- My STEP signature project was traveling to Panama with the College of Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Sciences to look at Panama’s sustainable agricultural practices. During this time, we meet up with local farmers and toured their farms, we went to a variety of plant and animal farms (most were a combination) and asked the farmers about their operations.
- During my STEP Signature Project, my assumptions of how farmers farm completely flipped on its head. I am a member of the College of Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Sciences, so it is safe to say I have a good understanding of what it means to be a farmer. In America, we usually have one crop in a certain section and another crop in a completely separate section, a practiced deemed “monoculture” is one we all know too well. In Panama, it is the complete opposite, there’s an abundance of crops and plants all growing together in a harmonious mixture, the farmers know every plants spot and how each plant can help benefit the people or animals using the land. Watching every plant you could think of working together on the land they were given was utterly refreshing. When we parted each farm, the farmers heeded us with a word of advice, we have to leave the world better than we found it, and the only way we can do that is by starting from the ground up with sustainable farming.
My favorite part of this trip was being able to tour each of the farmers properties, eat the fruit (or check out the animals) and ask them about their day to day lives in Panama. I loved being able to individualize each place we went to, the tours we took were truly one of a kind, the farmers weren’t used to having tours, let alone students, so the experiences we had were raw and unscripted. I don’t know if I would have it any other way. We drove up to a hill top range and ate the freshest pineapples I’ve ever had, we went into the mountains and had coffee from plants our farmer pointed out on our tour, I bought my parents salsa and turmeric straight from the source, it truly doesn’t get any more farm to table than that. The events and interactions help reinforce my feelings towards Panama: this is a place that truly cares about going good by the earth.
While also in Panama, I grew very close with the group of 10 other students that came, we were all in a class that meet twice a week a whole semester before the trip, but we never got to truly know each other. As soon as we set foot in Panama we immediately became an inseparable group, by the end of the trip we were bringing tables together so we could all eat as a group for dinner. On our final day, we all took turns sharing what our favorite part of the trip was and what we learned from our time here. Listening to what everyone else thought of Panama rang similar to what I thought, the farmers cared so much for the land they had and were committed to doing better, they created a strong community among each other and wanted each other to succeed instead of dragging each other down.
Finally, we wrote journals at the end of each day to reflect on our experience of the farms and how we felt about them. The prompts were very basic and didn’t change from day to day, but having extra time to process all of what we have done helped to solidify the day. I wrote about how I felt doing a certain activity for the day, how it made me uncomfortable or challenged and how I overcame these feelings, and a lesson I learned from the day, simple tasks with big implications. Being able to reiterate and remember what I had done and how it made me feel also helped me to further develop my contradictions between United States agriculture versus Panamanian agriculture. And to realize how in tune the Panamanian farmers are with the land around it and how to use it to its fullest potential.
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As an animal science major, this transformation was valuable to me because of its application. Seeing how the farmers wanted to plant fruits and veggies to boost the cows diet and nutritional content was new to me. In America, we fill the diet full of minerals and vitamins in a powder and feed it with grain to ensure the animals get all of their nutrients. In Panama, we met a farmer who is making “living fences” meaning that in between each fence post she is planting some type of fruit or nut tree, not for her own benefit but for the cows, who will eventually eat the fallen fruits and nuts for their own enrichment and nutritional needs. We Americans feel the need to fence off or tear down every tree in the pasture and we tend to see them as a nuisance not an aid. Learning about this has provided me the opportunity to educate more animal scientists and farmers alike that there are benefits besides shade to having trees on your land, I feel like we tend to have a more selfish point of view as trees equal more work.
As a regular American consumer, this transformation was valuable because of my new found experiences with farm to table. When we say farm to table in America it usually means picking some veggies from the garden and making them into your next salad, which don’t get me wrong I love doing that, but this is no where near on the scale of what we saw in Panama. Their farm to table included full and intricate meals, every ingredient came from their land. We met a chicken farmer and had San Cocho (traditional Panamanian soup) and the farmer even used one of his own chickens in the soup for us, In America, a chicken farmer would most likely consider that to be too much of an economic loss for someone to do that for us. They have a more laid back community approach to everything, they will go so far out of their way to help us learn and engage.