By Abbe Hamilton, MS student in Ecology
I was grateful for the opportunity to hear Mark Van Horn’s perspective on a successful student farm several times while he visited from February 12-13.
Van Horn is the director of the student farm at UC Davis. During his visit to campus, he met with several classes in the college of Ag Sciences as well as the student, faculty and community stakeholders in the PSU student farm initiative, and presented the Friday SAWG seminar. I was lucky enough to be around for three such conversations, and each yielded additional insight into what a student farm could bring. Here’s my attempt to categorize some of the facets of the conversations I overheard.
Curriculum
The UC Davis student farm was started by students in the 1970’s and maintained a student-dominated interest for the first decades of its existence. There is now lots of interaction between the farm and academic program aspects, although Van Horn says there is little involvement on the part of the general faculty (who could use the farm as an outdoor classroom) because of its history as a student-run establishment.
UC Davis has a Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems major that is tailor-made to harmonize with work on the student farm. Courses cover production methods, agro-societal interactions and the economics and policy of sustainable food. Also involved in the coursework is a student-run seminar where the class participants choose the lecturers they want to learn from throughout the semester. The capstone project for the major involves real-world projects. Students can take on an issue facing a local farmer or the local food system and are expected to follow through with a solution by the end of their project.
Recruitment
Van Horn has seen a shift from volunteer student positions to almost entirely for-credit or paid internships on the farm since its start in the seventies. He cites students’ increasing need to work through college as the driver of the trend.
Student interest is self-perpetuating, and he notes that friends recruiting friends continues to be the most effective way of getting new people out on the farm. The university uses the presence of the student farm as a recruitment tool within the College of Agriculture. The student farm is also used for programs involving underprivileged high-schoolers from the area.
Who works on the farm?
Van Horn says the Sustainable Ag and Food Systems majors only make up one-third of the students involved with the farm. The rest are from a diversity of interests and backgrounds, including lots of transfers from community colleges.
There’s a heavy focus on children at the UC Davis student garden, and they bring elementary school kids from surrounding areas to tour the farm every spring. The Ecological Garden brings in a lot of environmental education majors. By Van Horn’s estimate, the student farm graduates more prospective environmental educators than farmers.
Managing student workers
In recent years the UC Davis student farm has experienced a major uptick in student interest, but no increase in budgeted salaries to pay student or staff workers. Operating the student farm currently requires approximately 100 hours of work a week, and taking on more student workers has in turn allowed them to scale up production that enables them to pay more workers.
However, finding the resources to manage a rotating crew of 60 or 70 students per week is where there is a scarcity. They have been able to offer a half-time graduate assistantship for a student to take over some of the managerial responsibilities, and to organize leadership training for paid student workers. Motivated undergraduates are delegated to lead crews of fellow students. The non-student farm staff makes an effort to communicate as equals to the student staff to maintain a sense of camaraderie in the workplace. The arrangement fosters a real sense of trust and respect between the staff and student workers.
Farm culture and decision making
Students are more involved in the farm’s overall priorities for the present and future. Planning meetings involve open agendas and lots of group-thinks and world-cafes. It is obvious the organization prioritizes equality in the decision-making processes. Students don’t have much of a say in budgeting (as that is almost exclusively set aside for salaries) and crop planning: the farm has a production schedule that works, although students can choose crop varieties to experiment with. It is the students’ responsibility to decide what kind of an atmosphere they want on the farm.
Overall, our guest provided an exciting insight to the realities of an on-campus student farm. He supported our cause here at Penn State and gave us all a clearer vision of what to expect, avoid and embrace in our planning process here.