Galen Martin, an adjunct professor in the UO’s Department of International Studies, brings more than his teaching expertise to the classroom - real-world experience as a local farmer allows him to supply students with a bevy of information and unique experience directly from the field.
“When I teach, I have experience to draw from, and a lot of that isn’t necessarily from academia,” said Martin. “It’s from having an understanding of what agriculture production is about, the choices that farmers and producers face, and how the world’s food system has been changed.”
Martin’s general field is environmental studies, but he focuses on sustainable agriculture, international community development and curriculum development. Having grown up on a farm in North Dakota and now residing on a farm outside of Eugene, Martin is no stranger to living off the land.
“I find it very recreational, and a nice contrast to academia, which is for the most part rather abstract,” he said of farming. “Shoveling manure is very real. I do some of my best thinking on the other end of a pitchfork.”
Aside from being an enjoyable hobby, Martin says farming adds a hefty dose of integrity to what he’s saying in class. It reminds him of the difficult choices facing us from an environmental perspective and keeps him involved in the topics he teaches.
“Farming brings me a great deal of satisfaction, for a couple of reasons," Martin said. "One, it keeps me grounded, literally, in what it means to produce food. It also allows me to practice skills that were sort of sitting latent for 30 years.”
Running a farm adds a lot of work to the full-time professor’s plate, but Martin finds it reinvigorating, not stressful. He enjoys growing and selling his own food, and the satisfaction of producing something of quality as opposed to quantity is a reward in itself.
“Industrial food is about quantity," he said. "There’s a lot of exciting things happening here in Oregon, and the Pacific Northwest is really at the forefront of reinvestigating the food system and understanding that a lot of people want to become reconnected to their food.”
His heavy international focus has allowed him to travel the world, particularly Latin America and Europe. He was an exchange student in high school, worked on a vineyard in Germany and did some work in Costa Rica during college, and even taught English in China in the early 1980s. While Martin was completing his master’s degree at the UO that same decade, he did some fieldwork in Costa Rica, focusing on the impact of conservation areas on local communities.
When he isn’t teaching, farming or traveling, Martin is likely hard at work developing curriculum, both for his current courses and brand new ones. He hasn’t engaged in traditional research since working for a degree, but Martin is still highly engaged in the world around him.
“I’m always thinking, whenever I read anything or participate in seminars or even when I’m working in my own garden, about, ‘How can I bring this into the classroom and keep it current?’” he said.
While the dialogue surrounding sustainable agriculture is relatively new in the big picture, Martin makes sure to inform his students that the field has been around longer than they think.
“I remind my students that this discussion has been around for several decades," he said. "It’s been enjoyable seeing interest among students growing over the last decade. They hear about the environmental impact of pesticides and fertilizers and want to know why we use such things. It’s an important question.”
- by Taylor Robertson, UO Office of Strategic Communications intern