At U.S. liberal arts colleges and universities, students in biology, environmental studies, and philosophy are setting down their laptops and notepads to grab shovels, tillers, and hoes. In recent years, sustainable agriculture and food systems (SAFS) education - previously an activity solely of land-grant universities (LGUs) - has entered the discourse at liberal arts schools often through environmental and interdisciplinary studies. Though little consensus exists on how these programs are fostered and supported, the fact that they are increasing in number is undeniable. This study seeks to understand the motivation, development, and organization of these initiatives. This is important and useful to contribute to the larger dialogue on the importance of student farms and other SAFS initiatives, and to broaden the conversation about the historical bifurcation of vocational and liberal arts educational models. Research of 16 liberal arts schools conducted in the spring of 2012 sought to understand and deconstruct the organizational relationships and mechanisms leveraged to develop these programs. This author discovered a diversity of institutional motivations including an emphasis on pedagogical techniques such as experiential education and service-learning in addition to the wide influence of sustainability. It furthermore revealed a number of institutional barriers and wide variation of emerging SAFS models.
Read
