Re: Sust. ag in education

Rob Fetter (trf@student.umass.edu)
Tue, 03 Nov 1998 15:22:11 -0500 (EST)

I can only speak from my experience: taking agricultural, agribusiness
and natural resource economics here at the University of Massachusetts.
I'm continually impressed with the awareness of sustainable agriculture
issues here: although not everyone knows much about organics, most
everyone has heard of it, and at least one person in this department has
published several articles about the economics of organics.

It's not "perfect" - I still get frustrated at times with the paradigm
which I perceive as informing arguments for "economic efficiency" at the
cost of things which aren't valued in markets, like preserving local land
in agriculture - but I'm young yet, and idealistic; I haven't been
bludgeoned into cooperation by the weight of economic theory.

I can't speak to our Plant and Soil Sciences department, although it does
provide a concentration (within the undergraduate degree) in Sustainable
Agriculture.

So perhaps UMass is one bright light in the sust-ag-higher-ed picture.
It's my perception - studying here, reading sanet, and finding articles on
organics in journals more and more frequently - that sust-ag is spreading
quickly in the academic world. Perhaps if I weren't at UMass, I'd have a
very different perception.

Rob

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
T. Robert Fetter trf@student.umass.edu
Research Assistant "We are each poets and painters,
Ag. & Resource Economics bricklayers and revolutionaries.
U. of Mass - Amherst But we are all mapmakers..."
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