Farm Experience Internship: connecting students and farmers

Often, there is little contact between agricultural students and farmers. In an effort to bridge this gap, ILEIA is supporting a new initiative at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

The Farm Experience Internship is a summer course for students. Part of it entails living and working on a sustainable farm for two weeks. In that way, the students increase their understanding of the realities in the field and of the challenges and dilemmas of the farmers and their families. There will be mutual learning and knowledge sharing. Co-creation of knowledge is one of the core principles of agroecology. This is why we refer to this initiative as ‘agroecology in practice’.
The Farm Experience Internship is initiated by a group of international students in Wageningen, and based on a successful experience in Brazil. It is a new course/internship that is being developed at the moment by students and PhD candidates from different educational institutions including Wageningen University, Van Hall Larenstein and Universidade Federal de Viçosa in Brasil with various backgrounds. Wageningen University is giving support to this project through the chairgroups of Farming Systems Ecology and Rural Sociology.
In addition, several organisations and companies are closely collaborating in order to provide the Farm Experience Internship with a more solid base. These organizations include, Boerengroep, OtherWise, BoerenVerstand, De Bolster and ILEIA. ILEIA will offer particular support to the students in systematising and disseminating their experiences.
Participating students go through a three stage learning process: preparation, practical experience, and evaluation and collective assessment. If successful, there are intentions at Wageningen University to integrate the Farm Experience Internship into the standard bachelor curriculum.