Student Farmers elevate Student Farming in California

GREENandSAVE Staff

Posted on Friday 10th June 2022
Student Farming

Our GREENandSAVE Staff is pleased to inform our members and readers about organizations that are helping to promote sustainability. If you would like us to profile your organization please Contact Us.

Student Farmers is actively looking to recruit a student ambassador in California, as well as farm mentors in California that can help guide students. Overall, student farming is a great way to reduce the distance from farm to table and increase health for students as well as their parents.

Here is an overview on Student Farmers 

Student Farmers is a growing group of students who are committed to in-home and in-school sustainable farming as a means to promote physical fitness and environmental stewardship.

Our Mission: To improve health and nutrition education, combat the challenges of climate change, and support each other in generating some revenue to help pay for college.

Our Vision: To increase knowledge about the advantages of eating more heathy and locally grown vegetables across the range of high school and college age students. We also hope that many of the parents of the students will learn from their children’s engagement in our organization and adopt a diet with less processed foods to reduce the growing cost of healthcare. 

Here is an example of an agriculture education program in California:

Student farming takes root

Student interest in sustainable agriculture is surging at colleges across the country.

Why?

Mark Van Horn, director of the UC Davis Student Farm, offers his insights in an interview with UC Food Observer.

Van Horn has seen interest ebb and flow during his three decades at the student farm. A founding member of the Sustainable Agriculture Education Association, Van Horn helped organize the sustainable agriculture and food systems major at UC Davis and has been active in the UC Global Food Initiative, co-authoring an experiential learning report.

“Much of the increased interest is from young people who didn’t grow up in agriculture,” said Van Horn, who recently received the Sustainable Agriculture Education Association’s on-farm educator award named in his honor. “Some are coming from a point of view that there are a lot of problems in the world. Many of the problems they see are related to the fact that many of the things they rely on are produced in ways that are harmful to the environment and to people. They want to break out of buying things that are produced that way. They think, ‘I can’t make things: I can’t make my own car, can’t make my own shoes, but maybe I can grow my own food.’

“This is sometimes the spark. They then might think, ‘I can learn to grow food in a better way, not only for myself, but as a career,’ or, ‘I don’t actually want to farm, but I can have a career that somehow contributes to making a better food system.’”

 

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