Urban Agriculture and the (New) Land-Grant University

By Timothy Beatley

The University of the District of Columbia is a land-grant university with a mission of assisting "agriculture and the mechanical arts," in the words of the 1862 Morrill Act, which established the land-grant system. Congress extended land-grant status to UDC in 1968, and it is an unusual (and praiseworthy) example of how this traditionally rural-oriented mission can be applied in a city.

Unlike the other 100 or so land-grant universities nationwide, the school's agricultural assistance programs (a typical offering of land-grant universities) are imagined and applied in an entirely urban context. UDC proudly describes itself as the only urban landgrant university in the U.S.

In addition to its unique urban agricultural mission, UDC also boasts a highly unusual curricular structure. The academic and disciplinary mix of UDC's College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability, and Environmental Studies is timely and path-blazing. The college offers programs in urban agriculture, sustainable development, community planning, nutrition, and health education. Soon they will also offer a National Architectural Accrediting Board-accredited program in architecture.

Needless to say, one does not usually find architecture and 4-H in the same administrative unit, but the combo presents important advantages and benefits. Sabine O'Hara, dean of CAUSES, believes the unusual professional groupings in her college are very useful. For example, she believes the interdisciplinary collaboration of architecture and urban agriculture faculty and students is important, given the global trend toward designing food-growing spaces into buildings. Architects are increasingly being called upon to design homes, schools, and office buildings that include spaces for growing food; agriculturists and urban farmers can advise and collaborate on the types and sizes of such spaces and the ways buildings can house new growing media and technologies.

I recently had the chance to visit CAUSES to speak with Dean O'Hara, and see firsthand what makes this urban landgrant agenda so noteworthy.

The 40,000-square-foot green roof at the University of the District of Columbia's College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability, and Environmental Studies. Photo by Timothy Beatley.

Growing food and community

When I met with O'Hara, we first took a trip to the building's remarkable green roof, which serves as both an important ecological design element and active food growing space for UDC's community-supported agriculture program.

When we stepped onto the rooftop, I thought the spaces for growing vegetables rather small. But as O'Hara picked a cherry tomato and a plum tomato and handed them to me to for a taste test, I caught a glimpse of the rest of the expansive 20,000-square-foot growing space, much of which was planted in sedums and low-to-the-ground plants like strawberries, squash, and eggplant.

The growing spaces are positioned along the edges and reinforced areas of the structure, which O'Hara explains was their solution for the additional structural loads created by the deeper, heavier growing structures, which provide anywhere from 12 to 18 inches of soil depth. The soil was also engineered to be high in mineral content but low in organic matter to further reduce the load.

The special rooftop farm is just one element in a larger network of urban agricultural spaces and projects that O'Hara and her colleagues at CAUSES have undertaken. The most ambitious might be the creation of a series of what they call urban food hubs throughout the city. They are intended to function as community anchors, places that community residents go to learn to become urban farmers and food processors and run the hubs, which will create jobs and income for the neighborhoods.

O'Hara says the Urban Food Hub model will also bring healthy, affordable food to the food deserts of Washington, D.C., as well as build community and enhance quality of life. "And so [each hub] becomes a vehicle for building capacity in the community. And that's really what we should be doing as universities, isn't it?" she adds.

Five hubs are currently in development in Washington, but the program's goal is to have a functioning hub in each of the city's eight wards. One of the first is the East Capitol Urban Farm, located in Ward 7, on the corner of Southern Avenue and East Capitol Street. A kind of prototype, it exemplifies what can happen on a single urban site of about three acres. There is a nature trail, play spaces for children, community garden plots for residents, a farmers market, an aquaponic system that grows both food and fish, and a community gathering space. The hub also provides an important public art dimension, with a large mural and sculpture area.

The CAUSES green roof also features a stormwater system that collects rainwater into two 500-gallon cisterns and then circulates it through hoses to the plant boxes and beds. Photo by Timothy Beatley.

In the future, the model also calls for each urban food hub to have a commercial kitchen to help foster new community food businesses. The model argues for the importance of making room in each hub for all four stages of the urban food production system: methods and techniques for growing food, food preparation and processing, food distribution, and waste and water recovery from food waste.

As a bonus, the hub also acts as greenspace that helps manage flooding and stormwater runoff.

It provides 20,000 square feet of food growing space for a university-run CSA, and a greenhouse for agricultural research. Photo by Timothy Beatley.

Innovation for urbanity

The University of the District of Columbia's CAUSES presents an unusual case of a land-grant university taking on the food and sustainability challenges of a major city.

UDC seems to understand that its mission extends beyond the conventional classroom to investment in research and neighborhood infrastructure that will allow for in situt raining and education, which will ultimately help to strengthen local underserved neighborhoods, economically and socially.

Faculty-applied research is a key element. During our tour, as O'Hara proudly showed off a new vertical hydroponics growing structure invented by one of her faculty, she told me that the research and development functions are important and fit well with the land-grant mission of the college, even more so in this urban setting, where new agricultural innovations, practices, and technologies are increasingly needed. Other urban universities — land-grant institutions or not — might find inspiration in this program.

As I left the CAUSES building, I stopped by the CSA distribution point. Thirty shareholders were scheduled to pick up food that day, and the produce looked lovely. It struck me that I would like to live in a city where I could participate in a rooftop CSA, and where the local university is actively involved in building more sustainable, food-secure neighborhoods. Wouldn't you?

Timothy Beatley is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities at the University of Virginia, where he directs the Biophilic Cities Project.