Laura Sayre - Fields of Learning: The Student Farm Movement in North America

Fields of Learning

Culture of the Land: A Series in the New Agrarianism

This series is devoted to the exploration and articulation of a new agrarianism that considers the health of habitats and human communities together. It demonstrates how agrarian insights and responsibilities can be worked out in diverse fields of learning and living: history, science, art, politics, economics, literature, philosophy, religion, urban planning, education, and public policy. Agrarianism is a comprehensive worldview that appreciates the intimate and practical connections that exist between humans and the earth. It stands as our most promising alternative to the unsustainable and destructive ways of current global, industrial, and consumer culture.

Series Editor

Norman Wirzba, Duke University, North Carolina

Advisory Board

Wendell Berry, Port Royal, Kentucky

Ellen Davis, Duke University, North Carolina

Patrick Holden, Soil Association, United Kingdom

Wes Jackson, Land Institute, Kansas

Gene Logsdon, Upper Sandusky, Ohio

Bill McKibben, Middlebury College, Vermont

David Orr, Oberlin College, Ohio

Michael Pollan, University of California at Berkeley, California

Jennifer Sahn, Orion Magazine, Massachusetts

Vandana Shiva, Research Foundation for Science, Technology & Ecology, India

Bill Vitek, Clarkson University, New York

The Student Farm Movement
in North America

Edited by
LAURA SAYRE AND SEAN CLARK

Foreword by
FREDERICK L. KIRSCHENMANN

Copyright 2011 by The University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,

serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.

All rights reserved.

Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky
663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008
www.kentuckypress.com

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fields of learning : the student farm movement in North America / edited by Laura Sayre and Sean Clark ; foreword by Frederick L. Kirschenmann

p. cm. (Culture of the land)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8131-3374-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-8131-3395-9 (ebook)

1. School farmsUnited States. 2. Agricultural studentsUnited States. 3. Agricultural educationUnited States. 4. Agricultural collegesUnited States. 5. AgricultureFieldworkUnited States. 6. School farmsCanada. 7. Agricultural studentsCanada. 8. Agricultural educationCanada.

9. Agricultural collegesCanada. 10. AgricultureFieldworkCanada.

I. Sayre, Laura Browne, 1970- II. Clark, Sean.

S533.F49 2011

630.71dc22 2011008596

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

For the sustainable farmers
of the future

All studies arise from aspects of the one earth
and the one life lived upon it.

John Dewey, The School and Society (1900)

Frederick L. Kirschenmann

Laura Sayre

Sean Clark

Monte R. Anderson and Roy Joe Stuckey

Julia Shipley

4. Evergreen State College (1972): Interdisciplinary
Studies in Sustainable Agriculture

Stephen Bramwell, Martha Rosemeyer, and Melissa Barker

Ann Bettman

Mark Van Horn

Lorna Coppinger and Ray Coppinger

Marianne Sarrantonio

Robin Kohanowich

Tim Crews

Josh Slotnick

Mark Bomford

Constance L. Falk and Pauline Pao

John Biernbaum

Melina Shannon-DiPietro

Laura Sayre and Sean Clark

FREDERICK L. KIRSCHENMANN

The fact that books, documentaries, and journal articles about food and farming are becoming increasingly popular is one indication among many that a food revolution is emerging in our culture. Fields of Learning makes an important contribution to that body of art and literature. These stories provide valuable historical information about the creation of alternative learning environments that will almost certainly become crucial in the decades ahead.

I suspect that everyone who ponders the stories in Fields of Learning will agree that they are delightful and inspiring narratives. They are well written and convey a sense of value that far exceeds what Robert Bly once called the flat poetry of the universities. However, perhaps not everyone will agree that student farms are important. Indeed, as the stories themselves reveal, institutional support for student farms is often lacking. And so Fields of Learning also provides us with an opportunity to reconsider what we value in our universities as well as in our communities.

While the students and faculty actively involved in student farms strongly believe that the farms play a significant role in students education, administrators responsible for deciding which academic programs are most important for a college or a university are more likely to question the cost and the need to devote valuable land resources to this purpose. Consequently, almost all these stories reveal tensions around the appropriateness and practicality of maintaining these farms as part of an educational curriculum. Do student farms provide a learning environment that is important enough to compete for scarce resources with academic courses in science and technology or art and literature?

This same tension is now emerging in our public schools with respect to school gardening programs. The terms of the debate were clearly articulated in an article by Caitlin Flanagan published in the January/February 2010 issue of the