It blows your mind to see things like black pepper or cloves planted in the shade of teak trees, with a patch of cassava and corn right next to it. Even the rice fields have ducks eating pests like snails, or sheep grazing on the terraces,” said Krista Jacobsen, UK College of Agriculture assistant professor. This diversity and “fascinating web of organisms woven together” was what Jacobsen and other UK ag faculty saw as they toured farms in Indonesia this summer, part of a new program in the College of Agriculture.
UK College of Agriculture’s ties with Indonesia go back to the 1950s, when the late Professor Howard Beers promoted student-faculty exchanges. Now those connections are being strengthened, part of an effort to ensure that UK’s agriculture students learn about global agriculture.
Agriculture and the food industry are highly globalized, with American companies buying, selling and producing crops in many other countries. That trend also involves Kentucky.
“About one third of the state’s agricultural production is exported,” said College of Agriculture Dean M. Scott Smith. “Despite losing rough $1 billion of tobacco and equine sales [over the last decade], farm gate receipts have increased by about $2 billion.”
Another reason for UK’s agricultural students to take an international focus is their own financial security. U.S. students who learn about agriculture on a worldwide scale are much better prepared for the job market.
“Industry is not getting enough people with both understanding about and skills in the global economy,” said Keiko Tanaka, a UK agriculture associate professor who also serves as director of the UK Asia Center.
“The more we can prepare future students of agriculture to be global citizens who understand the common problems that exist in a different context, the better future problem-solvers they are going to be,” Jacobsen said.
Working with other UK agriculture professors, Tanaka has developed a three-year project on global agriculture and food. UK faculty members involved with the project include Mark Williams (horticulture), Kris Ricketts (community and leadership development), and Carol Hanley (cooperative extension).
Five other College of Agriculture faculty members each developed a relevant online learning module.
Their diverse topics included: Regulations and Certification in International Trade (Michael Reed, agriculture economics); sustainable agriculture and resource management (Krista Jacobsen, horticulture); world hunger and food justice (Janet Tietyen Mullins, nutrition and food sciences); local community development (Alison Davis, agricultural economics); and food safety and health (Michael Goodin, plant pathology).
In the project’s just-ended second year, those faculty members have incorporated their modules into a professional development program. It’s designed for agricultural education teachers and community agricultural educators such as Tracy Poff and Rebecca Russell.
Poff and Russell teach at Locust Trace AgriScience Farm, a part of Fayette County Public Schools. They joined the UK College of Agriculture group on its recent study trip to Indonesia. Faculty from the University of Lampung hosted the UK group and arranged tours to farms and related sites.
Poff said that many things she has told students came not from what she had learned firsthand, but from what she had read about someone else’s experiences. Now that has changed.
“To see rice farms or to walk on a pineapple plantation or go and help harvest coffee beans — to have that experience and know what it looks like and what it smells like and what the people are like ... to be able to share with my students is just so invaluable,” she explained.
When the UK group toured Green Giant’s vast pineapple plantation, Russell discovered “they plant all the pineapples by hand. We’re talking tens of thousands of acres. I was shocked to hear that,” she said.
In the summer of 2013, some UK agriculture students will visit Indonesia with Jacobsen and take her Tropical Agroecology and Sustainable Development course. Other UK students will travel to Japan for a course titled Global Food, Local Agriculture: Challenges for Rural Japan, with Tanaka.
“Faculty-led study trips are nothing new; We have sustained a student exchange with a university in Dijon, France, since 1991,” Smith said, but noted that the number of trips is at a record high, with six organized groups of up to 14 students studying abroad this summer.
Even students who don’t get to travel benefit from the project’s work. Jacobsen said she can “incorporate real-world examples of international issues in agriculture for my classes. The nice thing about having taken the trip and worked on the module is that the photos and stories give me personalized examples from other parts of the world and has helped me incorporate more international content into my classes.”
She added, “I have examples of global issues in agriculture for my Introduction to Sustainable Agriculture course, and more concrete production information for my Plant Production Systems class related to rice and coffee production.”
Tanaka predicted that the College of Agriculture’s connections with Asia “will definitely grow in the next five years. Within COA so many faculty members have been carrying out collaborative research projects in Asia, including China, India, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, etc.”
The College of Agriculture has established a working group for international programs. Tanaka said its purpose is “to develop a more strategic approach to internationalizing research, outreach, and instructional portfolios.”