Program outcomes on the Evergreen Organic Farm: An evaluation of nearly two decades of the practice of sustainable agriculture & the practice of organic farming programs at The Evergreen State College by Connor Xavier Murphy
This thesis paper details the model and results of a survey distributed to past and present students taking the Practice of Organic Farming/Practices for Sustainable Agriculture, distributed by Evergreen’s Office of Institutional Research and Assessment (OIRA). Reading the entire paper didn’t feel relevant to my ILC, but after skimming through, searching some key terms, and reading over the table of contents, I selected a few sections from Chapter 3 for context on the survey itself, as well as all of Chapters 4 and 5 which summarize and discuss the results of the survey.
The survey itself asked questions about participants’ experience in and feedback for the POF/PSA program, current industry of employment, personal gardens and food production projects, and personal and working sustainable agriculture practices. It was distributed via email to students who had participated in the program between 2002 and 2021 as part of Connor Xavier Murphys’ Masters in Environmental Studies thesis at Evergreen. After the connections I have made in the past few weeks I was excited to find an Evergreen-focused example of integrating food systems and access into the classroom, especially one that evaluates longer-term impacts.
One of the focuses of the survey was the participants continued level of involvement in the food system. Murphys’ survey showed that 75.4% of respondents worked in farming or gardening after the conclusion of the class and 47.7% held a leadership role. Employment on a farm or garden was not the only measure of involvement in the food system, data collection included involvement in gardening for personal or volunteer purposes.
“Every single respondent indicated, at minimum, a personal level of involvement in the food system. This personal involvement took the shape for some of maintaining a home garden or purchasing food from local growers, for some it involved educating friends and neighbors about sustainable agriculture, and for others it took the shape of political and financial support of groups working to advance sustainable agriculture and food justice goals.”
While a student entering a farming program may be more likely to participate in these kinds of activities than the average student, the classroom integration of food systems correlation to a 100% involvement rate cannot be overlooked. Not only has participation in this program provided education on food systems and community connection in agriculture, but it has also provided continued education and benefits to others in and out of the Evergreen and Olympia community as Amlunmi continue to apply and teach class practices. When highlighting work in food system leadership, survey data showed that 41% of participants had initiated or participated in the creation of a food systems job, further demonstrating the reach of these benefits.
I appreciated that Murphy allowed space for students to give feedback on the farming program, providing valuable insights to where a program like this may or may not be best suited for student needs. In years prior to the report community-based activities in the program had been scaled back dramatically from past years, these included things such as weekly potlucks and extended field trips. This was in part due to students’ ever-increasing need to consolidate their time so as to work or meet family commitments while they are in school, and in part due to a faculty disconnect on why these activities were so necessary to learning.
“These moments of tantamount importance to many students took place between and around the more formal course elements of lectures, labs, and farm visits. Yet, these connections between students, faculty, and staff were responsible for some of the most profound moments that respondents shared. In the modern academic environment, it is becoming more and more difficult to create space for these moments. Students have increasing demands for their time and institutions are ceaselessly wary of liability and they risks inherent in communal living and working.”
Lending time for these activities within academic time is crucial to integrating the feeling of belonging that was talked about in my readings from last week, potlucks especially are the perfect metaphor for creating that sense of trust within a community. While I acknowledge the challenges that come with these activities, community eating and food sharing is necessary, and putting time and funding into supporting these events both in programs and for the greater community should be a priority for the greater Evergreen administration. Murphy put it well in saying “The idea of a community of practice –often touted at Evergreen – is one that is easy to contemplate and imagine, but is often complicated to operationalize.” Community-based learning requires the school to take a community-based operation style.
I want to close my thoughts on Murphys’ paper with this quote I really enjoyed:
“The current moment requires a much larger group of educated food citizens. As one of humanity’s principal activities, agriculture is a primary contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions (Barlett, 2011). The path to change requires more and more people to understand where their food comes from and how it might be produced in a sustainable fashion. Even better, large numbers of citizens could be empowered through an understanding of producing even a small portion of their own food. The generation of Greta Thunberg is coming of age and entering colleges and universities – they will continue to demand access to hands-on agricultural education.”
This week I also started writing my final document which has a working title of “Hungry Greeners: Findings on College Hunger Through Digital Reading and Suggestions for Creation and Re-enforcement of Anti-hunger Infrastructure at the Evergreen State College”. It is still very much a draft but I wanted to share the section on my definition of effective anti-hunger infrastructure.
“To best explore and evaluate anti-hunger infrastructure I must first define what it is. By definition infrastructure refers to the physical and organizational needs for successful operation of something. That something can be tangible or not, but most anything requires a physical infrastructure of some kind, even just for storage or record keeping. When I discuss anti-hunger infrastructure I refer to the social programs, projects, and food systems that allow people to access food. This may be direct access to food such as a food bank or indirect access through resources and support such as SNAP workshops.
The infrastructure of social systems within anti-hunger infrastructure is equally as important as the physical infrastructure of the distribution, it is key that we explore the social and community aspects that influence a students ability to access what is already available and what could be created. Throughout my readings I found many references to a student’s sense of belonging within their student body and its effect on a students willingness to seek out the help they need. Students who are afraid of being labeled “poor” or otherwise seen as in need are less likely to use available services, pushing off their physical needs out of fear. (Food Insecurity at Urban Universities Perspectives during the COVID-19 Pandemic, 2021) Because of this, we cannot simply end the idea of anti-hunger infrastructure the functionality of the projects.
Effective anti-hunger infrastructure not only aims to create accessible food systems but also to de-stigmatize the conversation around hunger and human needs. The development of accessible and student-focused food security systems should be done in tandem with projects of community awareness and demonstrations of compassion. Anti-hunger infrastructure is focused not on the availability of free food but on the food security and hunger mindset of a community. “
I wrote this before I did my second reading, and it will defiantly see some changes. My second reading was “Social infrastructure and the public life of cities: Studying urban sociality and public spaces” by Alan Latham and Jack Layton. I chose this to further my understanding of infrastructure as it applies outside of food security projects and to strengthen my own definition of anti-hunger infrastructure.
Latham and Layton open by questioning what it is that makes a good city, highlighting Eric Klinenberg as a key inspiration for their research stating “A key dimension of a good city is its collective public character. In Palaces for the People, the sociologist Eric Klinenberg (2018) makes the argument that a whole range of physical and institutional infrastructures are crucial for the development and maintenance of social connections. This is an argument for social infrastructure.”
Since I am pursuing community connection and institutionalized trust as a key tenant of anti-hunger infrastructure, I was really excited to find something that explored how community infrastructure as a broader affected social connections, and by proxy human well-being. The paper is split into four sections, the first being Infrastructure, Social Infrastructure, and How to Study It. Latham and Layton once again pull from Klineberg to begin building a definition of social infrastructure, highlighting a quote from Klineberg that addresses different constructions and spaces that are a part of community infrastructure, showing how both sidewalks and churches fit into this category. Human connection in multiple forms.
“In developing the term social infrastructure, Klinenberg is building on and connecting with earlier writers such as Putnam (2000), who talked of a society’s “civic infrastructure” being nurtured by informal social networks, and Oldenberg’s (1989) work on “inclusively sociable” spaces like restaurants, diners, hair salons, cafes, and stores for building trust and community. This work itself connected with a long—particularly American—tradition of ethnographic work on neighbourhood and community life (Cavan, 1966; Gans, 1962; Jacobs, 1961; Liebow, 1967)”
I enjoyed the end of the section, where they are discussing the relational and “transparent” elements of social infrastructure using the example of libraries. They break down some of the properties of infrastructure that make up libraries, that they are “built on an existing base” meaning that book lending is well established, also that they are “fixed in modular increments” and that their purpose must be shifted slowly to mirror their complexity. When discussing the progression and social infrastructure of libraries Latham and Layton also write:
“As the world has become increasingly digital, libraries have had to provide new kinds of facilities for people working, studying, and reading. Infrastructures also involve the “embodiment of standards.” They work because they are able to draw on existing standardised ways of carrying out functions and designing components.”
This very much made me think of Skim, Dive, Surface by Jenea Cohn, especially this quote from the introduction of the Dive portion of the book:
“When we say that reading can only happen in certain spaces at certain times, we’re ignoring all of the students who can’t read in those spaces at those times. These concerns bring the key tension of teaching reading directly to the fore: we know that reading well is important to understanding knowledge, but if we don’t know exactly how to delimit what reading is, then what teaching reading well looks like can feel slippery and hard to delimit.”
In what ways is our current social infrastructure limiting when and where people can access food? How can anti-hunger infrastructure work within the greater concept of social infrastructure to become a widespread practice? What kinds of anti-hunger infrastructure projects are easily incorporated into wider social infrastructure?
The next section “An Infrastructural Approach to Public Life” explores social infrastructure as affects people engaging with people. Public life is defined both as the idea of being around other people but also addressing and conversing with them, and this is used to reinforce the element of community trust that is required for the success for these spaces.
“The concept of social infrastructure helps us think about the public dimensions of urban life, not least in how it orientates us to how the sociality which is entwined with publicness takes place in certain places and facilities. This publicness includes ideas of encounter (Wilson, 2017), but it is also about the ways communities are built, trust developed, cooperation achieved, and friendships made.”
Much of this section feels almost like a call to action, claiming that the sociability of these spaces is key to their successful contributions and therefore sociability and conversation must be included in their creation. They end the section bystating “developing the concept of social infrastructure draws attention to a whole range of often overlooked and underappreciated urban spaces—and all sorts of overlooked and underappreciated practices.”, meaning that community collaboration on these spaces could unlock more potential community resources.
The third section “The Spaces and Socialities of Social Infrastructure” focuses mainly on the ways in which social infrastructure encourages person-to-person engagement, bridges divides between communities, and provides important cultural spaces and connections. Early in the section Latham and Layton write “Public institutions that are provided publicly and designed as facilities for the general public are an important aspect of a city’s social infrastructure, and, unsurprisingly, they have been the focus of much work. Most obviously, these involve places that are explicitly conceived and designed for the public to meet.” This made me think about the digital commons and our city or town commons. How can we utilize the accessibility and collaborative nature of the digital commons to support anti-hunger infrastructure?
Latham and Layton also discuss beneficial and often lacking infrastructure in underserved communities, and the place of business and commercialism in social infrastructure.
“social infrastructure can be an important resource for the economically or socially marginalized. This relates to the work that recognises the ways the liveliness of certain streets and sidewalks connects with shops and similar commercial activity (Hubbard & Lyon, 2018; Klinenberg, 2002). There is also value to be found in the light sociality that can be found in other commercial settings: places like cafes and coffee houses (Henriksen & Tjora, 2018; Latham, 2003; Laurier & Philo, 2006a, 2006b; Puel & Fernandez, 2012), restaurants both fast and slow (Jones et al., 2015; Kärrholm, 2008), bars (Latham, 2005; Lugosi, Bell, & Lugosi, 2010), and social clubs (Conradson, 2003). Commercial spaces designed for particular social groups (such as the LGBTQ+ community) have been important locations for “community life, welfare and wellbeing” (Campkin & Marshall, 2017; p. 4; Taylor & Falconer, 2015; Chauncey, 1994).”
They discuss how these spaces while commercial still provide wanted services and public character to cities, demonstrating an overall deficit in cities that lack community spaces or commercial hubs. These spaces dictate what a resident can eat and purchase, therefore influencing their diet. How can social infrastructure be used not just to distribute and educate but also to improve food citizenship as a whole? How much does social infrastructure impact our quality of life?
The final section was entitled “Towards a Politics of Provision”, and it summarizes the main arguments from each of the previous section before making an argument for “the provision of social infrastructure” and “the need to study the politics involved with the provision of social infrastructure”. I understand provisions as she uses it here to mean the parameters of what social infrastructure offers, but I wish I could ask them to define it for me another way. Within this evaluation, they identify six “dimensions to the provision of social infrastructure that can make it more or less successful.” These are abundance (social surplus), diversity of functionality, maintenance, accessibility, responsiveness to needs and feedback, and an ethos of democratic living.
Each of these elements are applicable to the successful creation and upkeep of strong anti-hunger infrastructure, as well as the integration of digitized learning and online commons. The politics of provision seems to be the human needs-based elements that separate base functionality of a city from a community that thrives. I am curious to see if there is more stuff I can find on the idea of social surplus.
I will be uploading what I have for my final document, I spent a lot of time on it this week but it is defiantly not complete and I am excited to keep writing and make edits with the work from this week. I was really excited to get to read sections from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer but I cannot find my copy anywhere. If I am able to source it online I will be reading some stories from there next week along with some sections from Skim, Dive, Surface, and I will be uploading my final writing.