Getting Your Hands Dirty With Sustainable Agriculture
Written by Karl Hennen
Ecologically-minded farming might be the broad, everyman’s definition of sustainable agriculture. For Professor Norman Arancon, Ph.D., who specializes in a garden variety of topics ranging from crop-sciences to vermicomposting at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, the subject in his teaching, research, and community outreach is multidimensional. In fact his work has grown as much as he has.
Arancon’s agricultural involvement began in 1993 at Xavier University, Philippines. Four years later, spearheading its Sustainable Agriculture Center, Arancon worked with local cultivators to adopt eco-friendly practices across twenty-one Northern Mindanao farms. The project’s success proved inspiring for Arancon, pushing him to look towards education.
“It allowed me to continue my pursuit for more ecologically sound, economically viable and socially acceptable technologies through research,” he writes via e-mail. “My research became a useful instrument for teaching other farmers, students and all those food production[s] the principles of sustainable agriculture”.
UH Hilo students will appreciate Arancon’s experiences have manifested as lessons transcending straight lecture-based formats. Under his tutelage, Agriculture majors are engaged with field work, gardening, and individual/group research alongside classroom instruction. Arancon believes the applied learning benefits critical thinking and offers a direct approach to agricultural theories. Students can, at the very least, expect to get their hands dirty.
“Growing their own food” is one skill his classrooms pick up, he continues. They come to value “ecologically sound [alternative] techniques” and acknowledge “farming methods that will help reduce [their] dependence to chemical fertilizers and pesticides”. The wedding of learning through exercises and lab work to theory engenders pupils who are, in his eyes, “more independent and more resilient when exposed to real-life situations”. When Arancon and his students are learning, they are educating themselves about proactive stewardship of the earth.
Students, according to Arancon, learn not only important life lessons about tending nature constructively, but how to be autonomous, manage time, and think critically. Classes are forums in which realistic, meaningful conclusions are verified outdoors. The possibilities for pupils are far-reaching: they might co-publish research or attend a seminar with him, or they may be involved in ensuring the livelihood of community gardens. He posits these examples are “living proof” his former students “went beyond learning from the four walls of the classroom”.
The influence of Arancon’s brand of applied learning may be profounder still. Among the most rewarding moments for the professor is the pleasure of noting former sustainable agriculture pupils “[establish] themselves as successful graduate students, entrepreneurs, researchers and educators”.
Seeing another generation of people sharing his passion blossom reflects an enduring legacy connecting Arancon, his classes, and a very enthusiastic Hilo town community— Arancon regularly receives numerous electronic and telephone inquires voicing their support for his ecological endeavors.
Who says it isn’t easy being green? A little learning and growing outside the classroom goes a long way.
Norman Arancon, Ph.D., is an associate professor of horticulture at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. He can be reached at (808) 932-7030, (808) 932-7037 (fax), or normanq@hawaii.edu.
