Last weekend I attended the Urban Agriculture and Sustainability Meeting at the University of District of Columbia. There were a few goals of the meeting, to talk about current urban agriculture research in the Northeast, to network with other urban agriculture researchers, and to visit a few DC Food Hubs.
I signed up to present a lightning talk on our PlantingScience Agronomy Feeds the World (AFW) Module. Part of the module will be focused on students solving a real-world agronomy problem after they have conducted their open-inquiry experiment on nutrient management or crop stresses. Teachers will be able to chose one of two problems, of which designing or improving a community garden is one. I figured this would be a perfect opportunity to introduce PlantingScience and AFW. I gave a lightning talk followed by 5 minutes of questions, and overall the presentation was a success! I’m hoping we can get AFW into some Maryland schools, and I’ve got some PG county schools interested in learning more.
This meeting was also a great introduction to urban agriculture research happening in my backyard. I learned UDC has a College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability, and Environmental Sciences which you can learn more about here. We learned from Dean O’Hara about the challenges involved with engineering a green roof on a pre-existing roof, but despite these challenges green roofs can still provide food, resources for pollinators, and beauty in urban areas. We also went on a tour of the East Capital Urban Farm with Associate Dean William Hare. At the farm there is an active community presence, many raised vegetable beds, very similar to the community gardens you may be familiar with. Additionally, there were other interesting things at this farm including an aquaponic set-up that will soon be operational, a rice garden (so cool!), and many engineering practices that add to the beauty of the space and filter rainwater coming off of the steep-sloped farm. If you are ever in DC I highly recommend you check this farm out.
After the tours there was a meeting to discuss potential research in the region, but unfortunately I was not able to attend. Even so, I want to thank everyone who helped put the meeting together, I learned so much about urban agriculture, the University of District of Columbia, and how bad the socioeconomic environment is in DC and how urban agriculture might be able to start solving some of the malnutrition happening in our region. I especially want to thank Matthew Richardson for organizing the meeting and giving me the opportunity to present our PlantingScience work. Hopefully I will get to work with some UDC faculty in the near future! I took some pretty neat pictures during the meeting, please check them out below.
I signed up to present a lightning talk on our PlantingScience Agronomy Feeds the World (AFW) Module. Part of the module will be focused on students solving a real-world agronomy problem after they have conducted their open-inquiry experiment on nutrient management or crop stresses. Teachers will be able to chose one of two problems, of which designing or improving a community garden is one. I figured this would be a perfect opportunity to introduce PlantingScience and AFW. I gave a lightning talk followed by 5 minutes of questions, and overall the presentation was a success! I’m hoping we can get AFW into some Maryland schools, and I’ve got some PG county schools interested in learning more.
This meeting was also a great introduction to urban agriculture research happening in my backyard. I learned UDC has a College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability, and Environmental Sciences which you can learn more about here. We learned from Dean O’Hara about the challenges involved with engineering a green roof on a pre-existing roof, but despite these challenges green roofs can still provide food, resources for pollinators, and beauty in urban areas. We also went on a tour of the East Capital Urban Farm with Associate Dean William Hare. At the farm there is an active community presence, many raised vegetable beds, very similar to the community gardens you may be familiar with. Additionally, there were other interesting things at this farm including an aquaponic set-up that will soon be operational, a rice garden (so cool!), and many engineering practices that add to the beauty of the space and filter rainwater coming off of the steep-sloped farm. If you are ever in DC I highly recommend you check this farm out.
After the tours there was a meeting to discuss potential research in the region, but unfortunately I was not able to attend. Even so, I want to thank everyone who helped put the meeting together, I learned so much about urban agriculture, the University of District of Columbia, and how bad the socioeconomic environment is in DC and how urban agriculture might be able to start solving some of the malnutrition happening in our region. I especially want to thank Matthew Richardson for organizing the meeting and giving me the opportunity to present our PlantingScience work. Hopefully I will get to work with some UDC faculty in the near future! I took some pretty neat pictures during the meeting, please check them out below.