Sterling College - Sustainable Agriculture

Sterling College is a small progressive college in Craftsbury in Northern Vermont with a strong emphasis on experiential learning. The college is a work college, meaning that students live on campus and have many chores in the daily maintenance and administration of the college. The 80 hours of chores per semester are mostly spend in the kitchen, custodial and on the farm.

The roughly 100 students are in one of three fields of study: outdoor leadership and education, conservation ecology and sustainable agriculture. Sustainable agriculture has enjoyed a healthy growth and is now the strongest major in terms of student numbers. Any student graduating from the Sterling sustainable ag program needs to show competency in vegetable production, livestock management, woodlot management and draft horse handling. However, to accommodate divergent interest/student cultures and to create more depth in a field of interes, students now have to choose either an animal, crop or food systems track.

A garden/field area and an animal farm provide learning opportunities for students and fresh, local food for the college kitchen. The number and type of animals on the farm depend on student educational and food needs but at the time of my visit included draft horses, heifers, ducks, chicken, goats, pigs, rabbits, and turkeys. I saw goats used for weed management, pigs tilling the soil, turkeys and rabbits contributing to soil fertility, and chicken used for meats and eggs. I was also able to briefly attend a basic draft horse training lab. Draft horses play an important role in small wood lot management (and most New England farms have woodlots). They also are used in quiet a few small scale sustainable crop production operations.

Vegetable and other plant production is practiced in a small hand-cultivated area (1/4 ac) which has a few greens but over the years has been being transformed more and more into a perennial forest garden planted with various shrubs and trees. Another two acres of field area are horse-cultivated and planted with various crops such as leeks, greens and brassicas. Rotational grazing turkeys and rabbits in movable houses were providing necessary weed control and soil fertility after crop harvest on those fields. Two unheated greenhouses provide some opportunity for year-round crop production, but in climate zone 3 only the soil in the very center of the greenhouse stays unfrozen during the winter months.. To gain experience in direct marketing, garden students operate a 12 member CSA for Sterling College staff.

The kitchen plays on integral part in fulfilling the college’s sustainability mission. 15 years ago began a transition from a traditional college diet and commercial supply of food to a situation without soda/juice machines and 3 healthy, local meals daily for students and staff. For the reduced number of students and staff in the summer, 90% of the produce needs are from the college garden, during the remainder of academic year it is somewhere in 20-30% range. The other food comes from local distributors who sell local foods. Many students work in the kitchen as part of the work chores anyway but soon, some will gain a much deeper understanding of the food system. The college just hired a new kitchen manager, who will also develop a sustainable food systems curriculum. She brings a wealth of experience from her food systems studies at Tuffs University and her previous job where she connected growers and restaurant owners.

The sustainable agriculture program at Sterling College has numerous strengths. Topping my list are the focus on hands on learning; the integration of crop-animal-wood lot-, and soon the new, food systems curriculum; the year-round course offerings (2 short summer semesters), dedicated faculty and the location. Sterling College is situated in a regional hotspot for the local food movement. There are many small sustainable farms that market directly to consumers; there are several local food processors in immediate vicinity (tofu factory, local cheese makers, etc.); and related organizations such Center of Agricultural Economy, and the High Fields Center of Composting . Even a book has been written about the local food movement in the town of Hardwick (just few miles down the road from Sterling College): The Town that Food Saved – How one community found Vitality in Local Food.

Just like any other program, this one also has some weaknesses. The first one regarding college life is the small number of students. With only 100 students, most of them of a similar young age group and same ethnicity there is little exposure to different viewpoints and ways of doing things. On a curriculum level, I feel that the students could benefit from a stronger grounding in business and entrepreneurship, especially if they would go into farm production. Maybe another weakness is the limited capital resources that the college has to invest in up-to-date equipment and buildings (on the other hand this situation mirrors what most small farmers would find for themselves when starting a business).

I am grateful to Allison, Ann, Brandon, Corie and Charlotte who met with me to make this a great visit.