Welcome to the UBC Farm!
The CSFS is a research and teaching facility at the University of British Columbia. It includes a 24-hectare (60 acres) integrated production farm, forest, and community learning space located on unceded Musqueam territory. It is managed by LFS but led collaboratively by researchers and staff affiliated with almost all of UBC’s faculties.
The UBC Farm grows over 200 varieties of fruits, vegetables, and herbs. The farm also features honey bee hives and egg laying, open pasture hens.
The CSFS at UBC Farm conducts research, teaching, and outreach to explore and exemplify healthy and sustainable food systems. Every site on the Farm can be viewed ‘through the lens’ of each of these three objectives – no one thing does one thing!
Objective 1: Research – The CSFS embodies the concept of campus as a living lab, providing researchers with a research platform where social, economic, and environmental interventions can be designed, tested, and monitored within a living food system. Research opportunities span the whole seed to plate continuum while integrating a multitude of disciplines and sectors to provide global leadership for transformation leading to resilient and secure future food systems.
Objective 2: Teaching – The CSFS provides a globally unique research and teaching space aimed at improving the sustainability and resiliency of our regional, national, and global food systems. The CSFS also embodies the concept of campus as an agent of social change, where learners of all ages can immerse themselves in the stewardship of a working, productive landscape. More than 2000 students, through 60 courses, across 10 different UBC Faculties and Schools collaborate with the Centre on curricular activities ranging from community service learning to immersive internships to on-site lectures.
Objective 3: Community Engagement – Contending with a planet in which over half of humanity now lives in cities, the urban-rural interface at the UBC Farm provides a globally distinctive opportunity. Underpinning the confluence of a dense urban residential community, a world-class university, and a managed rural ecosystem is a chance to undertake a groundbreaking experiment: to describe and measure the network of interconnecting systems that underpin sustainable communities. UBC Farm provides an urban space that can provide food, fibre, and fuel for residents of the campus and surrounding areas, while also acting as a conduit for learning and discovery. Through a diversity of public engagement initiatives, the UBC Farm is working to advance dialogue on sustainable community development that builds common ground across age, ability, political views, socioeconomic status, culture, belief, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender. The farm values the diverse knowledge sets and experiences that community supporters bring to this shared site. CSFS at UBC Farm serves as an entry-point for students and community members to engage with a modeled sustainable food system. Each year, approximately 55,000 people visit the UBC Farm.