ReachOut Fall 2023

ReachOut LAND AND FOOD SYSTEMS

ISSUE 40 | FALL

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23

A fast read on plastics in our food and water

inside WHAT’S

2 Dean’s Message 3 Building Common Languages

to Support Healthier Communities

4 Building a Sustainable Winery

on Vancouver Island

5 Lights, Camera...Attraction?

6 A Fast Read on Plastics in

Our Food and Water

8 New Faculty Profile

10 Milestones 11 News & Notes 12 Developing Economic Policy

at the University of Indonesia

DEAN’S Message Welcome to the latest issue of ReachOut magazine!

From the stories in this issue, one thing that stands out to me is how we are moving towards transdisciplinary research more than ever. Today, finding solutions that help balance the needs in our food system with planetary health means we have to take a wide approach, considering the natural, social, and health sciences, and involving people who may be impacted by future changes.

I invite you to read one example of an alumna working at Microsoft Research. As a member of their Urban Innovation team, Madeleine Daepp aims to make communities more liveable by promoting health equity and fostering climate adaptation using new technology to develop insights for the general public and others. She’s addressing large challenges by drawing upon diverse experts, from political scientists to epidemiologists to computer scientists, as she works towards improving communities.

Another example are the two new faculty members in our Food and Resource Economics program who have seen the benefits of combining economics with other disciplines, such as ecology, engineering and computational sciences, to better inform planners and policy makers.

One of them has interviewed farmers in Southern Ontario to understand their important considerations when it comes to making land-use decisions on their sites.

I hope enjoy reading about the dynamic people featured in this issue of ReachOut magazine.

Have a safe and healthy lead up to the holiday season!

Cheers, RICKEY YADA DEAN, FACULTY OF LAND AND FOOD SYSTEMS

IF YOU WOULD PREFER TO RECEIVE REACHOUT MAGAZINE VIA EMAIL, LET US KNOW! SEND A NOTE TO LFS.REACHOUT@UBC.CA.

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Building Common Languages to

Support Healthier Communities Depending on the day, alumna Madeleine Daepp (MSc Integrated Studies in Land and Food Systems 2016) might find herself working with an atmospheric scientist, epidemiologist, computer scientist, or political scientist. She has developed an array of tools to address some of our most critical issues, which she uses in her unique role as a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research in Seattle, WA. Daepp earned her BA in Economics and Mathematics from Washington University in St. Louis, MO, where she conducted research on food accessibility across the city, and gained experience working on a food policy council and in a food bank. Her questions around food environments led her to meet Dr. Jennifer Black in LFS, and eventually, come to UBC for graduate school.

“When I found out about some of the work happening at Land and Food Systems, I got really excited about the potential to do research in this area with these top experts in a way that was really integrated across different aspects of the food system.”

For her master’s thesis at UBC, Daepp studied the effect of fast food restaurants on children’s school day diets.

She found that the proximity of a fast food restaurant or convenience store had a minimal measurable effect on a child’s diet. One significant factor? Almost every school had one nearby which made it difficult to study variations.

While in LFS, Daepp also found herself collaborating with researchers across the food system, from bee biodiversity to dairy farms to the blueberry industry.

Through her research on food accessibility and spending time in communities around Vancouver, Daepp became curious about how urban environments were designed and built.

“I started to get really interested in city policy as a key intervention and opportunity to improve people’s food environments, change how active they were, and to try to design cities that made people happy,” explains Daepp.

She continued this passion in her PhD studies in Urban and Regional Planning from MIT, where Daepp helped build an online mapping tool with resident researchers who were concerned about gentrification.

“There were different folks that I was working with and trying to leverage these big data sets to ask unconventional questions or try to shed light on new social problems.”

As a senior researcher in the Special Projects team at Microsoft Research, she continues forging multi-disciplinary collaborations, focusing on the use of novel data sources and technologies to promote health equity and foster climate adaptation in cities.

Daepp explains that while she has faced similar research problems throughout her career, the skills she has gained along the way have taught her to bridge gaps across different disciplines and sectors.

“Across all of that work, I would say I’m pretty methods agnostic and discipline agnostic. I’m really interested in problems – what is the big problem that children in the city are facing, how do I monitor that and come up with good mitigation strategies?” says Daepp. “I’ve really valued the way that UBC set me up to collaborate across disciplines and build common languages.”

“This is a set of people who are committed to making positive change in the food system, but who are also thoughtful, empirically grounded, and trying to work with farmers, policy makers and schools.”

As a TA for one of the courses in the core series, Daepp experienced firsthand the range of students who wanted to address systemic issues from different perspectives – future veterinarians and dietitians, applied biologists and food scientists, to name a few.

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Building a Sustainable Winery on Vancouver Island From historically long droughts to unexpectedly early freezes, the B.C. wine industry has weathered extreme shifts in climate patterns.

Unsworth Vineyards is located in the heart of the Cowichan Valley and takes a sustainable approach in the management of their 25 hectares of vineyard.

Chris Turyk is an alumnus of the UBC Farm Practicum in Sustainable Agriculture, and his family has built Unsworth with climate-resiliency in mind.

Turyk developed his interest in agriculture at a young age, growing vegetables with his mother in their backyard.

“I never lost that love for food,” Turyk says as he chats about culinary school in the Napa Valley and volunteering at local farms that directly supplied restaurants.

In 2010, Turyk started Unsworth Vineyards with his father. The Turyks had sustainability in mind from the start and hired an environmental consulting group to advise on best practices such as ponds to capture rainwater and cover crops to replenish soils.

In 2017, Turyk began volunteering at UBC Farm for more hands-on experience in agriculture. By the next year, he was involved in the practicum program.

Working alongside other farmers opened his eyes to the challenges, successes, and lifestyle in agriculture. For Turyk,

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the highlight of the program was its proximity to research projects.

“I’ve always had an interest in the educational side of farming,” Turyk says. “It was great seeing the scientific method applied to agriculture.”

After the 6-month program, Turyk went back to Vancouver Island to implement everything he learned. In the years since, Unsworth regularly tests their soil to measure microbial health, minimizes inputs by composting their own grape pulp, and incorporates no-till methods to preserve soil fauna and biodiversity.

Every now and then, Turyk visits UBC Farm and spends time with PhD candidates in the field, learning about applied research and following its progress into commercial use.

“There was a compost trial going on, developing a device that measured the off-gasses of beans and potatoes,” Turyk explains. “Eventually I saw the same device in a private company in Sonoma.”

The Turyks continue to grow Unsworth and the wine industry on Vancouver Island. From their first 2010 vintage of 200 cases, to today’s 12,000 cases, with enough vines planted to double that.

They also have plans to create a sustainable smallscale farm and livestock garden to provide for local restaurants.

Turyk himself is extremely engaged with the B.C. wine and hospitality industries. In July, he spoke at a UBC alumni event about developing the region’s wine identity. With the recent challenges from climate change, Turyk explains that most conversations with the provincial government revolve around replanting funds and revitalizing tourism.

“I hope that what we’re doing at Unsworth can set the standard for how to install a vineyard in 2023,” Turyk says. “If you want to have your vineyard for the next 30 years, you have to start planning climate resiliency now.”

Lights, Camera...Attraction?

How artificial lights at night impact insects and bats Researchers at UBC Farm may not conduct their research under the cover of darkness, but they are certainly getting a sense of what insects are up to during the night. These days, however, darkness is a relative term with the proliferation of humanmade artificial light at night (ALAN). Master’s student Daphne Chevalier is seeking to better understand its impact.

“Artificial light at night is a huge threat,” says Chevalier, a student in the LFS PlantInsect Ecology & Evolution Lab working under co-supervisors Drs. Juli Carrillo and Quentin Geissmann. “The dark sky is something that's so incredibly valuable and those of us who live in cities tend to forget about that because we're so used to having a sky that's light-polluted.”

“But light is super important to insects’ foraging, navigation, camouflage, and reproduction, and they are often very sensitive to changes in colour and intensity.”

Artificial light is not only a problem in cities. Rural areas are also seeing increases in street lighting and from less expected sources: greenhouses in farm fields become beacons of light pollution in otherwise dark and biodiversity-rich areas.

Chevalier’s project piggy-backs off the Sticky Pi project, which uses artificial intelligence to photograph and identify insects in real time. She has added lights, light sensors, pitfall traps, and bat recorders to 12 Sticky Pi instruments that are placed far apart around the UBC Farm. Chevalier herself designed the light systems, which she’s calling ALANizers. The sensors collect data on light intensity and colour, while the Sticky Pis, pitfall traps, and bat recorders collect information on insect and bat activity.

The colour of artificial lights could change the impact on insects and is important to study now as many municipalities shift from the dim amber glow of sodium vapour bulbs to cheaper, brighter, and whiter LED lights.

Chevalier’s study features both amber and white light, as well as darkness controls.

“We see under those different conditions — white, amber and darkness — how the number of insects we're capturing changes and which kinds of insects are most affected,” says Chevalier.

“Once we have that information, we can compare it to our bat activity data from the bat recorders and see if any changes we’ve observed in insect activity might match up to changes in bat activity. All B.C. bats eat insects, and it’s

important that they are active at the same time as their prey. If a group of insects are active earlier or later under artificial light, will the bats that eat them also shift their activity to match?

If not, they might start predating a different group of insects instead, with unpredictable consequences.”

She hopes that her study will show if one colour of light is better than the other, and that this evidence will inform regulations and guidelines.

"It's so important to understand how the light that we're introducing to the environment is impacting all of these different creatures,” adds Chevalier. “They really are the foundation of ecosystems and of our food system.”

Chevalier began collecting data in June 2023 and will finish collecting data at the end of the year. To find out more about this project and the PIEE lab, visit: piee-lab.landfood.ubc.ca.

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A new portable tool can give you a precise reading on how much plastic could be seeping from your plastic coffee cup and into your body.

This device works in tandem with an app and uses fluorescent labeling of micro and nano plastics (MNPs) to detect plastic particles ranging in size from 50 nanometres (nm) to 10 microns (μm). Developed by Assistant Professor Tianxi Yang, this new invention has the potential to serve as a preliminary assessment tool to detect MNPs in real-world samples.

“Given the potential risks MNPs pose to both land-based and aquatic organisms, I am hoping this device can help facilitate the accurate assessment of plastics, and ultimately contribute to the safety and sustainability of ecosystems,” says Dr. Yang.

Her research team wanted to make current MNP measuring technology faster, more accessible, and more reliable. They 6

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built a small 3D-printed box from biodegradable materials to house the needed hardware: a wireless digital microscope that collects fluorescence signals, a green LED light, and an excitation filter. To measure the MNPs, the team customized MATLAB software with machine learning algorithms and integrated it with current image capture software.

The result is a portable tool, compatible with a smartphone or other mobile device, that gives a readout within 20 minutes.

Importantly, the results can be understood by a non-technical person, such as someone working in a field, food processing lab, or just someone curious about their morning coffee.

The portable tool reads a small sample of liquid (1 microlitre), and then enables quantitative fluorescence imaging of MNPs. “Once the portable box enables the fluorescent image, the app will readily correlate the pixel area of the image on the screen with quantity of MNPs. The readout indicates presence or absence of MNPs in the sample, and the quantity

A Fast Read on Plastics in Our Food and Water

of MNPs in positive samples. Each test only costs as low as 1.5 cents.”

Dr. Yang’s team ran the first set of tests using disposable cups made with polystyrene (PS). Her team filled cups with 50 ml of boiling water that was allowed to cool for 30 minutes. The results showed that plastic particles were released from the cups at levels reaching hundreds of millions, primarily in the nano-size range.

Studies are growing into how much plastic we take in from sources that include drinking water, food, and even airborne plastic particles, as well as their long-term impact. One study indicates daily microplastic median intake rates for children are 553 particles/capita, and for adults it is 883 particles/ capita (Lifetime Accumulation of Microplastic in Children and Adults, Nur Hazimah Mohamed Nor, Merel Kooi, Noël J. Diepens, and Albert A. Koelmans, Environ. Sci. Technol. 2021, 55 (8), 5084– 5096, Mar. 16, 2021).

“It’s well-known that large pieces of visible plastic can break down in various ways and leach into soils, water and get into our food system,” says Dr. Yang. “The accurate detection of MNP is critical in assessing their potential risk.”

“I would suggest, from a safety point of view, to reduce exposure to micro and nano plastics as long-term exposure can be linked to cognitive and health effects. Use cups and packaging made of glass or biodegradable materials, such as starch or those from food sources.”

Dr. Yang strives to improve agricultural and food systems and her interdisciplinary research combines food science, analytical chemistry, material science and nanotechnology. Other areas of her research are in precision agriculture, using smart agrochemicals that can respond to environmental stressors, like drought, extreme temperature or disease, and release on-demand. She is also creating new food packaging materials to improve food safety, quality, and upcycle food waste.

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NEW FACULTY

Dr. Joséphine Gantois

profile

Dr. Jonathan Proctor

Dr. Joséphine Gantois

Dr. Jonathan Proctor

Dr. Joséphine Gantois combines economics and ecology with tools like machine learning and interviews to study the impact of human actions on biodiversity.

With a childhood spent foraging for blueberries and cooking with family in Pennsylvania, it was important for Dr. Jonathan Proctor to design a career that centred around food. Combining his interests in agriculture and economics has led him to study the intersection of our global food and climate systems.

“I started specializing in environmental economics as I became more aware of ongoing environmental issues, and it seemed essential to me to bring natural sciences into the mix,” says Dr. Gantois, who studies both natural and agricultural landscapes.

Dr. Proctor’s research aims to quantify how climate change influences human wellbeing, with a focus on agriculture.

Along with the approaches she has gained from studying economics and ecology, Dr. Gantois uses computational tools and remotely sensed data to produce wide-ranging data sets that can inform land use decisions.

“Some of the questions I study are: how do temperature, water supply, and sunlight influence agricultural productivity? How have farmers adapted to historical changes in climate and how might they adapt to future changes?”

“I’m interested in how to take ecological data, which are often unavailable at large scales because of measurement costs, and use remote sensing to scale them up,” explains Dr. Gantois.

Capturing variation at large spatial and temporal scales opens more opportunities for establishing causal impacts.

For example, while doing his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Proctor studied the potential impact of solar geoengineering — a technology that could theoretically cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight back into space — on agricultural crops using major volcanic eruptions as natural experiments.

Prior to joining the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, Gantois was a postdoctoral fellow in UBC’s Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, in a research group led by Professor Claire Kremen, co-appointed in the Department of Zoology.

“We found that damages to agricultural productivity from reduced sunlight offset the technology’s benefits from cooling, indicating that it would be less useful than previously thought for reducing agricultural damages from climate change,” Dr. Proctor said.

The research group looked at agricultural areas in Southern Ontario.

They interviewed farmers to understand how they dealt with less profitable areas in their fields and whether or not it would be feasible to convert them to semi-natural habitat. This approach was a learning experience for Dr. Gantois who was used to quantitative, computer-based research at the time.

Dr. Proctor is currently working on a project, in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), using satellite imagery and machine learning to make fine-resolution estimates of the Human Development Index (HDI). HDI provides an alternative to GDP that considers not only income, but also education and health.

“It takes time to learn how to do these things well: establish relations with organizations and people, build trust, and maintain those relationships.”

“The hope is that these fine-resolution data improve understanding about the spatial distribution of human development,” explains Dr. Proctor. “Such measures could improve targeting of aid or program evaluation in otherwise data poor contexts.”

These sociological approaches have challenged Dr. Gantois to understand the numerous facets of how a farmer might make decisions about new agricultural practices: the role of economic factors, the farmer’s environmental objectives, their relationship to the land.

Dr. Gantois explains that she also tries to adopt a land use planning or policy making perspective considering, for example, how individual actions have impacts that spill over to surrounding landscapes and add up to regional effects, which is where satellite data can have a real added value.

“I’m always interested in understanding what each method brings and how you can compare and intersect the knowledge that you get from those different approaches.”

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At the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, Dr. Proctor is excited to bring his interdisciplinary approach to the Food and Resource Economics program, where researchers study the food economy from various lenses.

NEW FACULTY

profile

Dr. Vassilis Kontogiorgos

Dr. Karen Taylor

Dr. Vassilis Kontogiorgos

Dr. Karen Taylor

Dr. Vassilis Kontogiorgos joins the Faculty as an Associate Professor in Food Chemistry. Dr. Kontogiorgos’ research focuses on the physical chemistry of carbohydrates and their specific ability to provide texture and stability to food products.

Dr. Karen Taylor is on a mission to empower students with essential financial literacy skills.

He completed his undergraduate and master’s degrees at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece and his PhD at the University of Guelph. Prior to his appointment in LFS, Dr. Kontogiorgos taught for 11 years at the University of Huddersfield and four years at the University of Queensland.

Dr. Kontogiorgos was drawn to B.C. by the province’s readiness to collaborate with academia. His lab focuses on hydrocolloids, like starches or pectin, providing ample opportunity for commercial applications. These carbohydrates can either improve the functional use of processed foods through texture and structure modification or minimize their environmental impact by recycling from waste products like fruit pulp.

“You can’t imagine any processed food without hydrocolloids,” Dr. Kontogiorgos says. “From the most basic to the most premium, you use hydrocolloids to stabilize, improve, or extend the shelf life of food.”

His lab mostly uses physical chemistry. Experiments measure the characteristics of components in food: surface tension, firmness, and other molecular properties.

Dr. Kontogiorgos is open to working with any new product. While in the U.K., he worked with well-known beverage brands. In the months since starting at the Faculty, he has been contacted by local brands, looking for research to develop new product lines.

“Expertise around carbohydrate chemistry is new at UBC and compliments existing talent in the Faculty,” he says. “This is something that industrial partners now know is possible at LFS.” Applications of hydrocolloids expand past food processing. Dr. Kontogiorgos has collaborated with pharmaceutical partners, stressing that the mechanisms to deliver nutrients and drugs often overlap.

At LFS, Dr. Kontogiorgos is excited to work in the new BC Food and Beverage Innovation Centre at UBC and collaborate with other researchers such as Drs. Derek Dee and John Frostad.

She’s teaching business and economics in five different LFS classes, reaching those in first-year all the way to master’s-level professional programs.

“When I was teaching business and economics principles, many students started asking me about personal financial literacy so I now try to incorporate this into all my classes,” Dr. Taylor says. “This includes learning how to plan money for the future, use different types of personal investment vehicles, such as TFSAs and RRSPs, to understanding the Rule of 72 [an easy way to calculate how long it will take for your money to double].”

When it comes to finance, Dr. Taylor has a lot of experience. For the last two decades, she’s worked at three major banks, Farm Credit Canada, and had a short stint at the provincial Ministry of Agriculture. In her most recent banking position, she was Director of Corporate Finance for four years.

In addition, she earned a PhD in Agricultural Economics from Oklahoma State University and an MBA, specializing in Agriculture, from the University of Guelph.

“Doing the MBA gave me an international perspective as we had people in the program from across Europe and South America. The MBA also gave me exposure to agtech and innovation, which I was always interested in throughout my banking career.”

Specializing in agricultural finance was enriching for Dr. Taylor. “I enjoyed the complexity of working with businesses that feed the world. I felt that I was able to make a positive difference,” she says.

“Also seeing the passion that agribusiness owners and their families have for their operations was fulfilling. Many of their businesses were long-time family legacies and they’ve had to be adaptive to change in order to be successful.”

For the past eight years, Dr. Taylor has been teaching Agribusiness Management as an Adjunct Professor in the Master of Food and Resource Economics program in LFS. She’s always taken her students on several site visits in the Fraser Valley, granting students invaluable insights into the intricacies of the agriculture industry.

“They meet the owners and senior managers of agribusinesses and receive really in-depth personal tours so they can understand what it takes to be successful, while also shedding light on the challenges that face the agriculture industry. It’s a real eye-opener. Many students are surprised by the level of automation, sophistication, and the size and scale of operations.”

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milestones Four faculty members recently received NSERC Discovery research grants to support their long-term projects in the natural sciences and engineering. These grants also recognize the opportunity for students to receive training in innovative projects.

These faculty members were funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s (CFI) John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF) to buy state-of-the-art lab equipment.

• Dr. Siyun Wang (Mechanisms of nontyphoidal Salmonella enterica response to bacteriophages in foods)

• Dr. David Wright (joint LFS and Kinesiology) for Metabolic Caging for the Assessment of Energy Balance and Substrate Utilization in Mice.

• Dr. Daniel Weary (Welfare, affect and agency in animals) • Dr. Tianxi Yang (Development of novel analytical tools and advanced materials for sustainable food production)

• Drs. David Kitts and Anubhav Pratap-Singh for the upcoming BC Food & Beverage Innovation Centre at UBC .

• Dr. Tamara Cohen for the Nutrition and Eating Behaviour Lab.

• Dr. Jennifer Grenz (LFS and Forest Resources Management) (Eradicated, Now What?: understanding the legacy of plant invasions in the post-control phase to inform long-term ecological restoration).

Parmjit Bains: UBC Alumni Award of Distinction To build a successful business from the ground up takes fortitude to face challenges and a sharp instinct to see an opportunity on the horizon and act on it – something Parm Bains (BSc Agr 1979) has done for the last 34 years in the Fraser Valley.

To recognize his longstanding success, contributions to the berry industry, and service to UBC, Bains was recognized with a 2023 UBC Alumni Award of Distinction.

Bains is President and CEO of Westberry Farms, a fully integrated grower, processor and packer of fresh and frozen berries. The company serves about 50 other growers in the Fraser Valley, and Westberry has grown to 500 hectares of grower-owned family farms. Across the Fraser Valley, there are presently about 20 grower packing facilities that handle the 75 million kilograms of blueberry crops produced each year in the province.

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Back in 1989, Bains and his wife Satwinder bought a 16-hectare blueberry farm in Abbotsford. Having worked on his cousin’s vegetable farm in Surrey as a teenager, Bains knew agriculture was in his blood.

“I developed a keen and profound love for the land and farming. This led me to UBC to study agriculture, where I majored in crop protection and horticulture.”

When the North America Free Trade Agreement came into effect in 1994 between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, many multinational packing and processing plants in the Valley closed their doors, finding it difficult to compete with their larger counterparts from the U.S. However, it was a time when the blueberry industry started taking off and this created an opportunity for grower/packing facilities to fill the vacuum created by the plants that closed down.

Bains and four other growers partnered to start Westberry Farms in 1997 to process and pack locally grown blueberries for the fresh and frozen Canadian market. Over the years, Westberry expanded its

News &Notes L-R: Sylvia Leung, Barbara Hsiao, Rebecca Lee, Edmund Seow, Rachel Toyen.

Hats off to longstanding UBC employees Congratulations to these UBC employees who were recognized for their longstanding service.

Joining the UBC 25 Year Club, which recognizes staff members, are the following: Barbara Hsiao (Director of HR and Administration), Edmund Seow (Manager of the Learning Centre), Rachel Toyen (IRP Project Manager), and Rebecca Lee (Dean’s Office Coordinator).

Dr. David Kitts

Sylvia Leung

Achieving a 40-year service milestone is Professor Dr. David Kitts. Throughout his career at UBC, Dr. Kitts’ research in food chemistry, food toxicology and nutritional sciences has helped to ensure our food supply is safer, and has increased understanding of the health benefits gained from food and beverages. He’s supervised or co-supervised 15 Postdoctoral Fellows and Research Associates, 14 PhDs, 36 MSc students, and numerous undergraduate research projects.

Also, notable is a 40-year staff employee! Sylvia Leung was hired as a Research Assistant/Technician in the Department of Animal Science in 1983, after earning her BSc in Agriculture/Animal Science from LFS (it was then known as the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences). Leung’s focus has shifted from assisting with research projects to lab management and inventory maintenance. Today, she's a Buyer, helping with purchasing needs to support ongoing operations.

market base globally and started distributing to countries such as Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Vietnam, India, and others. This created additional opportunities for Westberry to expand its base of growers as the industry grew.

In peak season, Westberry Farms receives up to 100,000 kilograms of berries daily for the fresh market and employees have a 24-hour turnaround window in which to sort, package and precool the berries in preparation for shipment. This quick turnaround ensures the berries stay crisp and fresh in transition to their final destination.

“We aim for a two-week shelf life once they arrive in stores. We ship across Canada, as well as across the U.S. to such places as California, Texas, Chicago, and Florida. Also, we ship internationally.

Consumers in South Korea and Japan like the B.C. highbush blueberries for their thin skin, size, flavour and crispness.”

Community partnership turns wool into pellets as an organic fertilizer Can waste wool be put to use in agriculture? A new partnership between the Elizabeth Fry Society (EFS) of Vancouver and Dr. Sue Grayston, an LFS/Forestry Professor specializing in soil science, seeks to find out.

They are collaborating on the Woolwerx Wool Pellet Project to evaluate the potential of using waste wool as a soil additive to help retain moisture and increase nutrient availability, and ultimately stimulate plant growth.

Waste from B.C. sheep farmers, which is typically sent to landfills, is donated to the EFS facility in New Westminster where Woolwerx employees make them into products, such as yarn, and felted dryer balls. Woolwerx is a social enterprise of the EFS that provides training and employment to criminalized women in B.C.’s Lower Mainland.

Women turn donated wool into new products, learn new employment skills, and increase their standard of living.

The Woolwerx Wool Pellet Project is funded by UBC’s Partnership Recognition and Exploration Fund together with a MITACS Accelerate grant. Both partners will benefit: UBC will help EFS potentially create a new product for their Woolwerx enterprise using its expertise in soil analytical techniques and plant growth, while Woolwerx employees will share knowledge of their processes from raw wool (pest and biohazards) to pelletizing with Dr. Grayston and UBC students.

The UBC Greenhouse is where trials are underway to assess the potential of wool pellets applied at three different application rates to enhance the growth and yield of flowering plants and vegetables. local industry on the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council, and served as a Chair of their Board of Directors from 2014-2017 – the only nonAmerican to hold this position. He’s been active with the BC Blueberry Council since the 1990s, and is known for being an early adopter of new technology that can support provincial growers.

Looking ahead, Bains sees both new opportunities and challenges. He’s optimistic about B.C. developing new value-added products using local blueberries – such as dried berries, new pet food formulas and dairy products – and making further inroads into Asian export markets. Also, what he calls the ‘halo effect’ of the health benefits of blueberries will continue to create strong demand.

His own business aside, Bains is well-known for being a spokesperson and leader in the berry industry, even addressing trade challenges that appear every few years. He represented the

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Developing Economic Policy at the University of Indonesia

Chang Che is a fifth-year Food and Resource Economics (FRE) student whose goal has always been working in public policy. Earlier this year, he travelled to Indonesia with a small cohort of UBC students to take part in Go Global’s LFS 303: International Field Studies in Policy Analysis for Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Che’s UBC journey started in the Faculty of Arts. While he was set on an economics degree, he was drawn to the FRE program’s interdisciplinary approach to economic principles. In the years since, Che has supplemented his core courses with a mix of commerce and science courses.

“I love to study how societies work,” Che says. “FRE gives me the opportunity to study applied economics, more than theory.”

Go Global gave Che the chance to experience policy in action, outside of the classroom.

The LFS 303 group landed in Jakarta, Indonesia, accompanied

by Dr. Richard Barichello. Che’s cohort had a range of academic backgrounds, with students from Global Resource Systems, Economics, Political Science and Forestry. They stayed in dorms at the University of Indonesia, attending lectures that grounded them in the context of the local economic landscape.

After a week of class time, Dr. Barichello led the group on a mountain hike to provide a hands-on sense of the effects of a tropical climate on vegetation and growth.

“You could see all kinds of tropical fruits, just growing on the sidewalk,” Che says. “Experiencing the beauty of Indonesia was a real high point of the trip.”

Then came the bulk of the course, providing consulting services for the Indonesian Ministry for Marine Affairs and Investment. The students divided into project groups, and Che’s group began researching fishing quotas and their effects on civilians and other stakeholders.

Che referenced case studies from other countries to support their recommendations. In the next iteration of the course, he hopes students will have more time to talk to local fishermen or farmers, to get their on-the-ground perspective.

In the last week of the course, Che and his group presented their findings to the Ministry.

The group suggested an Individual Transferable Quota (ITQ), which ensures all stakeholders, from individual fishermen to corporate vessels, are able to make the most of their fishing quotas. If a fisherman has an annual quota of 100kg, and they fill 80kg, they can find an alternative revenue stream by selling the rest to other stakeholders.

In addition, Che recommended a variable fee system to encourage sustainable fishing practices. Compared to the existing system, where all fish are weighed and sold equally, the proposed system will sort a catch into three categories: underfished, sustainably fished, and overfished.

Chang’s next goal is to further his studies with the Master of Food and Resource Economics program. He looks forward to any opportunity to work directly with farmers, fishermen, and producers.

“Definitely more pressure than a presentation in class, but nothing can top real world experience,” Chang says. “I recommend this course to anyone who is interested in going into policy writing.”

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REACHOUT IS PUBLISHED BY THE FACULTY OF LAND AND FOOD SYSTEMS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA EDITOR: KAREN LEE CONTRIBUTORS: MELANIE KUXDORF • PIA LIM • SHANNON WONG PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY: MARTIN DEE

ADVISORY COMMITTEE: EDMUND SEOW • GAIL HAMMOND LESLEY DAMPIER • NIKI GLENNING ZOË CAMPBELL

DESIGN & LAYOUT: DEE CREATIVE INC.

PUBLICATION MAIL AGREEMENT NO. 40664587

FOR ADDRESS CHANGES OR TO BE REMOVED FROM THIS MAILING LIST, PLEASE CONTACT REACHOUT@LANDFOOD.UBC.CA. TO RECEIVE REACHOUT ELECTRONICALLY, PLEASE EMAIL LFS.REACHOUT@UBC.CA.