Fostering relationships in New Zealand

Since 1999 and every other year for the past 26 years, Susan Truehart Garey has traveled to New Zealand as part of the University of Delaware's winter study abroad program focused on sustainable food production.

Garey was first a teaching assistant. She quickly rose in the ranks to co-director with Lesa Griffiths, a UD professor in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences in the UD College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

With her own farm at home in Kent County, Garey, the animal science agent and Kent County director of UD Cooperative Extension, has extensive knowledge of agriculture, which has proven invaluable for the program.

Since the program's inception, Garey said she has enjoyed learning the different perspectives of the new students. But there is another thing she finds incredibly rewarding - the bonds built over the last quarter of a century with New Zealand farmers.

"We get to see how they respond to changes in trade, consumer demands and regulation - and how they respond to intergenerational transfer of farming operations," Garey said.

In 2019, Garey was selected as a Nuffield Scholar, a program that develops future leaders in agriculture and connects them with other budding agricultural leaders across the world. Through the program, she met a fellow Nuffield Scholar, New Zealand farmer Hamish Murray.

"The value of that network cannot be underestimated," Garey said.

In its early years, the winter New Zealand study abroad focused specifically on livestock production on pasture-based systems. Griffiths and Garey then broadened the scope of the program to engage students more generally on sustainable food production, in order to attract more students from across various disciplines in CANR. The course, Topics in Sustainable Farm Management (AGRI 240), became the staple course of the program, while the second course, which this past winter was Topics in International Animal Agriculture (ANFS 419), has varied over the years.

The program, based at Lincoln University, brings students to New Zealand's South Island to learn about sustainable farm management, animal science and current trends in agriculture. Garey said over the years she and Griffiths have been going to New Zealand, they've seen an evolution in sustainable agriculture.

"We've definitely observed changes in the level and type of regulation that farms are dealing with - health and safety regulations, nutrient balancing, nitrogen leaching, fertilizer use and winter grazing," Garey said.

Alongside that evolution, Garey and Griffiths have tried to teach a more social aspect of sustainability to their students.

"Sustainability not only includes land and natural resources," Griffiths said. "Sustainability involves community."

Griffiths and Garey hold the idea of community close to their hearts. Relationships - a core principle of community - have been key to the success of this study abroad program since the program first launched.