Interested in urban agriculture? The School for Urban Agriculture at UW-Madison is offering a ten-week course on urban agricultural systems this fall. The course meets Tuesdays, 3:30-5:30pm, October 29 to December 17 and is open to community members, UW-Madison students and Farm and Industry Short Course students. For details and registration, visit the program website.

Urban farms not only produce fresh, nutritious food for city-dwelling consumers, they also provide social benefits such as job skills training, food security, environmental remediation and neighborhood revitalization. The School for Urban Agriculture provides students with a solid understanding of urban farming practices, nonprofit management of urban farms and community development around urban farming.

The School for Urban Agriculture includes two courses, one credit each, offered through the Farm and Industry Short Course in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. The fall course, Urban Agricultural Systems, presents key concepts of urban agriculture in Wisconsin: land, production, harvesting, processing, marketing, business planning, leadership development and policy. The second course in the sequence, offered in spring 2020, is Farming in the City. It delves into production and business practices of urban and peri-urban farming: land access, resource management, annual and perennial cropping systems, animal agriculture and business management. Both courses emphasize food justice and social equity.

The program also offers opportunities for hands-on, experiential learning through summer internships and workshops.

The School for Urban Agriculture is a collaborative effort of the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems and Farm and Industry Short Course at UW-Madison, the Center for Resilient Cities and Community GroundWorks, and is funded by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.