WHAT IS ORGANIC FARMING
“Organic farming” excludes the use of synthetic chemicals, bans antibiotics and hormones in livestock production and relies on cultural and biological pest management, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture
FOR MORE INFO
* Tennessee Organic Growers Association conference, TSU campus, Nashville, March 14, $50 includes membership. See www.tnorganics.org
* University of Tennessee’s statewide initiative: http://organics.tennessee.edu.
Agriculture programs have gone organic at area universities.
“Universities have traditionally pushed chemical agriculture because of the productivity,” said Chandra Reddy, dean of Tennessee State University’s School of Agriculture and Consumer Sciences. “Now, the public is more health conscious and everybody is shifting rapidly into the organic side.”
Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee Tech in Cookeville and the University of Georgia in Athens also have added sustainable agriculture courses, organic gardens or organic farms.
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Chattanooga State Technical Community College do not have agricultural programs.
Organic farming has become one of the fastest-growing segments of U.S. food production, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Retail sales of organic food in the United States rose from $3.6 billion in 1997 to $18.9 billion in 2007, according to the Nutrition Business Journal.
Last week, the USDA unveiled the results of the 2007 agricultural census. Tennessee tallied 2,020 acres in organic production and $1.13 million in product sales, according to the 2007 census. Georgia showed 2,015 acres dedicated to organics and $2.04 million in product sales.
Earlier data is unavailable because the USDA began collecting organic data only in 2007.
Student demand, personal interest and market interest led the universities to begin teaching organic farming, officials said.
“A growing portion of agriculture in this country is organic, and there’s reason to believe that’s going to continue,” said Dr. Wade Faw, professor of agriculture at Tennessee Tech. “Our students need to be aware of it and informed about it.”
Last month, the University of Tennessee launched a statewide organic program based at its Knoxville campus. UT also has certified 21 acres of farm as organic at its East Tennessee Research & Education Center.
Tennessee State University has certified five acres of a farm as organic, launched new research into organic methods and dedicated a faculty member exclusively to programs and courses on organic vegetable production. It also helped underwrite the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group conference in Chattanooga last month, and will host for the fifth time the Tennessee Organic Growers Association meeting on March 14.
But the sustainable and organic programs still are putting down roots.
Last year, Tennessee Tech leased about 115 acres of unused farm land to build an organic farm and as many as 10 students, of 250 in the program, worked there last summer, Dr. Faw said.
The University of Tennessee graduate program has no formal organic classes yet, said Sarah Broughton, a graduate student in plant sciences who worked on UT’s organic farm last summer.
“I like (the program) a lot, but it’s a little tricky,” Ms. Broughton said. “I have to cobble together courses that look like they would be beneficial to my research because we don’t have a program put together that would say what my requirements are.”
If Chattanooga State did teach farming, though, it would go organic, said Dr. Roy Sofield, Life Sciences head.
“We do discuss the advantage of going organic and the problems associated with the use of pesticides in our environmental science classes,” Dr. Sofield said. “We’re right on the river and a number of studies have looked at (the damage caused by) various persistent organic pollutants in the Tennessee River.”
