Master's degree (2 years)

Full time

Urban Agriculture

The world is facing significant challenges such as climate change, overuse of resources, loss of biodiversity, land use, and urbanization, with complex issues that require multidisciplinary expertise. In the world's growing cities, there is a growing interest and concern among residents for food production, self-sufficiency, food security, circular use of resources, and sustainable development, challenging society to find innovative solutions. Currently, about half of the world's population lives in urban areas, a number expected to rise to 70% by 2050. This will increase the pressure to provide enough healthy and nutritious food for the urban population. The pressure on the Earth's land resources is significant, aiming to avoid using land areas that house rich biodiversity. Utilizing various types of land suitable for both small- and large-scale food production is a possible solution, requiring broad interdisciplinary expertise in collaboration with private and public stakeholders in a transdisciplinary interaction.

NMBU has a long tradition of finding good, interdisciplinary solutions at the intersection of agriculture, urban and landscape planning, circular wastewater management, water and fertilizer handling, other technological innovations, and entrepreneurship. This expertise can be applied to urban agriculture, which involves a complex interplay of many disciplines: urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture, ornamental and safe food cultivation, knowledge of livestock, composting and substrate, ecological understanding, fertilization, water management, waste cycles, energy cycles, circular economy, innovation, pollution, public health, etc. Several of NMBU's educational environments have received local and national awards for their innovative teaching. Many academic environments from the university's seven faculties, in collaboration with NMBU's learning center and external actors, have built upon this by jointly offering a transdisciplinary master's program in urban agriculture. Transdisciplinarity here is understood as "a new form of societal knowledge development that brings societal actors in and combines interdisciplinary with an active user perspective" according to Nenseth et al. (2010 p. 4). Here, students learn collaboration methodology and communication across academic environments, as well as between academic environments, business, and society. Students should have the opportunity to develop their own competence within and between different fields. Students are prepared for professional life with various methods that reflect what they may experience in a work context, with a holistic mindset, through actual, complex issues.

NMBU's strategy towards 2030 is "Investing together in a sustainable future." NMBU has also developed a learning philosophy that provides the basis for an educational transformation with increasing emphasis on student-active learning. The master's program in urban agriculture is based on this mindset and will bring together both students and teachers from all NMBU environments that emphasize sustainable development, interdisciplinary collaboration, transdisciplinarity, cooperation, student-active learning, and continuous development of effective teaching methods as the basis for lifelong learning, which is one of NMBU's focus areas towards 2030.

Graduates from this program will be highly relevant to the job market in public and private administration and business, where collaboration skills and interdisciplinary expertise are becoming increasingly important. Urban agriculture is mentioned in the Government's declaration from Granavolden: "Facilitate urban agriculture" (page 44, last point). This has led to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food now working on a national strategy for urban agriculture, County Governors doing the same in each region, and all seeking expertise from NMBU and the National Center for Urban Agriculture (NCUA) at NMBU. In addition, NCUA and academic environments regularly communicate with private actors (landscape planning, architecture firms, urban planning, developers, private interest organizations, etc.) seeking expertise in urban agriculture. NCUA and the working group envision that our master's candidates in urban agriculture will meet a significant need for interdisciplinary expertise and the ability to practically collaborate across disciplines in urban agriculture and the circular economy. Students will also acquire a working method that can be used in all transdisciplinary projects across disciplines.

Student courses in the master's program are structured around research-based learning methods and are based on pedagogical principles used in several award-winning learning environments at NMBU. This will enable students, in addition to traditional lectures, exercises, semester assignments, field courses, and laboratory work, to engage in new learning activities such as:

"Transdisciplinary collaborative group work" (TSG)

Mentoring

Digital teaching, -group work and -seminars

Student active learning

Facilitated learning

Reflection

Exchange

Internship

The teaching methods will at all-time be under evaluation, and be developed based on the current issues that is worked on, the students feedback and the teachers/facilitators experiences with the courses over time.

The students will experience different types of evaluation during their studies. In addition to the traditional types of evaluation, e.g. oral, or written exams, mandatory activities, exercises, assignments and reports, the students within Urban Agriculture will also experience other types of evaluation.

Through collaboration learning the students will be made responsible for their own and their groups learning. The students will have to evaluate their own learning, both their own gain, and their own contribution to the others learning, through written reports. To be able to do this, the students will have to increase their consciousness about both their own and others way of learning. Reflection will be used to achieve this, and a reflection diary (-report) will be mandatory for each student. Mid-term assessment will also be used through the system of "mentoring".

Together with their own and other students’ evaluation during the course, the students will regularly have feedback on different types of academic work both from lecturers, teachers, and external resources. A form of folder assessment will be developed, where also the reflection diary/report, and the student’s own evaluation of the learning process and the professional development will be included. A good pedagogical system for folder assessment and feedback will be developed, so the students experience increased learning also of the assessment and may use these for increased professional development through the course of the study.

The Master's Thesis will be defended and discussed with the student and censors before a final grade is given.

The Courses within Urban Agriculture will be offered in Norwegian and will be open to all students at NMBU. From admission 2024, the program will also be offered in English for international students.

For other relevant courses, students may choose from courses offered at NMBU. Lists with examples on relevant courses will be available to help the students see the opportunities, and these may also be relevant for the incoming exchange students (or students from other study programs). Guidance in course selection will be offered by the study coordinator/advisor and the leader of the program board.