University of the Fraser Valley works with horticulture and livestock as well as agriculture innovation
The Agriculture Centre of Excellence at the University of the Fraser Valley has three main functions, according to Garry Fehr, the director of the centre and professor in the department of geography and the environment.
“First of all, we have the barns and greenhouses in Chilliwack which serve for both education, especially September to the end of April each year in both horticulture and livestock, and then it is also used for research. The research is dominant in the May-to-August time,” said Fehr.
The centre also works as the secretariat of the B.C. Agriculture and Seafood Research, Education and Extension Network.
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“There are 11 post-secondary institutions, federal and provincial ministry of agriculture representatives, as well as producer associations,” he said.
“What we try and do is collaborate on research, making sure that education institutions are providing the training for agricultural workers of the future according to the needs of industry.”
The third aspect of the centre is research.
One of the research streams is agriculture innovation on the technical side.
“We work with entrepreneurs, other scientists and we test their ideas,” he said.
“Then we either say, we give them a report that says this is a great product and try and commercialize or we give them feedback and say these are some of the problems with your technology and you should try and solve those challenges before commercialization.”
There are a number of projects that the Centre of Excellence oversees. One area of research is in low tech urban agriculture.
“My background is working in less developed countries, such as India and Kenya, so I’ve worked on some urban agriculture projects,” Fehr said.
“So then I came back and started talking to students and said, how can we develop urban agriculture infrastructure just using scrap materials that you can find in some of these slums and less developed parts of the city.”
Students have been working on the project and are compiling a digital resource to make that information freely available.
“We’re at the point right now where we’re trying to get permission for some of the images to be used in the publication,” Fehr said.
“There are different things such as composters that can be made out of scrap materials,” he said.
“There’s different types of hanging gardens, even things like using water bottles.”
Another example is creating shelters or areas to protect crops in areas where the temperature can get down to nearly zero.
“We’ve avoided identifying materials that someone would have to purchase,” he said.
