Community partnership projects 2020-2021

Arrell Food institute, University of Guelph

Each year, an interdisciplinary cohort of Arrell Scholars and their peers from the Highly Qualified Personnel (HQP) Scholarship Program at the University of Guelph are split into groups, and are then paired with an organization or business to build new skills through experiential learning. Together with their community partners, the student groups tackle an agri-food problem and develop a solution that draws on their respective areas of expertise.

2021 marked the third year that I collaborated with these groups of students to design and illustrate a series of visual summaries that clearly communicated the key findings and messages from their community partnership projects. I worked with six groups to synthesize and summarize projects spanning the following topics: innovations for cellular technology in agriculture; farmers’ perspectives on agricultural sustainability and stewardship; local food security and sovereignty; and community-based food sharing networks.

These summaries are then shared widely with community partners and the public to enhance understandings of and engagement with agricultural research and innovation. You can find descriptions of each project here.

These projects were all funded by Arrell Food Institute, the Food From Thought program through the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) through the Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance.