Laura Lengnick, PhD, Director, Sustainable Agriculture Program, Department of Environmental Studies, Warren Wilson College, Asheville, NC

Sustainable Agriculture at Warren Wilson College: Cultivating Leadership for Sustainable Food Systems

Warren Wilson College has a long and vibrant history as an educational institution emphasizing liberal arts learning for the common good through the integration of academics, work and service. Sustainable Agriculture at Warren Wilson draws on this wealth of resources to offer students a diversity of opportunities to apply sustainability concepts learned in the classroom to our campus and beyond. Established in 1994 as a concentration within the Environmental Studies major, the Sustainable Agriculture program supports student achievement of specific sustainability education outcomes through an integrated, interdisciplinary curriculum featuring socio-economics, community organizing, systems thinking, agro-ecology, and adaptive management. Sustainable agriculture students at Warren Wilson College learn how to plan, operate and manage a sustainable farm, but along the way, and equally important, they learn the skills, values and attitudes required to be innovative leaders in community change for sustainability. Successful examples of this experiential liberal arts approach to sustainable agriculture education include the recent adoption of a campus Sustainable Dining Policy inspired by a Life-Cycle Analysis of the top ten foods consumed in the campus cafeteria; the use of the Holistic Goal, an adaptive management strategy, by Student Life; the development of a Whole Farm Plan by the campus farm; and many national firsts by our students and graduates: the first state accredited high school program of study in sustainable agriculture, the first land-less community supported agriculture program, the first campus Energy Descent Action Plan, the first Youth Food Policy Council, and the first global sustainable agriculture information website written for and by farmers.