Walla Walla Community College buys land to grow its Farm to Fork program

Walla Walla Community College has announced the purchase of more than 73 acres of farmland near its campus. The land will initially be used for the college’s Farm to Fork program, which employs hands-on learning to teach more than 80 agriculture and culinary students about food systems. 

“The real benefit to this land acquisition comes from the additional space providing lots of opportunities for different test plots,” said Chad Hickox, the college’s president. 

Students will be able to tend to their own agricultural plots, seeing firsthand which techniques work — and which don’t. As Hickox said, it will give students the opportunity to “intentionally fail.”

The college started its Farm to Fork program several years ago. It grew out of a desire to prepare students for careers in the Walla Walla Valley, an area where even the baseball team, the Sweets, is named after the region’s most famous agricultural product.

“If we can, through our high-quality programs, recruit people to the area and convince them to stay in our wonderful community,” Hickox said, “that would serve the ag industry as well as the broader community.” 

The Farm to Fork program takes a holistic approach to food systems education. It wants culinary students to learn how soil can affect the quality of an onion. It wants agriculture students to learn how to grow onions that chefs will covet. And, it wants all students to learn how to make the future more sustainable. 

“ The agricultural industry of today is so complex and so interwoven with technology and with so many other adjacent disciplines that we want to provide instruction to our students that reflects the reality of the world,” Hickox said. 

This year, the Farm to Fork program has gotten some major boosts: First, $300,000 in grants and now, the multi-million dollar land acquisition that will expand the college’s footprint by nearly 50%. 

“We’ve been really, really lucky that the school has come through and invested in this idea,” said Tyler Cox, an animal science instructor who has been involved in the program from the beginning. 

With the acreage provided by the new land, Farm to Fork students will have more opportunities to learn and collaborate. 

Soil science students will work the ground, agriculture students will grow produce or raise livestock, and culinary students will cook the resulting products for on-campus restaurants. Emulating the relationships forged by chefs and farmers throughout the valley, students will also work together to figure out what to grow and what it costs.

Eventually, the college hopes to have a full working farm, with even more experiences that prepare students to enter the workforce — whether they end up growing sweet onions, or cooking them.