The Senior Applied Research Project (SARP) takes all Sterling students through an academic and personal journey to create a paper, applied research project, and presentation that is the end result of 15 credits of study. The project is a collaborative venture that requires students to work with a committee of professors, their academic advisor, and a sponsoring organization outside of the Sterling community.
These days, Johanna finds herself somewhere in the middle of this process. Johanna’s project sponsor is Rural Vermont, which is a nonprofit farm advocacy group that represents those who are opposed to corporate industrial agriculture. She has been working with Rural Vermont to create a new bill to be submitted to the Vermont Legislature. They hope this bill will expand the current regulations that govern the sale and production of farm fresh or “raw” milk.
“This project sort of fell into my lap” she quips. “I spoke to Amy Shollenburger, the director of Rural Vermont at the Grass Farmers conference last year, and they offered me the opportunity to work on an agricultural policy project. And I took it.” Johanna’s role in the project has been to write the new safety standards that will be incorporated into the bill. She has approached this task in a very humble and rational way: she talks to farmers. “We wanted to create the standards based on what practices Farmers already had in place to ensure the safety and health of the milk. My goal is to create standards that truly represent farmers and having their input is the only way to accomplish that.”
Johanna has spent a lot of time this year traveling around Vermont visiting farms. She has interviewed a number of organic and conventional diary farms to uncover the details of how each farm manages their animals and their product. From this broad survey Johanna is extracting all of the best practices farmers are currently using in order to draft the standards that will be in the bill.
“I was so grateful that my animal science professor, Louise Calderwood, had us learn about conventional farming practices. It provided me with an understanding of the dairy industry which enabled me to see what factors affect the decision making process of dairy farmers and what challenges these farmers are faced with. Gaining this foundation of understanding allowed me to ‘talk the talk’ with farmers and also be empathetic to their situation.”
Johanna has already begun to reflect on her experiences with this project. “It’s so important for farmers to understand and be aware of the politics that affect farming. But it’s really hard to work in agricultural policy and actually farm at the same time” she says with a hint of both disappointment and relief. “I’m not sure if I want to work in agriculture solely on the policy level, and that is why it’s important that farmers support organizations that can advocate for them.”
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