Seminar week culminated on Friday with a writing assignment to help students synthesize the mass amount of material they covered in the first week and a factory field trip. Students visited the Limsakdakul Factory which primarily processes and stores grain. The factory is an example of large-scale agricultural operation in a semi-urban setting, which they’ll be able to compare and contrast with agricultural practices they see in the field.

Ajaan Abram Bixler lectures on the challenges Thai farmers currently face.

Pi Jonas teaches an ecology lesson during seminar.

Students arrive at Limsakdakul Factory.

Students investigate the mountains of grain during their factory tour.

Students learn about the factory during a meeting with the management.

Elain smiles for the camera as she climbs up to check out one of the silos.

Following the end of Foundations, students, staff, and host families gathered together for a Northern Thai themed evening filled with great food and student provided entertainment. With everyone decked out in traditional Northern Thai garb, we saw some impressive performances ranging from Thai and American songs to semi-traditional Thai dances to hula hooping and playing the recorder (at the same time!) and much more. The finale performance was a classic Thai song performed by all 31 students which they had a chance to practice with their Thai teachers over the previous week.

The evening also provided students a chance to spend one more memorable evening with their families before they got ready to leave their host families and move into apartments in Chiang Mai.

Transitioning from host families to apartments coincided with the start of the first Expedition Field Course (EFC) of the fall semester, Sustainable Food Systems with Ajaan Abram Bixler. Students received their course materials and first assignment on Friday. This first week of seminar allows students to read, discuss, and gain an understanding of the general topics before heading out to the field for the first time. Students will be split into two groups, with half starting with home stays in Mae Taa and half beginning at the Upland Holistic Development Project in Fang.

Check back soon for updates and photos of the Sustainable Food Systems course!

Students hike up the mountain on their way to Wat Doi Suthep.

Students enjoying a mid-day lunch break during their hike.

Monkia, Pi Tic, Pi Noi, Pi Toto, Janelle, Nicki, and Pi Pui strike some interesting poses before the performances start.

 

Peter hanging out with his nong chao (younger brother).

 

Alice and her host mother enjoying some food and conversation before the performances start.

Janelle and her host sister perform a fun, slightly jazzed-up version of a traditional Thai dance.

Ajaan Siton's Thai class of Casey, Meredith, Hish, Katherine, and Andrew perform a Thai song and skit.

Elaine shows impressive dexterity by hula-hooping and playing the recorder at the same time.

Nicki and Grace perform a traditional Thai dance with their host sisters.

All the students managed to fit (barely) on the stage for their finale group performance.

Ajaan Wilasanee's daughter practices the hand motions of she picked up from watching the traditional Thai dances.

Lots of people there, lots of local fresh produce, artists selling crafts, small scale crafters of food (cheese, pickles, etc.) and the local color you get from this sort of community event.

Cows doing what they should be -- eating grass (from the Three Cowgirls Facebook page).

A hi-light was talking with Michelle from Three Cowgirls 100% Grass-Fed Beef (see the on the web or Facebook).  Her family has a farm in South Dakota that is a great example of the best in sustainability — family owned, organic, sustainable, and working with animals in a humane and sustainable way.

If you’ve read Omnivore’s Dilemma or seen Food, Inc. , you’ve read about the struggle small farmers have gone through to bring real food to the table — not the over industrialized products stuffed with corn and hormones that passes for food, and is correctly identified as unsustainable and ecologically harmful.

Like Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms, Three Cowgirls practices farming as it should be — sequestering carbon in the soil and grasses, and working with the ecosystems of fields and grasses rather than against them. The beef doesn’t just taste better, but is higher in Omega 3s and is free of the hormones and other additives (including the effects of stress) that industrial animal production creates.

Here are some thoughts from Joe Salatin from Yes! Magazine:

I think we need to go back to localized diets, and in North America, yes, we can really grow perennials, so there would be a lot of herbivore—lamb, beef—in a diet. And our fruits and vegetables, which have a high water content, would be grown close to home, preferably in our backyards. In 1945, 40 percent of all vegetables consumed in the United States were grown in backyards.

I think a local diet would have an indigenous flair. If you’re along the coast, you’d eat more seafood. If you’re inland, you would eat more herbivore and vegetables. If you’re in Florida, you would eat more citrus. Historically, it’s not about the relationship of meat to vegetables or whatever. It’s more about, what does this area grow well with a minimum of inputs?

So we bought some steaks, happy to support a family farm practicing sustainable farming, and happy to have a chance to enjoy grass fed beef. Thanks Michelle!

UPDATE: The steaks were outstanding!

A core part of the course is learning about different plants and how they fit together as an agroecological system.  This is foundational to understanding how this type of farming can be more sustainable than monocropping, with emerging research showing organics tend to be healthier (due to their natural defenses kicking in), higher yields in some cases (in terms of biomass as well as food), as well as some interesting research hinting at higher rates of carbon sequestration for organic and agroecological farming over “conventional” farms (“conventional” meaning high chemical inputs on monocrops, not “conventional” as in what humanity has done for most of history).

Each year the course adapts to current needs and work being done by our village partners and the folks at the Upland Holistic Development Project. What remains year-to-year is a great  opportunity for students to learn about plants and how they fit together in creating a healthy agroecology.  Here is what it looks like:

First, using field guides student go into the fields and forests to identify plants used in agroecosystems.

Next, plants are identified and marked down in relation to other plants and physical features of the landscape.

Healthy agroecosystems (in this case an agroforest) tend to have a LOT of plant diversity.

FInally, working off of maps and field notes, the plants are identified and systems are mapped.

Several of the people in the trailer are authors we read on our courses, and this is a great fit with our course on agroecology as well as several of the other courses that link into food systems issues, such as our forests course.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield’s Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

Go to the website here for the trailer and other information: http://www.foodincmovie.com/

Any movie with a bar-coded cow has to be good.

If you see it, let us know what you think in the comments!

-Mark