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Student Farmers Are Sowing Seeds for a Better Future By E.G. Vallianatos
I started my first day in North Carolina with a breakfast with Nancy Creamer, professor of horticulture and director of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems at North Carolina State University. Nancy Creamer is one of several professors staking her career and reputation on putting sustainable agriculture in America’s future. She is a pillar of support at the university for giving the students a farm and a taste of what it takes to raise organic food, learning how to become successful family farmers without any discernible impact on nature. Creamer also raises funds for extensive studies of a variety of farming practices, both conventional and ecological, so, at the opportune moment, we know how to move from one experience to the other. She is pleased that North Carolina State University, a typical land grant school serving agribusiness for decades, is supporting the student organic farm and the sustainable agricultural vision behind that nature-friendly effort. In fact, at a time when terrorism is a concern for Americans, she considers small family farms, and the university’s training of students in organic farming, as key ingredients for a national food security policy. After I talked to Nancy Creamer, I met some other professors responsible for the organic farming program of the university. They said conventional agriculture had done much damage to the land and rural communities of the country, so their devotion to organic farming was an expression for a better future. They knew the transition to this future would be difficult, but they were determined to stand by their science and ethics. One of those professors, Phil Rzewnicki, said the students who studied organic farming were “enthusiastic, excited, hard working and inspirational.” I could see feelings run deep among students and professors. I understood the implications of such a paradigm shift during the next two days when I worked with the students at the university’s organic farm in Goldsboro, North Carolina: Lisa Stocking is probably typical of a new generation of students who love agriculture and the land passionately. She dreams and studies and works the land in order to understand all one needs to know about the soil – and much more. Joel Gruver, a PhD candidate in soil science at North Carolina State, grows organic food, teaches other students sustainable methods of raising food, and, at the same time, is conducting a study for his thesis. Thais Coser, the Brazilian student searching for a graduate program in sustainable agriculture in the United States or Brazil, is also caught in the passion of working the land to raise food without deleterious ecological effects or social and political violence. She explained farming like love, eager to work hard and eager to wait for the delicious time of the harvest. We have an obligation to see that experiments in sustainable farming, like that of North Carolina State University, multiply and succeed. Directing students to the universe of science and agriculture and food is building a better future, easing this culture’s fatal attraction to a dead-end factory food system. The passion of students for organic food is also a desire for a livable rural America and a just society. They work hard on the land while dreaming of family farming and democracy. When they sow cover crops to suppress weeds, they are recreating farming as a way of life. It’s time to listen to our students: We need them to be tomorrow’s small family farmers, bringing life to the dying rural America. We also need their idealism and passion. Besides, the earth demands it. |
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