Reflecting
on our coursework and excursions, I was lucky to have encountered so
many inspiring presentations that are relevant to my interests and
future career, and this program has helped me hone in on what
specifically I would like to pursue. I knew I was interested in land
management, but now I am fired up to learn more about agro-ecology and
integrated agricultural practices!
Our
first week we took an excursion to ILVO – the Institute for
Agricultural and Fisheries Research – and I did not want to leave. We
knew from previous lectures that genetically modified crops were largely
not grown in the EU, which means they rely on good agricultural
management and plant breeding to increase yield. At ILVO, people were
working on both kinds of projects and with a variety of plants –
ornamentals, food crops, and green manure (which I find fascinating!).
There were studies going on in the greenhouse, and larger field tests
going on out of doors, including one which was studying different plant
varieties in simulated drought conditions. I loved that the researchers
there were working both in the lab and in the field and also that they were eager to share their findings with Flanders and the world at large.
Before
returning back to the states, I stopped for a few days in Amsterdam
with one of my classmates. We took a train from Ghent (several trains
actually, thanks to the Brussels labor strikes at the train station) and
got to see even more of the country side and those beefy Belgian blues.
I was very pleasantly surprised when we passed a village of tiny
houses. They were set up like a small-scale suburbia, each with their
own little garden, but I assume few of them had cars. I saw very bright
colored homes and funny-shaped ones and several with solar panels. That
seems like a very sustainable solution. One of the aspects of Ghent that
we saw carried over to Amsterdam was the prevalence of biking as the
primary mode of transportation.
It
is very noticeable at first glance that Belgium is being more
sustainable than the US with their vast public transit networks and the
prevalence of biking and walking compared with America’s automobile
centric transportations systems. Another thing you notice is the
abundance of photovoltaic cells on Belgian homes, even in rural
communities, where it is a novelty in the US to see anyone with solar
panels. But if I learned anything in my Foundations of Sustainability
class, it is to think of the unintended consequences and to step back
and look at the bigger picture. Europe is much more densely populated
than America, and they pay much higher taxes to support things like
public transit. The difference in public transit is largely a difference
in scale. And the photovoltaic cells mostly went up because they were
subsidized by the government, which was again a product of higher taxes,
and this made it easy for people to make a sustainable change. But one
of the unintended consequences of these thousands of solar panels
putting energy into homes and into the grid is that the price of energy
has dropped dramatically, and the biosteam and biopower facility that we
toured hardly ever has its engines running nowadays because it would be
unprofitable to do so.
Throughout the course of this program I learned
about many areas where the US has room for improvement
sustainability-wise, but so does Belgium and everywhere else. I’m
thankful for educators and professionals and my fellow students that see
these needs and are striving towards meeting them.
--
Read more from Jaden at https://jadentalley.wordpress.com/
To find out more about the U of A Faculty-Led: European Agriculture-Food Chain Sustainability
program at http://studyabroad.uark.edu/SUSTEurozone/
