Food for Thought:

A summer program in ecology and sustainable agriculture

Organic agriculture (Environmental Studies 201)

Course catalog description:

Environmental Studies 201. Organic agriculture. A study of the principles and practice of organic agriculture. Topics include the scientific and economic meanings of sustainability in agricultural systems, the ethical and spiritual dimensions of growing food and fiber, the effects of agriculture on native biodiversity, and the roles of activism, marketing, and government policy in the production and sale of organic food. Class will involve reading, writing, discussions, invited speakers, field trips, and the development and care of an organic garden. One class credit. Haskell.

Further details:

Assignments:

• essays on readings and field trips. Particular emphasis will be placed on: (i) placing the readings and field trips into the context of the general themes of the program, (ii) critical analysis of scientific and ethical arguments.
• written reports on the results of ecological experiments conducted in the garden
• group field- and library-based projects examining student-chosen themes of organic agriculture
• scientific illustrations of plant and insect morphology
• an examination testing knowledge of: (i) federal regulations governing certification of organic agriculture, (ii) plant and insect identification, (iii) cultural requirements of crop plants.

Readings (partial list):

• New Agrarianism, edited by Eric Freyfogle
• The New Organic Grower, by Eliot Coleman
• On Good Land : The Autobiography of an Urban Farm, by Michael Ableman
• Living at Nature's Pace: Farming and the American Dream, by Gene Logsdon
• Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural, by Wendell Berry
• Readings from:
  • Alternative Agriculture, National Research Council
  • Saving the planet with pesticides and plastic, 2nd ed., by Dennis Avery, Hudson Institute
  • The pesticide question: environment, economics, and ethics, edited by D. Pimentel and H. Lehman
• Papers from the primary literature, the review literature, and newspapers.

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