Thursday, April 29, 2010
The plan seemed tangible: research, organize and ultimately create a farm to cultivate food and sell it to KU Dining.
The photo is of Ben Alexander (green shirt), vice president of KU Student Farm and a senior from Lenexa. In the background is Jason Hering, president of KU Student Farm and a senior from Hutchinson. They are in the KU greenroom on West campus planting and prepping for the farm.
KU Student Farm, an organization started by students in the Environmental Capstone course, has had to jump over some unexpected hurdles throughout the semester, and the project is now up in the air.
BUILDING A FARM
Jason Hering, president of the KU Student Farm, said the point of the farm was to work out a plan with KU Dining. The group hopes to sell the produce on small food stands within The Market in the Kansas Union.
Hering said to have a thriving farm, the land needed to have certain qualities and certain kinds of soil depending on the location.
“If you’re looking to go off a public water source, you need to tap into the water mains and bring up a water meter, which is several thousand dollars,” Hering said.
Ben Alexander, the vice president of KU Student Farm, said a good thing to focus on when beginning a project like this is an organically certified or sustainable practice of vegetable production.
“For that, you would need a form of irrigation,” Alexander said. “You really don’t need much: plants, seeds, tools, water and people. I think next year things will happen.”
Lack of support, unavailable funding and an absence of future leadership has left KU Student Farm at a near standstill.
Ben Alexander, vice president of KU Student Farm, said the lack of support wasn’t coming from students, however.
“There are a lot of students that are really enthusiastic about this and want to be involved,” said Alexander, a senior from Lenexa. “It’s a lack of support from the administration, and so far we don’t have funding.”
KU Student Farm was denied funding by Student Senate on March 10. The organization asked for about $10,000 to cover a water meter, all the tools they would need and some perennial plants they hoped to put in.
Alexander said now that the group’s proposal was declined and that members were left with about $228. Of that, $28 was donated at the Kaw Valley Seed Fair and as a student group, the team automatically receives $200 from Senate.
This puts the group in a tight spot.
Jason Hering, a senior from Hutchinson and president of KU Student Farm, said finding a plot of land was also difficult. The group ended up receiving a portion of land with a research project the Biological Survey is working on that is funded by the Kansas University Endowment Association.
“It’s controlled by a project with different goals than ours, which houses a lot of sources of conflict,” Alexander said.
Tom Cox, a graduate senator from Shawnee, said the finance committee was concerned that it was too large and extensive of a project and that the research facility would also be benefitting from it.
“The same research group that donated its land to the farm would end up using the water meter,” Cox said of the finance committee’s concern. “They were afraid that Endowment would one day decide to take the land back and not reimburse us for the water meter.”
Cox said he thought there was a good chance KU Student Farm would get funding next semester after they submit a more detailed proposal to Senate and attempt to find another source of land.
Another difficulty of the farm’s transition is that Hering and Alexander, the leaders of the organization, will both be gone through the summer, and Alexander will graduate.
Alexander said they had numerous interns and volunteers who were available this summer to continue the project, but that there would be no true leadership for the team. If they were to find someone to lead it, KU Student Farm would still need to find another source of funding to pay that position, he said.
“It’s hard to convince University administration to let us use land that may be poorly maintained.” Alexander said. “It’s hard to do a project like this without someone responsible for it.”
Hering said volunteers and interns for Student Farm had already begun planting peppers, flowers, onions, tomatoes, leeks and cabbage in the greenhouse on West Campus. If things don’t pan out the way they hope, they will donate the plants to another cause in Lawrence, he said.
Although Alexander is disappointed with how plans for KU Student Farm has gone thus far, he said some pieces of the project would hopefully still happen because of the progress they had made thus far and that next year the organization would become a fully developed project.
— Edited by Anna Archibald
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