Campus garden initiatives can facilitate raise the next generation of environmental change agents

The climate crisis is no longer a future problem, but is now causing devastating consequences in the real world here in Canada and all over the world.

For many Canadians, one of the most apparent impacts of climate change is the availability and cost of the food we eat, as climate change, global crises, and profit-driven food companies combine to fuel food insecurity. The agricultural sector is simultaneously main contributor Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and Canada itself is highly vulnerable to climate change.

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Read more: The real cost of food is much higher than what you pay at the checkout

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In the face of crisis, students are sowing the seeds of change on college campuses across the country.

Transformational Learning and Action

Student-led food initiatives such as Campus Gardens, projects to reduce food wasteAND partnerships for community food security are becoming increasingly popular and are a proven way to localize climate action and transform food systems.

Given the enormous scale and complexity of the climate and food security crises, one may wonder what impact these tiny initiatives on campus can have. Scientists even criticized student gardens for perpetuating shallow and depoliticized understandings of the food system among participants. After all, the greenhouse gas emissions saved by growing vegetables in a single garden plot or creating a composting program are minuscule compared to the many hundreds of millions of tons of emissions attributed to corporations.

While student-led initiatives are not direct solutions to the crises we face, we have found that they can change the way students think and develop their skills and confidence as agents of change on a larger scale. Our research with McGill University students participating in initiatives on campus and in student communities, shows how such activities can support transformative opportunities for learning and taking action on food security and climate change.

Students have long reported that education about food and environmental issues such as climate change within the narrow confines of classrooms seems abstract and powerless.

The lack of real-world engagement makes it arduous for students to discern how and where they can contribute to building solutions. Student-led food initiatives are one way students are engaging with these issues through experiential learning.

Our Finds

We found that initiatives that focus solely on technical or scientific aspects of food security and climate change have narrow educational impact on student participants. Instead, building critical and transformative understanding of food systems in students appears to rely on several key practices that some, but not all, student-led initiatives address.

1 – Learning and acting outside the classroom

Through hands-on learning, students gain opportunities to “learn by doing,” both through course-based activities and extracurricular activities. This approach is especially effective when education extends beyond campus boundaries through partnerships with local communities and community organizations.

Immersed in hands-on, collaborative experiences with communities, students demonstrated recent abilities to collectively act on a tiny scale on large-scale issues. For example, connecting with partners in school and community gardens allowed students to tackle elaborate issues on a physical scale and fostered a deeper understanding of current challenges.

2 – Focus on equality and justice

Building on our insights into collaborative learning, we found that working with equity- and justice-focused partners further deepened student engagement. For example, working with local food banks required students to observe, interact with, and reflect on food insecurity and injustice in the community that they might not otherwise have encountered on campus.

This direct engagement with the realities of food systems developed a more elaborate, holistic, and critical understanding of food system issues among participants. It also inspired hope and confidence among students, motivating them to engage in further activities.

3. Collaborating with peers across borders

Our research found that student-led initiatives acted as essential spaces for social engagement and learning among students, creating opportunities for meaningful dialogue across academic disciplines. Social connections were also essential for motivating and empowering collective action among students, often eliciting feelings of hope. These feelings stand in keen contrast to the despair and discouragement reported by students exposed to conventional ‘disaster’ environmental education.

For example, while developing a workshop for a local food bank that linked community garden composting to climate change, students studying education and environment shared recent insights into the connections between climate, food, and education systems.

Supporting student learning

With the impacts of climate change predicted to become more severe in the coming years, educational institutions need to take urgent action to address the scale and scope of the challenge.

Our findings show how investing in hands-on, equity-focused, boundary-pushing learning opportunities helps fuel transformative learning and can nurture students as the next generation of changemakers. Universities can do this by supporting student-led initiatives by allocating funding, space, or mentoring for these efforts or by expanding experiential learning across academic courses and programs.

Strengthening partnerships between universities and communities, especially with organizations working for climate, social, and food justice, is critical to both types of investments.