Field of Dreams
Jacob Keary-Moreland, Lakehead Farm Club
Lakehead University students, with support from our Lakehead FC (Farm Club), together with faculty and community partners hive bean bee-sy cultivating a colourful and expansive vision for a new Recreation, Research and Education Farm (RREF) at Lakehead University’s Orillia campus.
Imagine a diverse, regenerative farm. What do you see? I see a community greenhouse and kitchen, natural buildings, and infrastructure for laboratories, food processing, celebrations and environmental/food/garden-based education. Multi-acre production-oriented plots (including pick your own) wildflower-pollinator meadows, ‘ecological regeneration zones,’ large community and individual allotments, orchards, berry belts. An agro-gym with specially designed agricultural work-out equipment (like stationary bikes that pump water, generate electricity, shred compost or blend smoothies). Farmer training programs. Indigenous, children’s and senior’s gardens. Horticultural therapy, multi-use outdoor theatre/stages, classrooms, and study spaces, nature trails and picnic areas. Rain gardens with water collection, retention, and conservation projects. Composters for cycling organic waste and energy-soil generation, and mulch, mulch more.
This holistic and integrated vision inspired by the calls to action articulated within Lakehead’s Strategic, Academic, Research and Sustainability Plans can help:
Address shortfalls & future demand for accessible healthy food on campus & beyond
Increase participation, physical activity, & interconnectedness of youth, adults & seniors
Improve student experience, wellness via research, education & recreation opportunities
Promote agrifood tourism, train & support local farmers; boost healthy economic growth
Protect farmland and regenerate local ecosystems to mitigate and adapt to climate change
Embrace local Indigenous Knowledges & Values with respect to Land & all our relations
A university is an institution of higher learning, predicated on the advancement of knowledge and betterment of society. The RREF as envisioned is a bold and ambitious exercise - it will not come to fruition overnight, but over generations. The seeds have been sown and are sprouting in our campus gardens, on these pages and in our hearts and minds. At its core, it is an immediate, inspired, collective response to the major existential challenges facing our community and our species in this century. We have much more to learn, and a long way to grow to know a better society.
Now, I understand that many students and others have their minds fixed on paving paradise for parking lots, to avoid the five-minute walk from available spaces at Rotary Place. Additionally, students want a student center, and various forms of recreation on campus (like a gym) and improved food services, desires which have been ignored (it seems) or translated into a proposal by an unnamed developer to transform up to a quarter of the campus grounds into a private sports dome and a complex of baseball diamonds (like 3 or 4, so we were told last Fall).
While the sports dome may make space for gym-like amenities (when it is not occupied by paying user-groups to recoup development fees and generate profit for the developer) the 3 or 4 baseball diamonds would offer less opportunities to students. The main beneficiaries would be the baseball community and the developer, adding value to their existing real estate investments nearby.
The RREF is an innovative student-led initiative to integrate recreation together with research and education to address diverse student and community needs. Our proposed motion for the March 23rd LUSU Special General Meeting, to permanently protect 20 acres of prime farmland on campus and establish the RREF, will not deny others the opportunity to park their vehicles or play ball. On the contrary, the RREF will stimulate enrollment and growth on campus, supporting the case for additional infrastructure and balling opportunities.
The campus obviously is big enough to accommodate all proposed uses up to this point. Given the majority of the grounds are currently dedicated to private for-profit industrial agriculture to produce cow food, it is no stretch of the imagination to picture students, faculty, and community growing food and knowledge to feed our “sustainable” campus community, like what happens at countless other post-secondary institutions. If we had our choice, we would grow the RREF in the northwest corner, adjoining Line 15 and the existing heritage farmstead, which someday may be preserved as well, as part of the campus.
What is up to deliberation among the diverse interest groups, is the priority and resources we give to these compelling visions -- where do we put each project in terms of place and time in our plans and within our vision of this university and society?
It is evident due to the existence of the West Orillia Sports Complex directly adjacent to campus, along with a soon to be opened fifty-five million dollar (plus) recreation center in downtown Orillia, that our community and political leaders have stated their values and priorities.
Imagine what a fifty-five million dollar Recreation, Research, and Education Farm would look like! Now that would be exceptional and unconventional!
Thankfully, keeping farmland as farmland doesn’t cost that much or anything at all! It is time that student leaders and student values and priorities are heard and acted upon. Join us in SOILdarity at the Special General Meeting on Monday, March 23rd from 5-7 and seed the future with us!
