Student-Centered Farm Students’ Interest Survey Results

by: Elizabeth Peterson, Ally Balcolm, Emily O’Coonahern and Victor Onesi

Introduction Penn State and the student-centered farm

● PSU team of students, faculty, and staff are currently undergoing the

planning and development process to create a student-centered farm ● Goals:

o Provide experiential education, research, and community engagement enabling and elevating learning in sustainable agriculture

o Foster community, leadership, teamwork, critical thinking and positive change to Penn State and surrounding communities

● Farm is university wide effort led by Leslie Pillen o Goal is to have the farm have its first season of production in spring of

2016

Introduction Who are we?

● Four upperclassmen undergraduate students in the Community,

Environment, and Development (CED) major ● Currently enrolled in our major’s capstone class (CED 475) and paired with

Leslie to help determine interest in the student-center farm ● Our goals:

o Assess the types of interests that students have in the farm o Assess the degree of this interest

Methodology Our survey

● We decided that a survey would help us best meet our project goals and

the goals of those a part of the student-centered farm initiative ● Student focused ● Incorporated feedback on rough drafts from people in the student-farm

initiative as well as Leslie Pillen ● Multiple drafts and revisions

o The final version having 30 questions

Methodology Distributing the survey

● Sent out the survey to various listserv emails to contact head people of

different departments o This way was more efficient than sending out hundreds of emails

● Contacted nearly seventy different groups ranging from all different majors and interests to gather well-rounded overall opinions o Examples: Clubs pertaining to agriculture, sustainability, etc.

● 528 responses & 372 completions

1. What is your status?

Other: Not a Penn State undergraduate or graduate student (37)

These participants were forwarded to the end of the survey, as we decided to only survey current Penn State undergraduate and graduate students.

2. What college are you currently enrolled in?

3. What is/are your major(s)?

4. What is your anticipated semester and year of graduation?

6. Are you currently at Penn State for your Master’s,

PhD, Professional Degree, or other?

Other: ● Doctor of Education (1)

7. What is your current course of study?

8. What is your anticipated semester and year of graduation?

9. How interested are you in having a student farm at Penn State?

10. If you had the option of enrolling in a class that incorporated on-farm activities, how likely would you be to take that course rather than a similar

course that did not utilize the farm?

11. What semester(s) would you be interested in participating in farm activities (located in State College)? (Select all that apply.)

Other: ● When I transfer to the University Park campus from the Penn State Berks campus (1)

● No preference: Fall of Spring (2) ● Anytime semester not as a course (1)

● I would help out with efforts to establish this farm until I graduate (1) ● Voluntary basis (1)

● Anytime not in the cold (1) ● Mid-to-late Spring (1)

● if i was on a college location this would interest me greatly but im world campus and unable to participate (1)

12. How much would each of the following incentives encourage you to become involved with Penn State’s student-centered farm during the

FALL or SPRING Semester?

Other: ● To get out of a required class for my major (1)

● Education for the community (1) ● Teaching experience (1) ● General experience (2)

● Experience for future work (1) ● Interdisciplinary collaboration (1)

● Life skills (1) ● Self-education (1)

● To teach others about where their food comes from (1)

● Will there be playful goats? (1)

13. How much would each of the following incentives encourage you to become involved with Penn State’s student-centered farm during the

SUMMER months?

Other: ● Educating the community (1) ● Teaching experience (1)

● Will not be here for summer (2) ● Self education (1)

● Goats (1) ● What about housing though? (1)

● N/A (1)

14. Please indicate your level of interest in participating in each of the following activities through the Penn State student-centered farm.

Other: ● Conducting experiments

● Research into making the farm more sustainable ● Purchasing food at a campus market ● Anything working with my hands

● Learning and teaching sustainable farming practices ● Testing alternative growing methods and research

● Milking cows

15. Please indicate your level of interest in learning about each of the following topics through a Penn State student-centered farm.

Other: ● Integrated Pest Management (2)

● Supply chain management, decision-making (1) ● BMP Implementation (1)

● Food Safety (1) ● Animal Production (1)

● Differences in Farming Techniques between More developed countries and less developed countries (1) ● Milking cows (1)

16. Of your personal and professional goals, how important are each of these for you to become?

Other: ● Pest Management/Plant Disease Management Skills (1)

17. How often do you use each of the following transportation methods to travel to school-related activities?

Other: ● Bicycle (111) ● Motorcycle (1)

18. If you took a course that met at the student farm each week, how long of a commute would you be willing to make to get to the farm? Assume that you

are walking.

19.Where do you live in relation to the University Park Campus?

20. How important is it to you to purchase locally-grown

foods?

21. During an average week of the school year, how many meals do you eat at one of the dining commons or a-la-cart cafes on campus?

22. If produce from the farm were served in the campus dining commons, how likely would you be to purchase foods using student farm products over

similar items that did not use student farm products?

23. If a meal (a sandwich, for example) in the dining commons currently costs $6.00 with a meal plan, how much is the maximum you would be willing to pay for that same

meal if it was made with ingredients from the student-centered farm?

24. If you had the opportunity to buy products directly from the student-centered farm (i.e., through a farmers’ market stall or Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program), how interested

would you be in buying each of the following?

5. How would your categorize the area you lived during most of your growing up years (ages 18 and younger)?

25.What is your gender?

26.What is your age?

30.What is your race?

27. Would you be willing to meet in a small focus group to further discuss your ideas about the student-centered farm within the next three months?

Academic Standings ● 512 respondents ● 59% categorized as undergraduate

34% graduate students ● Of grads, 69% are going for PhD ● College of Ag Sciences,

Engineering, and Health and Human Development made up majority (76%) of respondents

● Wide variety of majors of respondents, highest was Plant Science at 8.3%

Incentives ● Majority (62%) of respondents said

that they would be either be interested or very interested

● 49% claimed they would be much more likely to take a course that incorporated the farm as opposed to one that didn’t

● Top three incentives respondents stated would incentivize them to become part of farm are: Access to fresh produce, Income opportunity, and just for fun

Results

Interests ● Two most popular activities

students expressed interests in were Production activities and Purchasing food from the farm at campus dining commons

● Four topics students were most

interested in learning through the farm: sustainable crop production practices, healthy eating, interaction between agriculture, climate change, and food choices

Distance & Travel ● Interested respondents stated that

distance and time would most likely not be a problem

● Majority (84%) of respondents live

either on campus, downtown or within a five-mile radius

● On same note, respondents would

be willing to travel 5-25 minutes to get to the farm

Results

Food Related ● Food security and production are

two high-levels of interest to respondents

● The most popular response for

what respondents wanted to purchase from the farm was fresh fruit

● 60% of respondents stated they

would be very likely to most likely to purchase foods on campus using student-farm products

Demographics ● 64% of respondents were female ● Majority age group was 18-20 ● Respondents ranged from 18-49 ● 89% of responders were

White/Caucasian ● Majority (47%) grew up in a

suburban area

Results

Results Focus Groups

● Originally, part of our project plan was to hold follow-up focus groups for

students who noted that they were interested ● Due to time constraints we were only able to collect email information and

pass onto Leslie for her future use o 37% of respondents stated they would be interested in participating in a

focus group while 31% were unsure

Student Comments Some of the Highlights:

● Distance

o “Distance from campus will be critical to undergraduate participation. If location is such that it can't be reached by walking in 20 minutes then you will need to develop a transportation system to go with the farm. For example, get a bus route to stop by the farm.”

● Organic

o “I would be interested only if the food that the animals would be fed does not contain antibiotics, hormones or genetically modified organisms.”

Student Comments ● Community/Education

o “I am in support of this farm. I believe for the non-agricultural students a draw would be to educate them on how to grow gardens in addition to urban growing (confined spaces, no yard, etc).”

● Research

o “...I would definitely be interested in being involved in this, though my time is currently at a premium. If nothing else, it'd be something I would be interested in from a personal standpoint in terms of buying local produce. Please feel free to reach out to me!”

Conclusion ● We would advise to market student-centered farm to prominent groups of

respondents and students. o Including

Colleges Majors most prevalent in the responses

● Just our recommendation, there are many different aspects to keep in mind while planning the farm

● Overall very positive results!