[TheUWfarm] SP 2010 Agroecology Seminar and nurturing diversity in the UWFarm

Dear Farmers, Friends, and Colleagues:

I want to ask for your assistance in circulating, sharing, and posting this course announcement for SP 2010 quarter for ANTH 488: Agroecology. Below is the official catalog course description followed by the course registration info for next quarter. Given "Great Recession" budgetary constraints, the survival of courses like this may very well depend on meeting enrollment limits, so I ask you to do your share to help me recruit 30 students for next quarter.

ANTH 488 Agroecology (5) I&S Pena

Cross-cultural survey of agroecological research methods, theoretical problems, policy issues, and ethical debates. Local knowledge and ethnoscientific bases of alternative agriculture. Comparative political ecology of agroecosystems with a focus on indicators of social equity and ecological sustainability.

ANTH   488  AGROECOLOGY

(I&S)

Restr 10282 A 5    MW   330-520  MEB 245   PENA,DEVON G        Open   0/ 30           

I have been teaching this class since 1999 and I have a set of projects in mind for 2010 that I would like to share with everyone. Three ideas I am contemplating as a focus for next quarter's version of 488:

(1)  In recent discussions within the Food IGERT, it has been brought to my attention that the UWFarm is eager to start work on nurturing diversity across membership, crops, and networks. I propose that we use 488 as a process through which we can do several applied projects with, for e.g., MEChA-UW, El Centro de La Raza, Casa Latina, Marra Farm, P-Patch, advocates of the Native American UW Longhouse, and a select group of peri-urban CSAs, to strengthen links across and to nurture these varied forms of diversity. I can approach the board of The Acequia Insitute about fundng a small grant for this effort if there is a need.

(2) One aspect of the applied project would be to initiate planning and collecting for a "Seed Savers Memory Bank" that focuses not just on Puget Sound native and "naturalized" bioregional varieties but also on those of the Mesoamerican Diaspora that have been recently adapted to place and indeed may no longer be cultivated in the origin communities in Mexico and Central America. We may be the last chance for the preservaton of varieties from thousands of years of human stewardship of plant genetic resources, ironically by identifying, collecting, and protecting these "out-of-place" native land races. 

(3) Finally, I was hoping we could start the development of a Mesoamerican plant diversity home kitchen garden space that would be linked to the preservation of seeds/starters/other germplasm collected from Native American and Mesoamerican Diasapora sources in the Puget Sound bioregion.

I welcome suggestions on how I might integrate these ideas into the teaching of agroecology next quarter, but more importantly I hope this proposal provokes discussion of the need for Native and Diaspora students to become more active and dedicated to the nurturing of diversity of the UWFarm as a horticultural space, community of practice, and activist network focused on local, slow, and deep food movements.

I look forward to hearing from you all.    Devon