Sustainability of Western Michigan's Food System: Farm Interview Project.

While food is readily available and affordable to most people in the U.S., few consumers understand how food is produced and what trade-offs farmers must consider when striving to make their production process more sustainable.  The purpose of the farm interview project is to enable groups of two or three students to conduct a qualitative on-farm interview on one of a wide variety of farm types, driving a discussion designed to assess a the broad sustainability of the food system.  Student groups interview one of large industrial grain or animal production enterprises, or small organic, local community supported agriculture enterprises. The interview process is initiated by the instructor gaining the acceptance of the farmer to be interviewed.  Students are provided with a set of interview questions, both fact- and feeling-finding sorts of questions that consider a broad range of sustainability dimensions.  Sustainability factors discussed include field operation, product marketing, governmental regulation, and community connectedness.  These questions are designed to help students understand what is being produced, how it is being produced, and why the farmer chooses to run the business as it is.  Following the interview, students rate the operation they visited on the three dimensions of sustainability:  environmental, economic, and community.  These ratings are supported in a written report based on their assessment and group consensus of the interview.  Each student group then presents and supports their ratings to the class.  The class as a whole is challenged to compare the ratings given for each food production type and to identify key themes enabling and those presenting barriers to the achievement of a more sustainable food system.  Student assessments of this active learning form are very positive and remark that they gain much greater appreciation of the complexity of the food production process, respect for producers, and the difficulties of making the food system more sustainable.