University of Minnesota, Duluth
IN-2: Innovation 2

SAP@UMD formed in 2009 to institute education, research, and regional engagement around community food and agriculture systems in the western Lake Superior bioregion. SAP is a place-based 'land lab' comprised of fifteen acres at UMD's Research and Field Studies Center (formerly the Northeast Agricultural Experimental Station). We manage a five acre trial seedling apple orchard and a ten acre organic (transition) farm; we also work on a variety of food and agriculture projects in the region. SAP@UMD is guided by an interdisciplinary faculty collaborative in its activities, which fall into three areas: building a platform for experiential learning in sustainable agriculture for faculty, students, and community members; as a vehicle for collaborating on food systems change within the University of Minnesota, Duluth; and as a vehicle for bringing resources into the community and region around sustainable agriculture and community food systems. SAP@UMD is dedicated to bringing classroom and experiential learning around food, agriculture and gardening issues and activities. Courses in Geography, Environmental Studies, and Anthropology will be integrated into operating the market garden and heritage apple orchard. Please contact us if you are interested in any of these activities within the classroom, internships and volunteer opportunities. We developed a ten acre field at the Field and Research Studies Center (a.k.a. the UMD Farm). This field site, the former Northeast Experimental Station, has been abandoned since 1976 (see History tab on this website). This field site gives students hand's on opportunity to plan, grow and market food. A partnership with UMD Dining Services gives us a place to sell the produce we grow and UMD Dining has used this produce to rebuild their own capacity to use whole foods in their kitchens as a step toward procuring greater amounts from area farmers. The partnership with Dining Services has a twofold function: to provide experiential education opportunities to students in production, distribution and processing of local foods and scratch cooking; and to assist the Dining Services in iterating their own operations to broader scratch cooking from locally harvested produce.

More than a thousand students annually actively participate in the experiential learning activities. UMD’s Dining Services supports the personnel needs associated with the farm and purchases the organically grown produce (more than 20,000 pounds in 2015) which is served on campus, creating a systems-change vehicle linking academics and operations for mutual benefit. Taken as a whole, SAP creates an integrative structure for social and institutional learning related to how to devise, model and disseminate ways that human systems can better interface with earth systems at a regional scale.