Experiential Learning at UD

By Christopher Miller

The Experiential Learning Stipend for Professional Development, initiated by The Office of Experiential Learning and Career Services, provides stipends of up to $300 to students who plan to attend a conference, training seminar, or workshop. The stipend gives students a valuable opportunity to advance their personal, professional, and academic goals. 

Junior political science major Rachel Carr received this stipend to attend the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association Conference a couple weeks ago. As apart of her stipend, she wrote an essay detailing everything she did at the conference. Read below to find out more from Rachel.  

"Over this past weekend, I attended the 40th Annual Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association Conference. As the organization reflected on their 40 continuous years of service, I found myself in the perfect place to learn about the political, cultural, and economic history of organic food in Ohio.

As a consumer but also as politically minded observer, I attended session on issues of worker justice, cultural roots of agriculture in America, using podcasts to leverage customer relationships, and on regional collaborations and generational transitions. Many of the challenges these organic farmers and affiliated industries face reflected greater issues in the political landscape, particularly their attention to diversity and inclusion. One of the keynote speakers of the conference, Onika Abraham, brought attention not only to the inequalities that those within the industry face but the biases in the history we tell each other about the roots of contemporary organic agriculture.

Bringing attention to the particular circumstances in Ohio, like the fact that less than 1% of farms here are owned by African Americans, Abraham used a historical context to frame the issues, including the statistic that in 1920 it was more than 14% of farms in Ohio. The impact of the political context of race on land ownership and the landscape organic farming were illuminated in her talk. On of the sessions reflecting on the history of the organization put those challenges in the specific context of the past 40 years of the organizations.

As OEFFA and organic farming continue to thrive at the intersection of sustainability, public health, and markets, the conference asked attendees to turn their attention to justice at all levels. Justice for the workers who work dangerous jobs with poor health insurance if at all; justice for the farm owners struggling to maintain ownership at prices of land so; justice for low income families that cannot afford the higher cost of organic growing; and justice for the indigenous and colonized communities from which our contemporary practices have been appropriated.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to have been able to listen to the stories of so many farmers, better understand my own history with food, and begin to understand the political context of sustainable agriculture. When I intern in Columbus this summer, I already have plans to connect with a number of the urban farmers I met."

If you are a student and would like to apply for this stipend, click here or contact Dr. Karen Velasquez at kvelasquez1@udayton.edu.