(From left) Sara Barton and John Jones lead VCU’s Foundations of Urban Food Production course.
John Jones and Sara Barton know big things can come from small spaces. That’s why Jones, a Virginia Commonwealth University professor, and Barton, a VCU staff member, joined forces this semester to lead ENVS 291 - Foundations of Urban Food Production, a class that offers course credits for tending a city garden, greenhouse flats and a hydroponic system. Once harvested, healthy greens from these plots are delivered to VCU’s Ram Pantry, where they are available for students experiencing food insecurity.
Barton was hired as a program coordinator for VCU Sustainability in 2017 and moved into the role of senior manager for sustainability programs and policy in 2022. When she arrived, she found an active volunteer group working in the VCU Monroe Park Campus community garden on Parkwood Avenue. Jones, who was initially hired in fall 2019 to join the Sustainable Food Access Core — part of VCU’s Institute for Inclusion, Inquiry and Innovation — is now an assistant professor in the Center for Environmental Studies. In spring 2020, he and Barton secured a campus learning grant to begin microgreens production with student volunteers.
Starting in the fall of 2020, Jones offered a one-credit course centered on microgreens production to keep students in the greenhouse — albeit one at a time, following pandemic protocols. When restrictions eased, students began working in groups to grow and harvest the microgreens. This semester, for the first time, plants are also being grown hydroponically in small, dirt-free flats stationed on shelves just outside the rooftop greenhouse, where tables hold trays full of microgreens that are harvested every 10 days.
“The industrial food system does a lot of great things,” Jones says. “It allows society as we understand it to exist. But at the same time, there are a lot of negative externalities. It becomes invisible to people’s lives. We don’t really think of where the food in the grocery store or Chipotle comes from.”
Microgreens harvested during the course are available to VCU students facing food insecurity through the school’s Ram Pantry.
The course offers class instruction as well as hands-on experience with basic plant and soil science, organic gardening, food waste and composting — made easier by bins recently installed at the back of the garden in a new program from the city of Richmond. “The seed-to-harvest arc is very fulfilling,” Barton says. “It’s something we as humans can connect with but don’t always have the opportunity to.”
But we can create new opportunities for such connections, Jones says. Before completing a joint doctoral program in urban systems at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, Jones worked in his home state of Ohio in economic development. He came across an extension program that initiated community gardening for an immigrant population. And there’s a movement among urban planners to support agriculture production in cities, not just in rural areas.
“Traditionally, it was too expensive to purchase land in cities [for large farms],” he says, “but we have cities with underutilized spaces, and we have technological advances that allow 3D, or vertical, hydroponic farming. You can get five to seven times the production space [with vertical farming] than you can get with a field.
“It’s a big problem for postindustrial regions: What economic activity can come back into those [abandoned] spaces?” he notes. “I’m not pretending agriculture is the silver bullet, but when you consider economic development strategies for cities in the 21st century, food production should be one of the tools in the tool chest. Historically, it’s not been.”
Students enrolled in the class come from across the campus, some with academic interests, others just with a desire to get their hands in the dirt. It’s an easy entry point, Barton says. “A larger farm can be intimidating. Certainly, we want to grow as much as we can here, safely, but I want to create something that’s more accessible,” she adds. “We can take time and resources to focus on learning for those who are curious. This is also an educational space.”
Part of that education involves responsibility. Over spring break, several trays of microgreens died, which led to good lessons, Jones says. “[Students saw] the fragility of the process,” he says. “I got to tell them that no one is starving because we forgot to water. The industrial system provides. But in a different situation, someone might go to bed hungry. We want to reinforce the point that food production is really damn hard. People who pick the food aren’t really protected or rewarded for what they do. But economic and cultural justice is hard to tackle. That’s really another whole subject.”
In the future, Barton and Jones hope to offer a two-course series that could enable students to earn a badge, a form of microcredential, in sustainable food production. “I don’t know that VCU will ever have the same agricultural programs as a land-grant institution,” Barton says, “but we know students care about sustainability. This course is a cool way to gauge student interest and administrative interest in urban agriculture topics.”
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