360o Urban Ag Farm Tours: Taking Virtual to the Next Level
Teaching & Educational Technologies
James Jasinski
Extension Educator
OSU EXTENSION
URBANA
Abstract
Ohio has a population of 11.8 M people including 17 cities over 50,000 individuals, many with a diverse array of urban agriculture (UA) farms. Unfortunately, no formal mechanism exists for growers to visit and experience other farms to gain operational wisdom from the manager due to time and travel constraints. In 2020, Ohio State University Integrated Pest Management Program personnel experimented with using 360o virtual tour technology to help bridge the gap between growers. This technology allows images to be rotated 360o instead of a traditional static 2D image or video. These 360o images can be stitched together to form a farm site tour, and viewers can freely interact and navigate between images throughout the tour to explore areas of interest. When applied to UA farms, it allows growers across the country to virtually visit and experience Ohio farms. These tours allow new and beginning growers to see unique farm assemblages, scales of production, and various operational missions which may influence the design or enhance their own UA farm. These tours also allow experienced growers to see specific operations or practices on a working UA farm that may be adopted into their operation. OSU currently has 16 360o virtual tours of eight Ohio UA farms of different scales, complexities and missions online for growers to experience. These models have been viewed 2,468 times since being posted. As the imaging methodology has evolved, a subset of these UA farm tours were augmented with educational “hot spots” where text, audio, images or video have been added to highlight the significance of certain practices, tools, structures, etc. Growers and educators from at least six states have been exposed to this virtual tour concept during a multi-state Great Lakes Urban Ag (GLUA) webinar series, GLUA annual meeting and OSU Extension annual conference all in 2022. Further virtual tour development will occur in 2023 as the GLUA working group has been awarded funds to image UA farms in Michigan, Indiana and Illinois to further showcase the diversity of farms across the region.
Authors: James Jasinski, Margaret Rivera
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James Jasinski Extension Educator, Ohio State University Extension, Ohio, 43078
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Margaret Rivera Extension Educator, Ohio State University Extension, Ohio, 44306