There is a certain irony to the recent surge of interest in sustainable agriculture and local foods, for even as the number of courses on agriculture at liberal arts schools rises and the number of books and articles on the food system climbs, as a country we continue to lose mid-sized family farms and the rich cultural history that goes with them.

For this documentary project, students in a course entitled Innovations in Agroecology (changed to Sustainable Agriculture in 2011) taught by Prof. Matthew Mariola planned and recorded oral interviews of local farmers in Wayne County, Ohio, gaining first-hand knowledge of their farm operations and their lives in farming.

Farmer interview questions master list. This master list includes possible interview questions on various topics from personal history to controversial topics in agriculture. The question were created during a class brainstorming session.

Interviewing do's and don'ts. This presentation includes recommendations for successful interviewing and a list of metadata to be collected during the interview.

Interview training lab outline. This is an outline of a class lab session to train on interviewing

Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the Five Colleges of Ohio [Next Steps in the Next Generation Library: Integrating Digital Collections into the Liberal Arts Curriculum, 2010]