In this time of global crises, many universities including UMass Amherst have transitioned to online learning. Making a transition like this is surely difficult for any discipline…but farming remotely?! How does that work? Sustainable Food & Farming also includes a depth of study of theory, plant science, and social dimensions of food systems which our instructors have been hard at work to continue teaching using online Zoom sessions, using forums on course pages like Moodle & Blackboard and designing a blend of live and pre-recorded lectures so that students can keep learning.
Many students have shared that they look forward to our weekly Zoom sessions and we are continuing to learn and have fun together as best we can in these times. To be a farmer, one must be resilient and able to adapt to challenge and change (the weather is constantly surprising us!). What is also becoming more clear in this emerging pandemic is the need for SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE and healthy resilient systems.
Farmers across the globe are responding and organizing efforts to continue to expand and provide community access to local produce. Here in the Pioneer Valley, the newly formed Sunderland Farm Collaborative is providing a delivery service so Western MA residence can get local produce delivered to their homes safely and still support local businesses. Our local paper did a story on this collaborative which employs several alumni from our program. Neighboring Simple Gifts Farm has been offering an online ordering & curbside pickup for our local community. Current SFF students & alumni are working hard and with caution on the frontlines to make our food system more resilient during these times.
Sunderland Farm Collaborative 3/31 
Simple Gifts Farm 4/7 
Delivery of local produce
We are continuing to advise students remotely and designing our schedules for the fall semester. At a time where so much is uncertain, in many conversations we all seem to agree connecting with nature by going on daily walks, growing seedlings (from just a few in a windowsill or a large backyard garden) helps keep hope alive. Few things offer such simple wonder and awe and remind us that what we’re doing here is important and essential. Now more than ever we must learn to grow food, to organize, to collaborate, to be resilient and adapt. To do what farmers, Indigenous communities, and grassroots organizers have been doing for centuries. Wishing good health and happy spring to all!
-Sarah Berquist, Program Coordinator, Lecturer, & Advisor
UMass Sustainable Food & Farming
Cuba’s former agricultural system—large-scale, mechanized, and “modern”—relied on a steady flow of resources from the Soviet Union. Before 1989, the Soviet Union sent vast amounts of agricultural supplies, including petroleum, pesticides, fertilizers, and livestock vaccinations, to fuel Cuban production of cash crops such as sugar cane, tobacco, coffee, and bananas. The Cuban government prioritized the export of cash crop products and imported 80 percent of what the country consumed: rice, beans, grains, and vegetables. To the north, the United States enforced el bloqueo, an economic blockade against Cuba first established in 1960, prohibiting the flow of goods, including food and medicine, to and from the socialist island. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, severing the supply of food and farming supplies, Cuba woke up to a major economic crisis. Without food imports to stock the grocery store shelves, how would Cuba feed 11 million people? How would Cubans till the soil without diesel to run the tractors? How could farmers stimulate yields without synthetic fertilizers? Agricultural production plummeted dramatically. State farms and factories shut down. Livestock perished. Precious cash crops rotted in the fields and, as a result, revenue from exports crashed.
degree program in the Stockbridge School of Agriculture, Sarah Berquist, was chosen as the 2019 recipient of the Massachusetts Distinguished Service Award by Phi Kappa Phi, the nation’s oldest, largest, and most selective all-discipline honor society. According to society President, Professor Theresa Y. Austin, the UMass Chapter recognized Ms. Berquist for her outstanding service to the University in ways that are consistent with the Society’s motto of “Let the love of learning rule.” 
UMass Sustainable Food and Farming 