Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
an environment encourages questions and stimulates discussion of the practices and systems,
as well as opening issues far beyond the field boundaries. This is extremely difficult to re-
create in the classroom and is not possible without immersing students in some way in the
field or in the community.
Farmers are often more than willing to share their farms and experiences in this way. The
challenge for educators is to identify the resources needed to transport and sustain students in
the field and to compensate farmers for their time, as well as to convince administrators that
this type of education is worth the trouble and expense. This is far less efficient in terms of
accumulated student credit hours that can be counted by the department and credited to a
professor, compared to the large lecture environment. It is only when effective long-term
learning is measured that the benefits of such a system can be fully appreciated.
One concern of educators in organic farming and sustainable agricultural systems is the
availability of adequate textbooks, journal articles, and other resources for giving students the
foundation needed for in-depth study, writing class papers and backstopping their field
research with sufficient and relevant information. Much of the information resides in the 'grey
literature' of conference proceedings, annual reports of non-profit or farmer organisations,
and in the heads of farmers who are practicing these systems. One approach to collecting and
making this alternative information available is to encourage authors to publish their experi-
ences.
Our
Sustainable
Future
is a topic series from Nebraska Press that covers topics from soil
organic matter (Magdoff 1992), to whole farm systems (Bender 1994), to regional concerns
about natural resources (Opie 1990), to global concerns such as green plans (Johnson 1995) or
the impacts of Chernobyl (Yaroshinskaya 1995). This active series continues to publish two to
four projects each year.
Technical journals are also available in which articles from scientists cover topics related to
sustainable agriculture and organic farming. Among these are the
American
Journal
of
Alter-
native
Agriculture
(begun in 1986, with the new title of
Renewable
Agriculture
and
Food
Systems
),
Biological
Agriculture
and
Horticulture
(begun in 1982),
Journal
of
Sustainable
Agri-
culture
(begun in 1990),
International
Journal
of
Agricultural
Sustainability
(begun in 2003),
Agriculture,
Ecosystems
and
Environment
(begun in 1974) and
Agricultural
Systems
(begun in
1976). Proceedings of the biennial scientific congresses of the International Federation of
Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) publish conference presentations in all aspects of
organic agriculture. Regular international journals in agricultural science occasionally carry
scientific papers covering organic agriculture, particularly in plant and animal sciences. The
social, political and economic aspects of organic agriculture and agrifood systems have been
hotly discussed since about 1995 in journals such as
Agriculture
and
Human
Values
,
Socialia
Ruralis
and
Rural
Sociology
.
Much of the most relevant information continues to appear in newsletters from non-profit
research centres, annual reports of small projects working in organic agriculture, and bulletins
from specialised organisations such as the Organic Farming Research Foundation. The Organic
Eprints archive has been developed by DARCOF since 2002. A German language version of
this much used service is supported by the Forschungsinstitut für biologischen Landbau
(Research Institute of Organic Agriculture) in Switzerland (see also
Chapter 15
).
Future perspecties in designing educational programs
It would be presumptuous for anyone to believe that they could foresee the future and design
learning programs that would be appropriate for unknown conditions and challenges. But just
as it is proposed that students learn to develop their capacity for envisioning alternatives for
the future, educators must put themselves to the same task in the design of future learning
