Student Groups Related to Food and Agriculture

Community Garden: Hampshire College’s community garden, located in the heart of the campus and managed by students, provides free open space for students, faculty, and staff to plant their own annual and perennial gardens. We are currently re-evaluating the space, with plans to re-design the garden for spring 2012.

The Local Foods Initiative is dedicated to the appreciation and promotion of the diverse food products produced in the Pioneer Valley.

Mixed Nuts is a co-op, which has provided reasonably priced organic and natural food to the Hampshire community since 1972.

The Growing Farmers Collective focuses on ecological food production from sustainable agriculture and permaculture to urban farming and beekeeping. From October to May, the group operates the Winter Farmer’s market on campus, featuring produce from season extending greenhouses.

New Leaf works to engage the Hampshire and Pioneer Valley communities on issues of environmental sustainability through education, collaboration, and direct action.

Greenwich Forest Garden, created in 2007 as a Division III project, is a biodiverse perennial landscape of nutritious and useful species surrounding a building in the Greenwich residential area of campus.

The Enfield Solar Greenhouse is a place for growing plants and food, learning about environmental sustainability, and for events that bring the Hampshire community together.

Recent Courses at Hampshire

• Agriculture, Ecology, and Society
• Agriculture, Food, and Human Health
• Biomass Energy
• Colloquy on Sustainable Living
• The Contested American Countryside
• Ecology of New England Old Growth Forests
• Farming in America
• From Generation to Generation:
• Seed-Saving in Sustainable Agriculture
• Intro to American Studies
• Kitchen Ecology
• The Microbial Farm
• Pesticide Alternatives

Recent Student Projects

• Industrial Agriculture in Spanish Lookout, Belize
• Agriculture, the State, and the NGO in Egypt
• Nitrogen Cycling in Organic Agricultural Systems
• Cooperative Extension and Progressive Change in U.S. Agriculture
• Under the Canopy: Investigating the Effects of Arsenic on a Microbial Population Under Anaerobic Conditions in a Collection of Flooded Soils From an Atkins Farm Apple Orchard
• Micronutrient Foliar Fertilization of Aquaponic Basil: The role of Fe and other metals in foliar fertilization at Bioshelters, Inc.