Discussions of the following questions in this breakout session are posted as comments here:
1. What seems to be unique or specific about your program?
2. Are there specific issues or obstacles your learners have difficulty addressing?
3. Are any of these drawing new people into your programs, or do you think they may be keeping some away? Are our programs sustainable?
4. How are we preparing students for a sustainable agriculture system?
Here are the notes from Group A on the following questions:
1. What seems to be unique or specific about your program?
2. Are there specific issues or obstacles your learners have difficulty addressing?
3. Are any of these drawing new people into your programs, or do you think they may be keeping some away? Are our programs sustainable?
4. How are we preparing students for a sustainable agriculture system?
1. What seems to be unique or specific about your program?
FFA and Ag in Classroom: teaching critical thinking skills, problem solving; HS ag education: inquiry, experience based
Sustainable ag at MU: problem based, bridging more conventional with more “granola” crunchy types: sustainable ag as “wicked problem;” no one right answer, multiplicity; engages them
Holistic management is a specific curriculum: decision making process, not tactics; complexity; adaptability; integrating livestock into diverse farm system
Permaculture design is hands on, practical; classroom work followed by hands in the dirt–outdoors
Master gardeners: some do flowers, others veggies; some school programs, hands on activities; work with school districts: slice of ag (using slice of pizza, how it is produced), demonstrations and simulations of various components
KU environmental studies working toward a sustainable ag component; current cooperative farm trying to provide a whole diet through CSA
Extension Horticulture: latitude to determine subject matter (with approval) dealing with commercial fruit and veg production using soil management
JCCC program: the working campus farm; hard to figure out who to talk to, where is the blueprint
This is an issue in many places, including Extension: “there’s no one-stop shop”
Are there specific issues or obstacles your learners have difficulty addressing?
Nature of science not necessarily a holistic approach; science in parallel with learning
Who funds the science? Do we need science in the public interest
Work in Andes and South Africa shows the way farmers want info is different than the way researchers do; the way we use knowledge
Tension between innovation and risk
Basic issue with ability to critically think about knowledge
Ability to have intellectual honesty, not illusion of objectivity; know what the bias is and how it affects knowledge
In short, are we teaching critical assessment of knowledge
Farm tours can help expose people to “first adopters”
Cuba as example of cooperative education, farmer to farmer horizontal transfer of knowledge
Are we serving the best of humanity?
We are not drawing the “best”; parents are pushing the kids to career they want to have
“We are caught up with money and not the quality of life.”
“They don’t know what they don’t know”
Extension folks have a kind of low priority for “sustainable ag”; based on their backgrounds, as well as county governments that provide bulk of funding, many of whom don’t see a value in extension in general; people don’t even know extension exists; specialties often don’t have ability to answer questions; JOCO hiring community food systems agent; because of funding, it tends to perpetuate the cycle
Solving the problem of having enough money is crucial
Are our programs sustainable?
Do we show farming as exciting and sexy?
You don’t want to just be preparing farmers: everybody needs to learn about the food system, and a sustainable food system
“We need to be in the business of creating ‘agriculturalists.”
How are we preparing people for a sustainable ag food system?
From a student standpoint, if i do what I am learning to do.
Be the change.
Are public schools doing it? Permaculture feels it is.
Beyond sustainability is regeneration.
We could all do better at linkages. Building a new food system based on community. Conventional ag has gotten away from that.
Making connections.
Teaching about externalities.
Teaching economics as social not natural law. Economics ultimately is about allocating resources.
Instead of just sustainable ag, “community food systems” hits all of these issues; but, if we look at community only we can distract from broader interdependence
Linkage with regional food systems
Here are the notes from Group B on the following questions:
1. What seems to be unique or specific about your program?
2. Are there specific issues or obstacles your learners have difficulty addressing?
3. Are any of these drawing new people into your programs, or do you think they may be keeping some away? Are our programs sustainable?
4. How are we preparing students for a sustainable agriculture system?
Group B’s responses:
1. What seems to be unique or specific about your program?
-JCCC’s connection to compost program
-Gail Fullers field school takes a focus on the big picture from soil health to human health
-Extension services Slice of Ag program unpacks a multi dimensional piece of pizza as it relates to ag with exposure to all relevant parties
-KS Weslyan, experiential learning on farm, interdisciplinary perspectives
-career pathway flexibility
-nature focused pre-k in Johnson County
-Linda Hezel, private tutoring in biodiversity and nutrition, hands on, minds on, constant communication
-internships in agronomy and industry professions only
2. Are there specific issues or obstacles your learners have difficulty addressing?
-a false economy
-connection to the outdoors/natural world
-financial stressors
-recognizing negative impact within nature
-“no” mentality, lack of open-mindedness
-classes lack application in applicable specialized areas
-exposure at a young age
-off farm incomes also need training
-lack of repetition on true cost of food
-no internships or clinical placement opportunities
-wide variety of agriculture
-lack of critical thinking in ag classes where applied sciences have dominated
-not seeing professionals like yourself in the workforce-where are farmers in the workforce?
-career pathways facilitated by communities, not always educators-k-state is working on this
-experiential learning & internships almost always required by employers
-profit and efficiency as values
3. Are any of these drawing new people into your programs, or do you think they may be keeping some away?
-social entrepreneurship, finance & business strategy
-skills in defininf a new niche
Are our programs sustainable?
-To much pushback from Kansas leadership?
-Sustained funding of growth projects, co-funding
-sustained educators
-endowed positions
-keeping people with a passion on the ground doing leadership actions
-where are the jobs?
4. How are we preparing students for a sustainable agriculture system?
-How do we teach or approach Ag education to support values in sustainable ag systems vs. the profit and efficiency values?
-exposure to a variety of models
-apply critical thinking as it relates to pillars of sustainability
-“before researchers become researchers, they should become philosophers”