A group of students and faculty are working hard to complement agricultural and ecological curricula at Iowa State.The group, headed by Ricardo Salvador, associate professor of agronomy, comprises about 30 undergraduate students and graduate students interested in the ISU Student Organic Farm. Salvador said about 12 of the participants actually run the farm.The farm is located on a six-acre site on the south side of Mortensen Road and west of the USDA Plant Introduction station. It was started four years ago with its first year of production in 1997, Salvador said.Student-run farms have also been successful at the University of California at Santa Cruz and Davis, and the University of Maine at Orono, said Pernell Plath, graduate student in anthropology and this year’s farm co-manager. The farm is also managed by Dan Haug, sophomore in biology. “The farm is primarily intended to be a learning center for agricultural and food systems education,” she said. “It is student-led and integrated with the Ames and ISU Community.”No man-made products are used to produce crops, Salvador said. “The farm is set up to offer land organically managed, which means that, in at least three years, no human-made products have been used to boost or protect the crops,” he said.Plath said the farm produces a wide variety of vegetables, herbs, flowers and small fruits.The farm grows all of its crops using organic production techniques, or no synthetic chemicals, Plath said. They also practice crop rotations, use manure and compost for fertilizer and use ecologically-sensitive pest and weed control, she said.”Our biggest market is the Magic Beanstalk Community Supported Agriculture project, but we also sell a wide variety of other markets including Wheatsfield Grocery and John’s Natural Foods, the Downtown Ames Farmers’ Market, several local restaurants and through several local brokerage projects,” Plath said.According to the Web site,www.agron.iastate.edu/studentfarm/, the farm is a producer farm in the local Magic Beanstalk Community Supported Agriculture.Work on the farm happens during the summer and the planning is done in the off-season, Salvador said.