Planning a regional food geographies field course for University of Arizona undergraduates
A water canal west of Yuma, Arizona that carries Colorado River water to farms
As an undergraduate in College, I signed up for a four-day Geology field course to Newberry National Volcanic Monument in Oregon. That trip transformed my education and sparked the curiosity that has guided me in both my educational and professional life. As a graduate student in geography, I want to contribute to these same types of experiential education opportunities here at University of Arizona. With money from the Center for Regional Food Studies, I worked with two other graduate students to work on designing a field course for undergraduate students focused on regional food geographies of the Southwest. This support allowed me to travel on a scoping trip to Yuma, Nogales and Cochise Arizona to chart the potential path of the field course, as well as supported us as we meet with other collaborators within the Tucson region.
During 2024 I worked with other graduate students Noah Schlager and Tali Neesham-Mctieran to develop themes and goals for the field course. The course will be three days long, during which we will travel with undergraduate students around Southern Arizona, visiting different producers and learning about their role in food production, transport, and preparation. Along the way we camp, cook for ourselves and reflect as a group on how these perspectives inform what we have learned at University of Arizona. This is an opportunity to for me to give back to the University of Arizona community by contributing to a field based education experience for UA undergraduates.
Noah and Tali bring expertise in food studies to the course, while I have experience leading expedition-style field courses. As someone who is only beginning to learn about the food geographies of Arizona, I am repeatedly so impressed by the diversity of agricultural producers, interests and the unique challenges of agriculture in the desert Southwest. Producers turn both to the past through knowledge of their ancestors, and to the future through technologies and science such as agrovoltaics to adapt to the changing climate.
The challenge for the course, is that there are so many places to go and people to talk to–it is difficult to condense those experiences into a three days of visiting producers and agriculture industry stakeholders, listening, projects and of course driving. Our vision for this field course is to give students the opportunity to hear about the complexity of food systems and politics in the region directly from those who live it, and develop their critical thinking skills through reflection. In order to do this we must ensure that there are a diversity of perspectives.
While the itinerary for the field course is still far from finalized, we hope to include perspectives that operate at a variety of scales and have a variety of goals, including Indigenous farmers who are fighting for Indigenous food sovereignty, producers who rely on both Colorado River Project and groundwater, and who face complex challenges when securing water, produce importers who work through supply chains across the borderlands, ranchers, and solar providers who are considering agrovoltaic developments. With our initial scoping complete, we’re now refining the itinerary and developing partnerships and collaborators to ensure a meaningful and well-structured experience for students.
I am so grateful to the CRFS’s support in getting this field course going. I hope that it will enrich the educational experiences of students across campus who are interested in the role that food production plays in our lives. The opportunity to develop this course has been an extraordinary professional development and learning opportunity for me.
Newly planted pecan trees in front of the Cochise Mountains at sunset. Cochise Ccounty, where agriculture generally relies on groundwater, is home to the newest groundwater Active Management Area in Arizona.