Student farm breaking new ground on campus, in education

​When spring returns to West Lafayette in 2017, the volunteers and students at the Purdue University Student Farm will be planting into new ground – both figuratively and literally.

The farm has provided practical education to students and fresh produce to the surrounding community from its current location at 1601 W. State St. for five years. However, changes are coming to the west end of campus in the form of the State Street Redevelopment Project. By 2017, a new research and innovation district will bring aerospace research facilities, business and conference centers, apartments, homes and grocery stores to the area, including the five acres currently occupied by the student farm. After the current growing season is complete the students and volunteers will pack up their equipment and greenhouses and head to a new location a mile and a half away on Cherry Lane. Moving will begin in October with the goal of being settled in the new location by April.

The new acreage is located near the William H. Daniel Turfgrass Research and Diagnostic Center and the Birck Boilermaker Golf Complex, a location that could draw new traffic to the farm from nearby bike paths and neighborhoods.

“We might not have initiated this move but a lot of great opportunities are coming along with it,” said Steve Hallett, professor of horticulture at Purdue and the farm’s faculty advisor. “We built our farm on the current site from the ground up and put it together piecemeal, inexpensively. You might say we held it together with wire and duct tape. But Dean Jay Akridge and the College of Agriculture are helping us move and build on our new site and they have been very generous with their resources, both intellectual and financial. It’s been fantastic.”

 

Farm manager Chris Adair said that while there is less acreage at the new site – three and a half acres instead of the current five – the new land is better suited for production. “As you see, we have some trees here,” he laughed, gesturing to the heavy woods that completely surround the long, rectangular strip of cultivated land at the current location. “Because of the shade from the trees, we have only been able to use about 75 to 80 percent of this land. Our new location is 100 percent usable so we will be much more productive and efficient.”

Productivity and efficiency are key for the farm, which sells its produce to campus eateries such as the Ford Dining Court, Purdue Memorial Union and Fresh City Market.

Orders have increased this year from all three locations. Kale and onions from the student farm can be found in both the produce section and in-house restaurant at Fresh City Market, Adair said, and other restaurants are expanding their orders to include a larger variety of vegetables. Individual customers also continue to order produce weekly through the Farm Share program, where members pay a small fee to receive weekly deliveries of fresh vegetables, herbs and cut flowers.

Planting, cultivating and harvesting the produce for these orders is done primarily by undergraduate students who work or volunteer at the farm.

“There is a lot of history in this earth that we will be sorry to leave,” said volunteer Langston Newton, an agribusiness senior. “Dr. Hallett and the other students worked hard to build it up and get it established. But getting to start over in a new place – restart the planting, establish new perennials, plan new things – is going to be an amazing opportunity for the farm and the people who work here.”

Newton will graduate before the move is complete but said he plans to remain involved as a volunteer when he is in the area. He wants to develop hydroponic gardening in areas of the United States that struggle with drought or water quality and says his experience on the farm has helped him formulate his career goals.

“I learned so much working here – how to plan and time your crops, how to know what your customers want and plan accordingly. But most importantly, I learned that you need to come prepared to work and to work hard.”

It is not uncommon for students to volunteer at the farm, even when they do not need class credit, Hallett said.

“Sometimes people get the impression that the students who work at the farm are only there for class credit but that’s not necessarily true,” Hallett said. “Students from any major can come and volunteer at the farm, see how it functions and get involved. We have students from all of the majors in the College of Agriculture, and some from other colleges such as engineering, liberal arts, and so on. All majors are welcome and no prior experience is required.” Groups and individuals from outside the university also visit occasionally, he added.

The vision and goals of the farm will not change after the move but its mission could be expanded, Hallett said. One initiative that will be launched after the move is the development of a certificate program in small farm entrepreneurship.

The certificate is geared toward students who may not find a good fit in Purdue’s traditional agriculture programs, Hallett said. These students could include nontraditional students, aspiring farmers who do not come from a farm background, students who do not want to pursue a full four-year degree, and farmers seeking to work on a small acreage or in a niche market such as local foods.

“The design of the certificate program will have students come and spend part of their time helping to run the farm over the course of about nine months,” Hallett explained. “A relatively small proportion of time will also be spent in the classroom. Our students will be people who need a hands-on, practical, experiential education – maybe former teachers, accountants and suburbanites who are trying to go into farming. The student farm is ideal to offer the kind of experiences they need.”

Overall, the objective for the farm remains the same as it has for the past five years, Hallett said, and that is to involve students and volunteers in managing and developing a living, growing farm.

“We began the student farm as a catalyst to develop hands-on educational programs in sustainable agriculture,” he explained. “Purdue is one of the primary schools in the world for agriculture but its focus has tended to be on production agriculture and commodity crops. One of the things we felt needed strengthening in the college’s educational portfolio was a small farm, hands-on horticulture and sustainable, low-impact approaches. The student farm was a way that we could put all of these things together, while increasing undergraduate students’ exposure to real, hands-on learning.

“The decisions that the students make are not just momentary decisions in a short lab course. They are trying to manage and develop the farm according to a long-term vision.”

 

External Link: https://ag.purdue.edu/connections/Pages/article.aspx?sid=274&m=August&y=2016#.V6xx9kdf2Um