Agriculture Study Abroad

 

Meet Gretchen Zdorkowski

 

 

 

 

Gretchen Zdorkowski wants to know where you get your coffee. She is not interested in knowing which coffee shop you frequent, however. She wants to know what country sent it here. She wants to meet the farmers who grew the beans. She wants to know the factors that brought coffee beans from the Equator to your mouth.

 

These are the details that comprise food systems, an interest of Zdorkowski’s since her time as a university student. After receiving a bachelor’s in botany and a Master’s degree in geography, she went to Canada to study for her doctorate.

 

"I went expecting it to be similar,” she said. “I thought it would be the U.S., only ‘north-er.’”

 

She was surprised by what she found surrounding the city of Vancouver: small farms. Unlike U.S. agricultural operations typified by sprawling fields and massive machinery, these Canadian farmers were producing labor-intensive fruits and vegetable in relatively small quantities and were selling them in roadside stands to hungry Vancouverites.

 

This exposure to foreign agriculture as a student has shaped Zdorkowski’s work as a professor. Today she is a lecturer in agronomy on the subject of food systems and sustainable agriculture. “I’m interested in how places in the world organize their food and agriculture systems,” she said. “To what extent is it based on making sure your population has sufficient food, or on exporting in exchange for dollars?”

 

In recent years Zdorkowski has traveled to India and Mexico, and has led student travel courses to Uruguay and Ecuador, learning from various food systems along the way. “Good food was easier to find, homemade, made from scratch,” she said. “I’ve eaten better in developing countries than eating out (in America).”

 

Zdorkowki’s personal interactions while abroad have been eye-opening as well. While in India, she worked with a non-government agency run by women who worked with survivors of damaging arranged marriages. The experience has put her day-to-day struggles in perspective.

 

“I can say ‘I have so many problems, boo hoo,” Zdorkowski said, motioning to piles of paper work on her desk. “But I don’t have a problem in the world. The people I’ve met abroad have been very influential in making me a better person.”