governments to tackle any large issue. “The work of municipal government is real to residents, it is on-the-ground and in their neighbourhoods. I encourage everyone who is concerned about their city and our shared future to engage with elected officials, and to get involved in collective action.”

Photos of Christine Boyle courtesy of Erin Flegg Photography

Learning Tools for Just Food

May 28, 2019

Learning Tools for Just Food

Joyce Liao and Meryn Corkery worked on a community project in LFS 350 (Land, Food, and Community II) involving equity issues in the food system and both felt a strong desire to dig deeper. So together with PhD candidate Colin Dring, they
proposed an ambitious project to build tools that everyone from a first-year student to a seasoned faculty member could use to give students the skills to enact change in the food system.

“We initiated it because I was feeling like there was a lack of teaching about social and cultural sustainability,” says Liao, a fourth-year Global Resource Systems (GRS) student. “There was a deep desire in us to see this embedded more in all courses in LFS.”

Their two-year project Just Food: Building Equity Competencies with Food Systems Pedagogy was funded by UBC’s Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund.

The project involves people from across UBC campus. Other members lend their expertise from the Centre for Sustainable
Food Systems at UBC Farm; Faculty of Arts; Department of Educational Studies; and the Centre for Teaching, Learning
Technology. The project leads are Corkery and Liao, with support from Dring and LFS faculty member Will Valley.

The team has started a scan of UBC courses that use food and equity as a means to engage teaching and learning, and began
reviewing 16 institutions externally.

Both Liao and Corkery, also a fourth-year GRS student, believe the topic of equity in the food system should be introduced
earlier in the undergraduate curriculum to recognize how intersectionality is a lens for exploring the different ways people
shape and are shaped by the food system. People of different race, gender, and class experience a different level of access to food. For example, First Nations people who live on reserves, and single parents who are female are more likely to report experiencing food insecurity in Canada.

Dring, who is working on his PhD in Agricultural Planning, said this project enables undergraduate students to meet their desire to give back and further the conversation. It also builds a foundation to prepare students as global citizens and future professionals or academics who can work on these important issues.

“An essential part of post-secondary education in sustainable agriculture requires an understanding of the social relations related to food and equity,” Dring said. “To be global citizens working towards social justice requires skills such as active listening, communication, emotional awareness and management, and knowledge of decolonization, anti-oppression, and food justice.”

Dring is also Chair of the BC Food Systems Network, Secretary of the Sustainable Agricultural Education Association, and sits on the Food Justice Working Group of the Vancouver Food Policy Council.

In the end, the project team hopes to build a collection of online multimedia and open source materials available to those within and external to UBC, as well as teach-back tools that could be used by both students and faculty members.

“We both realized we wanted to employ different ways of learning that were more purposeful and more in-depth,” said Corkery. They plan to pilot some of the tools in the fall in a student-directed seminar, then begin to implement them into LFS courses early 2020.

A Message from the Dean

May 28, 2019

A Message from the Dean

There are changemakers among us. Those who are not satisfied with the status quo and are motivated to take action for the greater good. In this issue of ReachOut we talk to a few of those changemakers in the Land and Food Systems community who are making a difference.

Two LFS alumni threw their names into the City of Vancouver elections for the first time last fall and both won a seat. One says he is an unexpected politician who, as a new Vancouver Park Board Commissioner, is able to review every project that passes his desk with a climate lens. The other honed her skills as an activist during her time at UBC, and she is now a City Councillor who has already passed a successful motion to declare a climate emergency.

Changemakers can be young and hungry as well. We show you students who want to see social equity issues discussed and actioned in more LFS and UBC courses. They are embarking on an ambitious project that involves people from four different departments at UBC. Their goal is to update curriculum and develop instructional tools that will give students the skills to enact change for the better in the food system.

Our first-rate researchers are also continuing to innovate and transform the world. They are bridging the divide between climate change research and application for B.C. farmers, improving plant breeds for organic farmers, and finding ways to use organisms to help plants combat the effects of carbon dioxide.

And finally, we are pleased to talk about a unique LFS undergraduate course that teaches students the art of capturing both sides of a story and communicating science clearly through the use of podcasting. This is an important course, because having people understand your message underlies all change. It’s inspiring for me to see how our alumni, students, staff and faculty can demonstrate such passion to make a difference.

I hope you enjoy the spring issue of ReachOut and as always, I welcome your feedback. If you wish to reach me, you can connect with me at r.yada@ubc.ca.

Rickey Yada

Dean, Faculty of Land and Food Systems

The Science of Storytelling

May 28, 2019

The Science of Storytelling

LFS 400 (Audio Storytelling) is not your typical science course.

In fact, course instructors Duncan McHugh, Digital & Instructional Media Producer in the Learning Centre, and Will Valley, an Instructor in the Faculty, encourage students from all disciplines to enroll.

“LFS 400 is a science communications course, disguised as a podcasting course,” McHugh said. “Students learn to effectively communicate their research to audiences that may not have a scientific background, which is a particularly important skill if they wish to pursue graduate studies.”

The first assignment of the term is a vox pop, where students are tasked with approaching people on the street and asking
for their opinion. They also record the encounter using audio equipment. For many students, it may be their first experience doing both.

“Some students find themselves outside of their comfort zone at first,” McHugh notes. “But we cultivate a welcoming and
open space in the classroom that’s free of judgement. Every assignment is practiced in the classroom first. Then after they
return, the students listen to each other’s work and provide constructive feedback and encouragement.”

Joyce Liao, a fourth year student in the Global Resource Systems program, took LFS 400 in her second year and found it to be a new and exciting experience. “I saw the value in each project, and how my skills were being built up over time,” Liao said. “There is a good balance of technical components and creative work, from using equipment and learning to edit audio, to interviewing and listening skills.”

The course began as a collaboration with the School of Journalism in 2005, before morphing into LFS 400 in 2009. It is offered every winter term and is open to all UBC students, but with only 20 seats it often fills up quickly.

UBC’s campus radio station, CiTR 101.9 FM, partners with McHugh and Valley to provide access to their studio for some recording.

The major assignment is a 10-12 minute podcast, the subject of which is the students’ own choosing. “The topics students
choose to investigate often map directly onto the different disciplines and fields of study in our faculty: animal welfare,
nutrition, food insecurity, sustainable agriculture, and community development,” said Valley. “Students get an opportunity to dig deeper into an issue they are passionate about, and at the same time, learn about other issues through listening to their peers’ final podcasts.”

On the final day of term, all students participate in a listening party, where they present their podcasts to the class. “It’s an incredible opportunity to recognize how far the students have come since the first day, when many of them have had little experience in storytelling. We often hear in the feedback that this course has provided them with the most opportunities to be creative during their undergraduate degree,” said McHugh.

“It may be unlike any other course they have taken before, but the experience and skills they learn are very applicable to their careers after university.”

The podcasts have a permanent home on the course website, lfs400.landfood.ubc.ca, where anyone is free to listen.

LFS round-up: Mobilizing climate research, changemakers in our community, and more…

May 21, 2019

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Dylan Kennedy wins award named for his father

May 17, 2019

Dylan Kennedy wins award named for his father

May 17, 2019 – This month Dylan Kennedy is graduating from UBC with a remarkable achievement: he is taking home his father’s namesake prize, the George Kennedy Prize in Global Resource Systems. This is awarded to the top graduating student in Global Resource Systems, a program in UBC’s Faculty of Land and Food Systems.

Dylan is an outstanding individual who achieved the top cumulative GPA in his class. While in the program, his focus was on sustainable agriculture and economics in the context of the Americas, and to round out his academic experience he went on exchange to the Université de Montréal.

The prize is named for Dylan’s father, George Kennedy, and it was established to recognize the senior Kennedy’s outstanding contribution in establishing international partnerships with UBC. He was the main architect behind the BSc Global Resource Systems (GRS) degree program and served as its first Program Director. George Kennedy is currently Associate Professor Emeritus in Land and Food Systems.

“Interestingly enough, looking back I realize that my Dad never insisted or pressured me to consider GRS,” says Dylan. “I started out in arts at UBC and it was only during my first and second years that I became more curious about the program he had made long ago, and started to think it might be a good fit.”

“It turned out to be an excellent fit and I am so glad to have been a part of the program and of Land and Food Systems. It helped me to study a variety of subjects I’m interested in, challenged me to take courses outside my comfort zone, and introduced me to lots of cool people.”

Dylan was originally reluctant to join the program due to its rigorous science requirements, but he ended up obtaining a first-class standing in every science-based course, as he did in every non-science focused course. According to GRS Program Director Les Lavkulich, Dylan is a true scholar.

In the near future, Dylan plans to move to eastern Canada and consider further studies.

“This summer I am planning on moving to Toronto and working for a year, and then the year after I will look into graduate programs related to food studies and food economics.”

Global Resource Systems is a second-year entry program that provides an understanding of natural and agricultural resources from an international perspective. Students take a breadth of courses in both the sciences and humanities, and co-design their programs by selecting a region of the world to study as well as a resource discipline, such as global health, international trade and development, sustainability and planning, among others.

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Afton Halloran

May 15, 2019

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Sarah Common

May 15, 2019

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Better veggies for Canadian organic farmers