Book description
Where will the next generation of farmers come from? What will their
farms look like? Fields of Learning: The Student Farm Movement in
North America provides a concrete set of answers to these urgent
questions, describing how, at a wide range of colleges and
universities across the United States and Canada, students, faculty,
and staff have joined together to establish on-campus farms as outdoor
laboratories for agricultural and cultural education. From one-acre
gardens to five-hundred-acre crop and livestock farms, student farms
foster hands-on food-system literacy in a world where the shortcomings
of input-intensive conventional agriculture have become increasingly
apparent. They provide a context in which disciplinary boundaries are
bridged, intellectual and manual skills are cultivated together, and
abstract ideas about sustainability are put to the test.
Editors Laura Sayre and Sean Clark have assembled a volume of essays
written by pioneering educators directly involved in the founding and
management of fifteen of the most influential student farms in North
America. Arranged chronologically, Fields of Learning illustrates how
the student farm movement originated in the nineteenth century, gained
ground in the 1970s, and is flourishing today -- from the University
of California--Davis to Yale University, from Hampshire College to
Central Carolina Community College, from the University of Montana to
the University of Maine.
""This book not only showcases successful undergraduate
farm experiences, but alos provides an inventory of all US and
Canadian student farm projects, including their age, size, and
production foci.... Highly recommended."--CHOICE" --
Laura Sayre is a postdoctoral researcher with the French National
Institute for Agronomic Research and a former senior writer for the
Rodale Institute's NewFarm. org. She lives in Dijon, France.
Sean Clark teaches in and currently chairs the Department of
Agriculture and Natural Resources at Berea College in Kentucky. He
lives in Berea, Kentucky.
