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<\/a> My name is Mykl Nelson,<\/strong> a world citizen intent on feeding the globe.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The first distinct connection to food I remember was in the late 90s while living in \u0130zmir, Turkey<\/span><\/strong>. We had a large mulberry<\/strong> tree in our yard which bore delicious fruit. I also remember the bazaar<\/strong> in the Buca province. Cart after cart of people selling mounds of all manner of produce. After leaving Turkey, and for maybe half of my childhood summers, I lived on the farm of my paternal grandparents\u2019 in Worland, Wyoming<\/strong>. I saw many aspects of high, dry farming of row crops: sugar beets, alfalfa, barley,<\/strong> and dent corn.<\/strong> I could only catch fleeting glimpses into the life of my grandfather, a commodity farmer. But in my recent years I\u2019ve been openly told that these American farmers vehemently hoped their children were \u201ctoo smart to get into farming.\u201d Their wish came true. Of four children and nine grandchildren, I\u2019m the only one in agriculture.<\/span><\/p>\n I turned on to agriculture when a friend and I built a 400 square-foot poly-tunnel<\/strong> in our backyard in Colorado.<\/strong> We didn\u2019t know anything more than that we wanted to grow our own food<\/strong>. I remember feeling so incredibly accomplished, fulfilled, and validated picking personal salads straight into dinner bowls. I took that inspiration to fuel my travel to the Pacific Northwest, a place I knew I could immerse myself in the world of tending plants. I pushed every aspect of my network to get more involved in farming and to gain space to garden. I\u2019ve worked on three organic urban farms<\/strong> since moving to Oregon.<\/strong> I went back to school and retrained from political science to agricultural science. I continued my education with a graduate project which firmly oriented my interests to the world of urban agriculture.<\/span><\/p>\n I am now an instructor of urban agriculture<\/strong> here at Oregon State University<\/strong>. <\/span>My current duties are to develop new online courses to train and empower new urban growers to produce food within the confines of their modern environment. This work is challenging, as urban agriculture suffers from a distinct lack of focused research. One of the most relevant discoveries from my graduate research project is that nearly all advice extended to urban growers is simply copied from traditional agriculture. Even if suggestions are altered with respect to the scale and local environment of urban growers, the research supporting these suggestions is still wholly based upon traditional agricultural methods of food production. I am developing my courses with this mismatch in mind. I have changed my approach from seeking to broadly support food production and instead specifically analyze and adapt traditional recommendations to work in an urban environment.<\/p>\n <\/a>I use scientific research<\/strong> to inform my course development<\/strong> on many levels. At the macro-level, articles like one by Oberholtzer, Dimitri, and Pressman (2014)<\/a> have reported that most farmers, and new farmers especially, struggle with complications in managing the farm\u2019s business much more than the challenge of growing their crops. I used these findings to inform the outline of a new course that I am developing: Introduction to Urban Agriculture<\/u>. Rather than spending time covering the how<\/i> or why<\/i> of plant growth in much detail, I\u2019ve instead focused on how urban growers can adapt agricultural principles<\/strong> to their unique environment. I strive to keep students aware of how these factors should influence their management activities and always keep the concept of \u2018value\u2019 in their mind. On a more micro-level, I have built the lectures regarding soil and plant growth with adaptations of my own previous graduate research.<\/p>\n
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