Sustainable Agriculture, Building Regenerative and Resilient Communities
Course Description
Summary
Climate change, poverty, and food access are all compelling and urgent issues confronting our society. Growing local food is one significant way we can respond. Having received the Bennington Fair Food Initiative Grant with the mission to develop educational training programs in agriculture/food system workforce development and to create small business, this class will be practice based learning in regenerative agricultural practices and the creation of sustainable food systems. The course will combine hands-on learning at the farm with classroom work to gain knowledge on how to create and develop a project. We will do a broad overview of project management, writing a mission statement, creating a budget, how to work collaboratively, marketing and grant writing. We will use the farm as material, learning about organic farm production, processing, flowers, beekeeping, medicinal herbs, and cider-pressing. All students will be expected to develop and design a project.
Learning Outcomes
- Become familiar with gardening/agriculture as a facet of community food resilience.
Learn the process of organic, small scale vegetable farming through hands-on learning at the Purple Carrot Farm.
A deeper understanding of small-scale farm management and entrepreneurial skills.
Cross List
- Environment