"It's all about preparing younger generations for a different kind of future."
- University of Guelph President Alastair SummerleeThe Guelph Organic Program, including the B.Sc.(Agr) Organic Agriculture major, is now an amazing five years old! In five short years, public demand for organics has grown by leaps and bounds, creating a stream of new employment and growth opportunities in everything from organic farming, food safety and security, and public health to greenhouse gas abatement, nutrition, and resource conservation. If ever there was a time for organics, that time is now.
Program offerings, including the addition of the new 1 hectare Guelph Centre for Urban Organic Farming (GCUOF) on campus, have been refined to better prepare both students and the broader community to face these issues head on. Guelph is unique among Canadian universities in offering both academic and applied learning opportunities in organics on campus for a broad range of career directions.
While organic remains the centerpiece of the program, the overarching theme of “eating sustainably” encourages engagement in the local, seasonal, and post-farmgate issues which together with farming philosophy create the ecological footprint of the agri-food system. As is increasingly apparent, these issues pertain not simply to local and regional but also to global
For example, how often have you heard ‘which is more important, local or organic’? Would you be surprised to learn that 19% of the US national energy budget is consumed by the agri-food system, but only 7% actually occurs on the farm? The rest is expended post-farmgate, with as much energy being used to process and package food (7%) as to grow the food in the first place, plus another 5% devoted to simply distributing and preparing it!? WOW. Clearly, reducing the agri-food system footprint means rethinking how we obtain and prepare our food, as much as how we farm. There’s need for all of us, so come to Guelph and get started!
 "The reason that we have gotten accustomed to eating the way we have – mangoes, kiwi fruit, salmon – is that we can. We like it. It’s cheap. We can do it. Energy is cheap. It’s all predicated on artificially cheap fossil fuel energy. As some have said, we are just living beyond our means. As the price of that fuel rises, as we run out of it, in the simplest terms, it’s going to shrink the economically competitive travel distance of foodstuffs – of t-shirts, tennis shoes, everything!" | More... |
 Download a copy of the new marketing poster for Guelph's Organic Agriculture program. 1.4 MB, PDF |
