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Food for thought: The Student Farm at OSU is growing more than just vegetables

Posted on | July 15, 2009 | 1,218 views |

by Julia Harris

Farming is not for the faint of heart. It’s hot, dirty and often back-breaking work. And it takes a lot of sunscreen, applied liberally and often, to keep sunburn at bay.

Just ask two Metro High School students, Zakia Nasrin and Zach Brazik, who have been spending their summer on three plots of land carved out of a small portion of Ohio State’s Waterman Farm.

“I have a job at Chick-Fil-A at the mall, but this is actual work,” Brazik said, taking a moment’s rest under a shady tree. His hands and shirt are streaked with dirt, and next to him sits a dusty laptop computer bag.

Not far from him, Nasrin wanders the three rows of vegetables that have recently been covered with filmy sheets of a gauze-like material, placing rocks carefully along the edges to keep the billowy fabric from flying away. The idea behind the coverage, called Agribon Row Cover, is to minimize damage from wind and insects while allowing up to 85 percent of sunlight to reach the plants.

Watching over her work is Patrick Turner, the newly hired manager of the Student Farm at OSU, an ambitious project involving Ohio State students, faculty, Metro High school students and instructors and a range of community volunteers.

“This is our organic production plot, which we hope to get certified this year so that we can sell our products as certified organic,” Turner said.

“To be certified, a plot has to have been free of any synthetic pesticides or herbicides for at least three years,” he added.

In this plot, Turner and his army of colleagues have planted kale, swiss chard, broccoli, cabbage, winter squash and some melons. A second cultivation, a high-level, integrated crop management plot, employs a newer type of sustainable agriculture that strives to curtail the use of pesticides as much as possible, without eliminating them entirely.

“What you do is scout the vegetables for insect pests and weeds and then only apply herbicides at the most optimal time,” Turner explained.

The ICM plot is home to a thriving assortment of vegetables, from Brussels sprouts to corn and tomatoes. The compact cornfield is itself the site of another experiment, using what’s called the “Three Sisters” model.

“There are three plants that Native Americans planted together a lot: Corn, squash and beans. The beans grow up the corn as a trellis, and they also produce their own nitrogen in the soil that provides nutrients for them and for the corn,” Turner said.

“The squash shades the ground and its spiny leaves can also keep away rodent pests like raccoons.”

While some of the produce from this plot has been harvested and sold at the farmer’s markets held weekly in Metro High’s parking lot, growth in the third and final plot is not for sale. That patch of soil is being transitioned to an organic plot: Since it was previously used for vegetable trials, pesticides and herbicides were applied to it within the last three years, so it has to lie fallow in order to be certified later.

These kinds of lessons in real-life farming are just what Mark Bennett, a professor of  horticulture and crop science, hoped participants would gain from the experience.

Bennett helped coordinate and organize early efforts to get the OSU Student Farm off the ground, and he also taught the 2008 organic gardening (Horticulture and Crop Science 294/694) class that he called a “meeting point” where students shared their ideas and dreams for how the farm could become reality.

“The student farm is a more realistic and authentic kind of learning than you can get in many lab exercises,” Bennett said.

“It’s also a great blend of generational understanding and experience, since we’ve got the master gardeners near our plots in Waterman, we’ve got the Metro students helping, we’ve got graduate and undergraduate research going on, and we’ve had the daycare centers on campus express interest in bringing their kids through the farm.”

Funded in part by an Excellence in Engagement Grant and by a grant from the Idea Lab at the OSU Urban Arts Space, the farm is the realization of a vision Bennett says had been percolating since around 2000. Student-run farms are becoming increasingly popular at universities around the country as a way for students to get more in touch with food production, learning about food systems and the debates between organic and traditional agriculture.

For Nasrin, a soft-spoken fourth-year student who has dreams of becoming a doctor, the student farm is the perfect place to learn about something dear to her heart.

“I’m really interested in sustainable architecture because as a doctor, I’d be focused on third-world countries and this could really apply,” she said.

She squinted into the bright July sun with a faraway look in her eyes. “I’m going to write an essay to the World Food Prize and hopefully get an internship for next summer to go to any country of my choice. That’s really why I’m interested in this.”

For more information…

Read a short description of the Student Farm at OSU at uas.osu.edu/idealab. Metro High School students have a blog about the project at growamerica.blogspot.com.

The World Food Prize is an international award recognizing the achievements of individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world. For details about its work and its student programs, see worldfoodprize.org/index.htm

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