Project Clearinghouse

Urban Agriculture Research

Sustainability Problem and Proposed Solution: 

The CLEI 150 class, in connection to the Sustainability Studies minor, hopes to accomplish the goal to inspire those around campus and globally by having a successful urban garden. In contrast, we will be researching ways to make this garden as sustainable as possible, such as focusing on a green irrigation systems, types of gardening used, and more, in order to create the maximum output of crops. With that being done, we will then analyze the amount of labor, capital and cost of the crops.

Jump to: Contact | Project Description | How to Join | Metrics for Success | Results
Project Categories: 
Food
Awareness, Education & Engagement
Social Justice
Project Status: 
In Progress
Campus Organization: 
College Eight Sustainability Minor
Sustainable Living Undergraduate Research Project
Affiliated Department, Unit or College: 
Sustainability Minor
Project Location: 
On campus

College Eight
PICA/The Farm


Stakeholder Contacts: 
Contact NameEmail Address
Kevin Bell
kwbell@ucsc.edu
Ronnie Lipschutz
rlipsch@ucsc.edu
How to Join: 
In order to join, feel free to contact one of the Stakeholder contacts, as seen above. You may also enroll in the Clei 150 series which is offered every quarter.

Project Description: 

This project is related to the CLEI 150 series which is composed of 150A, 150B, and 150C. The class is divided into three different projects, one focusing on Urban Agriculture. Through this Urban Agriculture project, our main objective is to find how much food can be produced in a specific area of land. We will focus on what kinds of crops to plant in the appropriate time of year, where we can plant these seeds, and how much crops will feed a certain amount of people. As a group, we were given the area to start a garden at PICA and the College 8 Garden. So far, we have transported soil into felt pots and galvanized garden beds and planted various crops, measuring the spaces in between to maximize the amount of food. We are currently in the process of finding out a sustainable irrigation system in order to regulate the amount of water used, and designing garden beds to be put into the PICA garden that we will be working on in the near future.

Metrics for Success: 

As of now, students are looking forward to the success they hope to achieve. At the end of this project for the school year, we hope to calculate how much people we can feed through the crops we have made. This project was started to research how much we can make in a given area so it would be great to see the success at the end of this project. Not only are we looking forward to that, but we are excited to see how many people can be inspired through this project to start an urban garden of their own.

Result Categories: 
Education/Outreach
Data Collection & Analysis
Results: 

This project will hope to deliver many crops over the course of the year. We also hope that people will experience service learning and will be inspired to start their own sustainable urban garden, whether at home or in their community. The project will be on-going throughout this school year and for future CLEI 150 students.