Agroecology Day

Friday I attended Agroecology Day at Alnarp at the SLU campus. Although most of the students were from SLU there were also people from different programs at Lund University and even other Scandinavian universities. There were about five other Americans in attendance but they were all part of a Norwegian agroecology program.

It was a really nice event with really passionate speakers and great food. For lunch, an Indian family who lives across the street from the campus prepared food for all 100+ of us! The only problem I had with the event was how unbalanced the discussion was as far as social science versus natural science. There is so much emphasis on the social side of the issues, but if I'm attending a day of lectures on agroecology, I expect to hear at least one farmer or scientist talk about what's new and innovative in the field of sustainable agriculture, as agroecology is an interdisciplinary field. One speaker talked about how great it was that her school was teaching an old Romanian method of hay collection, and while there is certainly nothing wrong with implementing a practice that is tried and true (it's actually probably a great thing!), don't we have the capacity and ingenuity as students and researchers to try something new? To do something transformative?

After the day's Q&A session, Fernando and his fellow SLU agroecology student, Fabian, took us on a brief tour of the campus, mainly to see "the castle."

Peculiar building I spotted on the way to the bus

After Agroecology Day I met up with Meryem to go over our strategy for our Evaluation Research project. We met up in front of H&M, which is in front of some of the government buildings in Lund. There was a huge crowd of people and it looked a walkway was sort of blocked off. I remember thinking, "Hm, it looks like they're preparing for someone important to walk through there." So since we both had no idea what was going on we continued to our fika meeting at Cafe Popolare. One minute after we walk in this guy comes in and is talking excitedly to the cashier. I recognize some of what they're saying so I (in English) ask if they're talking about what's going on around the block. Apparently Meryem and I missed seeing the King and Queen of Sweden by about 2 minutes! We were both quite devastated but moved on and had a productive and fun meeting.

Typical tourist coffee picture

Meryem showing off one of her new skirts from H&M