Maine School Garden Network
The Liberty School
“Farming: Your Food-Your World”
I thought you’d be interested to know of a class I taught in the fall of 2001 entitled “Farming: Your Food/Your World.” This is a course requested by the students at a meeting where they identified what issues interested them and what they thought was important to learn. The course description is as below:
Description:
How do people decide to be farmers? How do they decide what to grow, or how to grow
it? How do those choices affect the community or the world? This course will be guest
speaker and field trip rich. Speakers will tell us about conventional, organic, and
biodynamic farming. We will also hear from people who have studied the food industry
and the politics/economics of food as well as from those who have traveled to other parts
of the world. We will visit conventional and organic farms and get some “hands-on”
farming experience. Students will be assigned readings and be expected to contribute to
class discussions. They will be required to do a minimum of half a day’s work on a local
farm. Because of the speaker/discussion/field trip nature of this class, faithful attendance
is a must. As a final project students will be asked to create their vision of the ideal food
system, including growing, transportation, marketing, community, political, economic,
and other considerations.
Some of the visits/field trips that augmented our readings included a Rick Kersbergen led tour of Waldo County dairy farms, a visit from Roland Dupuis of RC&D, interviews of local produce managers, a talk by Paul & Karen Volkhausen regarding the effects of global trade in El Salvador, a visit from a farmer who has been part of a biodynamics study group, a visit from a woman who spoke about soil devas (as in Findhom), attendance at MQFGA’s Farmer to Farmer conference, a visit to my farm, and each student’s half day working at the farm of their choice.
The students prepared a list of questions they felt were most important to answer with their final projects: 1.Who produces seeds? 2. Who works on the farms? 3. What would be the best form of fertility to use? 4. What farming methods are best? 5. What would be ~he best form of pest control? 6. What should be grown? 7. Should livestock be included in farm systems? 8. How/what would livestock be fed? 9. Would the farms be diversified or specialized? 10. Where should farms be located (included whether they should be concentrated or dispersed throughout the country/world) 11. What is the ideal farm size? 12. To what degree can/should farms be self sufficient? 13. What should happen in the winter (in our climate) 14. What about product packaging? 15. What about processing? 16. How would pricing be determined? 17. How would products be distributed? 18. How would products be marketed? 19. How would the government play into this? 20. What would the safety standards be? 21. What would the organic standards be? 22. What would the trade rules be?
Obviously these questions are student-generated and would be different every time the course was taught. The important thing is that they are quite comprehensive and the students took ownership of them. Each student bad a different set of answers, according to their understanding of the materials/information studied and according to their personal values. In general the class agreed that small farms are better for the environment and local communities. Most of the students favored organic methods (Perhaps their awareness of my farm and loyalty to me had something to do with this.) They favored local marketing. They each created a combination illustration & text product that addressed each of their 22 questions. They loved the course and thought it should be offered again because of the importance of the issues.
I think this is an example of what high school students can be interested in and issues they can grapple with. It was inspiring to see their passion and informative for me to read/hear so many viewpoints on the subject of farming flavored by the students’ reactions to them.
I’ll leave you with a few quotes from student papers: Regarding how Americans should eat: “When I walk into the house the kitchen is a light shade of white from the flour and the counter-top is covered with dough. The mixing bowls are soaking in the sink and the air is filled with the smell of bread cooking. I feel a great sense of comfort; and that, my friends, is down home cooking.” Regarding the farm situation: “The day begins early for everyone. These farmers use horses and reap the benefits of them. They are strong and quiet; they can be taught to do virtually anything, and their manure is a great addition to the compost pile.” “It would be a simple task for the community to save seeds. People could share the different types of produce and experiment with the best seeds for the area. No one can own seeds in my food system, because they are everywhere, and genetic engineering is not allowed.” Regarding our food system: “If everyone were to step back and realize the history of the food they just purchased, many would make a new decision. If each family tended their own garden that provided a significant amount of their food or worked on a community farm, they would most likely take a keener interest in food. Packaging would be reduced, people would be healthier from the exercise, more care could be taken to control pests and weeds by hand, thus eliminating many of our problems surrounding modem farming.” Perhaps these are romantic notions, but these kids are thinking and they are more aware of their food now.
--Mark Hibben