Focus Frostburg: Economic
Botany Presentations
By: Megan Collins
When
attending Focus Frostburg, there are several sections of the event that could
be attended throughout the day. The event took place April 18th 2012
and lasted from 9:00am till 5:00pm. Particularly Economic Botany Presentations,
located in Lane Center 111, stood out and the presentations were split into two
groups. The first was called ‘Gardening’ and the second was called ‘Sustainability’.
Alas not many people showed up to the event. Each slide was an array of
beautiful bright colors such as orange which ironically mirrored the orange
that decorated the seats and the left wall of the room.
Gardening featured
Suzy Snow, MarryAnna Cole, and Brody McAllister. Their presentation was on
local produce and their research which shows that though many people are
interested in the idea they just do not know where it is or do not have the
money. Their main focus on research was Garret County, Allegany County, and
Washington County and their rationale for surveys was to gain a broader
understanding of the customer food base. The presentation also touched on the
positives of choosing local produce instead of the produce from across the
globe, or from unknown origin, such as its fresher, it can lower your carbon
footprint, and it is already in the community, so it is close by and the
customers can support their own community. When asked why they chose to do the presentation
on local produce instead of something else, like different energy sources and
how the campus could help integrate those sources to good use Susan admitted
she had to think a moment as to why they chose this in particular. Susan Snow
is a junior with a major in Ethnobotany from Frostburg, Maryland. After giving
it good thought she said, “I love food, and I love the farmers market so I wonder
why when we are surrounded by tons of farms why is it so hard to find. In Garret
County, you can find about 8 farms but University of Maryland Extension Office has
about 40 listed and they told me to destroy the list of 40 farms for the
project when we were done with it.” She did not know why so it left only speculation
as to why they would want the list destroyed, perhaps for privacies sake.
Sustainability featured Morgan
Bauer, Ben Brown, and Alec Fisher. Their presentation was on the sustainability
on Frostburg State University’s campus. They namely focused on how many people,
both students and faculty, were interested in sustainability and how many of
them actually took that interest to the next level and participated on making
things better by recycling, planting trees, and using public transportation.
The numbers sadly decreased. Many were interested, but it was cut almost in
have when they got to how many actually were engaged. Morgan Bauer is a junior
with a major in Ethnobotany and minors in Biology, Forestry Ministration, and
Cultural Anthropology from Rockville, Maryland. When asked about why they chose to do
sustainability Morgan said, “I personally make a lot of noise about issues I
have on campus. I did need the information to back it up. I’m interested to
make the campus attractive to perspective students.” He then followed up with, “this
was the first thing I needed to do so that I could give myself a direction to
move in,” when asked about what would be the first thing he would do, he said
it would be to try to implement more student involvement.
When coming from a student and audience
perspective the presentation was interesting and had a lot of useful
information. Megan Fisher a junior with a major in Interpretive Biology and Natural
History from Myersville, Maryland says, “I learned that our campus is trying to
find ways to implement more sustainability ideas, but is having a hard time
actually following through with it. Like with recycling, there are supposed to
be recycling bins in every academic building, and in every dorm there are
supposed to be bins on each floor, but not all those places have the required
bins. If you look at what is in lane they do not have glass recycling, all they
have is paper, cans, and regular trash, which creates a bit of a problem with
what to do with the glass. I think they need to work on getting the students
more involved on campus because some of the research that they did shows that
the students are interested in helping but they just aren’t implementing it. So
if they had more opportunities, places, and more reason to be involved, then
they would be more likely to do it. ” When asked if she would recommend others
to see the presentation and event she said, “Yeah, there is actually a lot of information
that I learned that I did not know before, like where I can find local produce
for a lot cheaper than in chain stores and they are much better quality. I also
now have sites that I can go to for local produce for when I move of campus
next semester.”
USDA and Local Harvest
Allegany farmers markets
Garret CSA, Farmers Market
Maryland’s Best Farms
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