Aug. 31, 2007 (See more photos)
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SUSPROT coordinators at a sidewalk cafe in France are (from left) Vincent Brenier, assistant, Office of International Affairs; Claude Barbichon, deputy director, Office of International Affairs; Marilyn McPheron, Study Abroad Coordinator, Pennsylvania State; UC Davis SUSPROT coordinator Walter Leal; and Ed Rajotte, entomology professor at Penn State. |
DAVIS—When Amy Morice, an entomology major at the University of California, Davis, studied in France last summer as part of an international agricultural exchange program, she learned that agriculture is “a very large part of their culture, and they are working very hard to maintain it as such.”
“I don’t think we value agriculture the same way in America,” the senior said. “It was interesting to see how important it is to them to keep smaller farms rather than large corporate farms.”
Morice participated in the Sustainable Crop Protection in Agriculture Program (SUSPROT), a federally funded program designed to promote scientific cooperation and collaborative education between academic and professional communities in Europe (Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands) and the United States.
Morice spent two weeks in Paris and one week in Belgium with a 16-member American contingent of students and faculty that included UC Davis SUSPROT coordinator and chemical ecologist Walter Leal, professor and chair of the Department of Entomology, and UC Davis entomology students Jacqueline Kishmirian and Katie Szulewski.
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“It’s important to understand the problems so we can understand the issues,” said Leal, who as a three-year SUSPROT faculty member lectured on insect communication here and abroad. He also mentored three international students selected for six-month internships in his laboratory.
Countries differ in their agricultural practices, research and extension programs, Leal said, but they share the commonality of getting food from the field to the table, while trying to resolve such issues as exotic pests, insect-plant interactions, disease outbreaks, food contamination and other global concerns.
“It’s a global agricultural industry now, and we need to know how to research the problems and how to solve them,” Leal said. “We need to learn from each other.”
SUSPROT, jointly financed by the Fund for Improvement of PostSecondary Education (FIPSE) of the U.S. Department of Education and the European communities, completed its current three-year funding cycle on Aug. 31.
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| UC Davis students participating in the SUSPROT program in Europe last summer were (from left) Jacqueline Kishmirian, Amy Morice and Katie Szulewski.
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UC Davis participated in the program with two other American universities, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urban, all selected for their strong agricultural programs. They partnered with four European universities: Agro Paris Tech (formerly Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grigon), France; University of Hohenheim, Germany; Wageningen University and Research Centre, the Netherlands; and Gembloux Agricultural University, Belgium.
SUSPROT’s three-fold mission, Leal said, centered on preparing graduate and undergraduate students in the agricultural sciences to work in a global agricultural economy; integrating approaches designed for different agricultural systems and helping to preserve the environment by using fewer pesticides.
“SUSPROT has proved so successful that we want to establish an international master’s degree in entomology,” Leal said. “We’ve submitted a proposal (SAGECROP) to the European Union-United States Atlantis Program (affiliated with the U.S. Department of Education), to find ways and means of implementing such a program.”
Leal said the SUSPROT program last summer in France was “so high-level that Sen. Gérard César, who sponsored the bill to reform French agriculture, participated in the program.”
Morice described the European study program as a valuable learning experience. “I’m going to apply to graduate schools this fall and would love to continue my education in entomology. Since entomology is very connected to agriculture and I have no agricultural background, I thought it would be interesting to learn more about it.”
The American ambassadors toured Rungis, the largest fresh wholesale market in Europe, located on the outskirts of Paris. A distribution point for France and other European countries, it boasts produce, dairy, seafood, meat, poultry and floral sections, trucked in from all over Europe. The 573-acre market employs 15,000 people and draws 26,000 cars a day.
“We learned a lot about how they label their food, so it was interesting trying to find all the different labels,” Morice said.
A tour of the Champagne region of France resulted in a better understanding of wine production and marketing. “They are very determined to keep the name ‘Champagne’ to refer only to wine from that region,” Morice said.
The American contingent also sampled many of France’s renowned cheeses. The country’s diverse cheese production once prompted former President Charles de Gaulle to comment: "How can you govern a country that produces 246 different cheeses?”
Earlier, three Europeans--Sabine Asser of Germany and Nicolas Latte and Henneaux Quentin, both of Belgium--served six-month internships in the Leal lab. UC Davis entomology professor Frank Zalom hosted Belgium student Lainel Gilles in his lab for a six-month internship.
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| UC Davis entomology student Jacqueline Kishmirian photographs beekeeper Jose Artus in Burnotige, Belgium. |
In the Leal lab, Quentin worked on the chemical communication of the navel orangeworm and the tenlined June beetle, both important pests of the almond crop. Quentin said he chose Leal’s lab for the internship because “I wanted the opportunity to do my final thesis and gain experience in a world-recognized laboratory.”
SUSPROT also offered “the chance to travel, face challenges and meet people with different backgrounds,” the Belgium student said.
Quentin credited his six-month internship in Leal’s lab and his improved English language skills with landing him a global position with Baxter, an international medical supply and pharmaceutical company. Quentin is now a raw material specialist in the Supplier Quality Assurance Department serving Europe.
“These students are going to be making the agricultural policies of the future and they can only make good ones if they understand the entire picture and that includes how agriculture intersects globally,” said study abroad coordinator Marilyn McPheron of Pennsylvania State, leading institution of the SUSPROT grant. “The quickest way to make this clear to students is through an international experience.”
SUSPROT, geared toward an international curriculum and project/research experience, covered a curriculum on transatlantic differences in approaches to land management, social and cultural norms, and the introduction of new technology, such as genetically modified organisms.
European faculty member Frederic Marion-Poll, professor at Agro Paris Tech who lectured twice at UC Davis and taught a course at Penn State, said that he learned a lot from SUSPROT participants, including Leal, internationally known for his research on how insects communicate, and the three UC Davis students.
“SUSPROT, for me, represented a great hope to build a network of competent faculties in sustainable crop protection. It was meant to offer our students the very best of scientists in entomology, plant pathology, weed science and agronomy which could help us and our students to contribute answering to global questions.”
“It was a unique opportunity for our students and for us to understand differences of approaches as concerns nature, agriculture and genetically modified organisms,” Marion-Poll said. “In a sense, this worked well but I now realize that these are long-term goals which can only be reached by a constant commitment not only of faculties and students, but also by our respective administrations.”
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| Bees in Burnotige, Belgium |
“To me, it really opened my mind to different ways of thinking,” he said. It also afforded him the opportunity to exchange ideas with colleagues from his discipline. He said he wants to continue networking with the U.S. and European partners. One way “is to continue the Web video conferences,” he said.
The next step: “a way to support transatlantic research,” Marion-Poll said. “It would really boost our interactions. I hope we can one day get private companies involved in these exchanges because the students who experience working abroad gain another dimension and are more ready to work in an international environment, not only for a global market but also they are more able to deal with intercultural differences at work, more open to different approaches to solve practical problems.”
For more information, see the American (Pennsylvania State) and French SUSPROT Web sites.
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--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
(530) 754-6894
