Here are student summaries of fall 2024 MCJD dialogical surveys with Willamette Valley farmers and ranchers. Click on any title for details, then return to see all titles.
Dairy and Tractors Galore
Event: Willamette Valley AgricultureInterviewer: Nora
Whom did you interview?
I spoke to Hannah who runs a Christmas tree and timber farm along with her and her husband having full time agriculture jobs on top of it. We also spoke to Roy’s wife who came from a non-agriculture background until she met Roy and became introduced to everything.
How did your EcoTypes and SDG priorities compare?Honestly, I felt that our ecotypes were still very similar, as we are people who value agriculture and our environmental focus comes from an labor and farming viewpoint. It was very interesting to hear Hannah’s perspective as someone who is a generational farmer she was able to explain more on the technology usage in modern day farming. Her insights into how technological advancements are integrated into agriculture gave me a new understanding of how farming practices are evolving. This helped me see how technology can be both a tool for efficiency and a way to improve sustainability in the industry.
What larger MCJD lessons did you learn?What I mainly realized while redoing the survey was that my perspectives did change on some things. For the question of if it is better to allow nature to flourish without human interaction or it is better to have a human constructed landscape, I always found myself leaning to a non-human place. But as we learned about Latour’s perspective on not abandoning the environment in which we created, it made me realize that I want to help maintain and preserve certain landscapes. Additionally, I also want to keep farming landscapes, but it all depends on the balance of give and take with the environment.