UBC Farm
The Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm (CSFS) is a teaching and research centre and local-to-global food hub working towards a more sustainable, food-secure future.
UBC Farm and Campus as a Living Lab
The Centre for Sustainable Food Systems engages in research, teaching and cultivation activities including sustainable food systems research at UBC and around the globe. The UBC Farm is CSFS’s main research and learning space, which it uses as a living laboratory to pursue solutions to local and global challenges facing food systems sustainability. UBC Farm is located on the southern end of the Vancouver Campus, on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓-speaking xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people.
The UBC Farm was started by students in 2001, and CSFS was established in 2011 to provide an academic home and framework to spur innovation. The Farm encompasses both agricultural and forest ecosystems spread across 24 hectares and is organically managed and certified. On it UBC faculty, students, staff and volunteers cultivate over two hundred varieties of fruits, vegetables, herbs, as well as honey beehives and egg-laying, open-pasture hens.
CSFS supports research and development of innovations in agroecosystem planning, management and practices, in response to global challenges like climate change and population growth, and local challenges like aging farming demographics and land limitations. In addition to over 99,000 pounds of food produced on the Farm in 2021-22, it hosted more than thirty active research projects.
Key People
Sean Smukler, Director, CSFS and Associate Professor and Chair of Agriculture and Environment in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems
Clare Cullen, Operations Director, CSFS
