Social Context

Previous Page: Introduction

The Lafayette Student Working Farm and Community Garden, abbreviated LaFarm, serves several purposes. Firstly, LaFarm serves as a community garden space for students, staff, alumni, and faculty. More importantly, however, is the student working farm portion of LaFarm, which provides space for students to grow food under the direction of LaFarm Manager Sarah Edmonds which can be donated or sold directly to members of the Easton and Lafayette community or to dining services for wholesale use.

There are many stakeholders involved in LaFarm. There is LaFarm Manager Edmonds, the LaFarm Advisory Board (currently professors Cohen, Lawrence, Germanoski and Brandes) and of course the many students that volunteer with or work for Manager Edmonds, do research at LaFarm, and take part in the Lafayette Food and Farm Cooperative (a student organization for agriculture inclined students). There’s the community gardeners, from their diverse backgrounds, and the Plant Operations Staff that help Manager Edmonds. And there are also Alumni interested in the farm, most notably Mr. Hendrickson, who has a fund set up for projects that combine engineering and art. This fund has been crucial in the past for paying for the solar powered irrigation well at LaFarm, and means that implementation of any project at LaFarm should take art into account.

For this project, the most crucial aspect of LaFarm is its educational capacity as it is used by these students. Assessing our greenhouse decision through the lens of educational context will allow us to choose a type of greenhouse that aligns with LaFarm’s practices, ideals, and future while still considering environmental and infrastructural contexts.

Education, The Sustainable Food Loop, and Community Engagement

LaFarm is a part of the larger Lafayette community, and, as such, education is paramount. LaFarm strives to provide a space where not only students, but also faculty and small farmers from around the Lehigh Valley can learn about small-scale agriculture. For students, this often takes place through faculty-student research projects. This has included a diverse breadth of classes including Independent Studies, the Civil Engineering Capstone Design, Technology and Nature, Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Introduction to the Environment: A Systems Approach, Organizations and the Environment, and Edible Ethics. There have also been Excel Research Projects covering topics like Integrated Pest Management, Community Outreach and Small Farm Infrastructure that have taken place through LaFarm with tremendous contributions from Manager Edmonds. In addition, many Lafayette students learn experientially by working or volunteering under Manager Edmonds, and draw value from LaFarm by contributing service hours. Service has been popular for fraternity members on campus, especially Delta Upsilon, as well as for service days like the Green Apple Day of Service and Earth Day.

Operating under strict industry standards, LaFarm strives to be a model place for small farmers to glean important knowledge about agriculture such as how to grow, what to grow, when to start and when to harvest. However, seed starting and season extension are critical parts of agriculture in our region that necessitate a greenhouse, which LaFarm does not have. A greenhouse would enable LaFarm to educate small farmers and students on how to perform these tasks and construct their own greenhouses, and potentially provide space for local farmers or other community members to use alongside Lafayette. For example, there is a senior center which was recently relocating to a space across the street from LaFarm, and members of the senior center expressed interest in being able to work with plants at LaFarm. Although there is not an opportunity for the seniors to help right now, a large greenhouse could easily contain space for such outreach.

A greenhouse would also be an educational boon to faculty-student excel researchers seeking to expand their focus at LaFarm, because of the large number of research projects which could be done with greenhouses. Projects that can be done in greenhouses range from altering the heat and ventilation to increase efficiency, investigating how to make the perfect greenhouse growing media, working with hydroponics or aquaculture, the study of the biology of the plants themselves as well as investigations into biomass heating and the sequester of CO2 for plant use (for a few examples of academic research on greenhouses, see: Beshada, Zhang, & Boris, 2006; Sanchz-Molina, Reinoso, Acien, Rodriguez, & Lopext, 2014; Sethi & Sharma, 2008; and van der Velde, Voogt, & Pickhardt, 2008).

LaFarm currently utilizes space at a greenhouse at the Seed Farm in Emmaus, PA. The 45 minute commute both ways is severely inhibiting both institutional and community educational opportunities. Furthermore, changeover in the administration of the Seed Farm has led to complications which may mean that that space is not even accessible to LaFarm in the future. In this context, inaccessibility is the hurdle we would overcome with a LaFarm greenhouse.

Additionally, the emissions from the drive reduce the overall sustainability of LaFarm. As part of Lafayette’s Sustainable Food Loop infrastructure (LaFarm -> Dining Services -> Food Waste Composting -> LaFarm…), LaFarm is held to a higher standard. A presentation that was given about the Sustainable Food Loop at the LVAIC 2014 Sustainability Conference is located here: LaFarm Sustainable Food Loop Presentation. Bringing a greenhouse to LaFarm would further improve the Sustainable Food Loop both in the production capacity and in its overall sustainability.

Environmental Context

On a grander scale, LaFarm’s educational and infrastructural context involves the world outside the Lafayette and Lehigh Valley communities. LaFarm is part of a small farm movement in America. Growing concerns over emissions related to large-scale farming production have compelled many individuals and groups to maintain their own land, share land in farm co-ops, or undertake any number of activities to produce their own food. This enables people to break out of the large farm and grocery store’s unsustainable food infrastructure and establish their own food loops which are more sustainable. By passing on knowledge and know-how for small agriculture to students past and present, faculty, and local farmers, LaFarm serves a greater purpose in furthering this movment.

The environmental context that applies to this project influences our greenhouse design greatly. Our location falls under USDA Zone 6 which expects a certain amount of snowfall and rain each year. This means a greenhouse here will have specifications to prevent collapse from snow buildup. This will be covered further in our technological section. In addition, the outside climate that our greenhouse will be exposed to play a huge role in helping us determine what types of heating systems we will need. We are taking into account the immediate environment of LaFarm in that the greenhouse cannot be placed in a floodplain or in an area that is either too sunny or too shady.

Furthermore, we must think about how a greenhouse would affect our environment as a whole. With this, the question arises; would it contribute significantly to global warming? Ideally, LaFarm would have a net zero greenhouse. But, with limited solar power accessibility, as discussed in the Technical Analysis section, how to power a greenhouse becomes complicated. To avoid this problem, it is possible to expand the sustainable energy infrastructure at LaFarm in order to power a greenhouse. Ascertaining the exact amount of infrastructure necessary is itself an opportunity for further environmental education and research by Lafayette.

Looking Ahead

Another important factor to consider is the potential expansion of LaFarm. Lafayette owns over 12 acres of land adjacent to LaFarm which is currently rented out to a local GMO farmer. There is a lot of student and faculty desire to reclaim that land and put it to educational use. As of 2015, there has been talk of allowing LaFarm to expand an additional acre from where it is, but also talk about reclaiming land on the other side of the property, adjacent to the Bushkill Creek. Furthermore, the professors of the LaFarm Advisory Board have expressed interest of using the whole of the land that Lafayette owns adjacent to Metzgar as an environmental campus. There is great potential for education there between LaFarm and the creek’s uses for engineering, geology, environmental sciences; there is the potential for housing in the house on that land, and the current and future sustainable energy infrastructure in place at LaFarm and Metzgar gives even more opportunity for education and sustainable living.

But none of these plans have been finalized or approved, in the short term or long term. Since it is impossible to know at this time exactly where LaFarm will be next year or in ten years, our analysis has resulted in a set of suggestions rather than a strict plan. These suggestions are predicated on the facts that LaFarm is educationally focused, that it is expanding at an uncertain rate, and that it can become the cornerstone of an entire environmental campus. Taking into account this, the rest of the context on this page, and everything in the introduction, we set out in the following sections to analyze three greenhouse designs which involve different technical aspects and implementation strategies, and would affect the contexts we have described in various ways. We have selected three designs which make sense based on these contexts: a hoophouse which could be easily implemented and help expand interest and production at LaFarm; a Gothic-Frame greenhouse which would take more work to implement but allow us to safely start seed and eliminate any need for off-farm greenhouses; and an A-Frame greenhouse which would be top of the line, achieve more than the Gothic-Frame, and allow additional education and community engagement. Each of these designs is explored in detail in the technical analysis.

Next Page: Technical Analysis
Previous Page: Introduction

Policy Analysis
Economic Analysis
Conclusion

For more information about the context of the Lehigh Valley, as well as an overall history of agriculture in the US, please see Resetting the Table in the Lehigh Valley, a book written by Lafayette students in 2014, cited in the bibliography. For more information about LaFarm itself see both the LaFarm Annual Reports, also linked in the bibliography.