AgriCultures: Cocoa and Permaculture in Jamaica

AgriCultures invites “feed to field” engagement with practices of consumption that also consume. To explore how media cooks humanity in this fall, winter, spring series of programs, we'll focus on how agricultural grift intersects with agricultural craft to create the possibility for regenerative media and food systems. What can it mean to be part of a global regenerative agricultural movement connecting care for the Earth, care for all people, and care for community in the age of AI? From the PNW origin of "fair exchange" craft chocolate to the Cross-Atlantic Chocolate Collective’s rebellion, from farm practicum to cultural theory, this program invites students to engage with the biocultural diversity of the Caribbean while earning an International Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC). While the requirements for the PDC follow the 72-hour contact format specified by the Permaculture Institute of Australia, the curriculum for our Evergreen program integrates an on-campus, interdisciplinary food and agriculture curriculum, community building, reciprocity through non-extractive learning practices, digital documentation, and the design of individual research projects to be completed in the field. We'll make chocolate from bean to ball while bridging the (post)colonial distinction between those who grow cacao and those who eat chocolate. 

We'll read and seminar on Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place and other, destination-specific literature, which will relate to global contexts and studying abroad in an unequal world. Texts might include Earl Lovelace’s The Dragon Can ’t Dance to hear carnival music played on the legacies of abandoned American military base petrol cans. We'll watch Bob Marley: One Love in anticipation of hearing reggae, eating Ital, and experiencing counter-textualities of subjugated cultures. We’ll visit a campus of the University of West Indies (once a sugar plantation), experience cocoa agritourism, and engage with farm hosts in agricultural practicums. Visits to cultural heritage sites will provide opportunities for learning about the spiritual traditions that have shaped landscapes and mindscapes of one of the world’s most ethnically and culturally diverse populations. Our attention to food and agriculture, including community-based engagement on working farms and permaculture centers, will provide opportunities for applied learning that is aligned with a collaborating partner, One Regeneration's mission: “As humans, we have the blessing and power to design our lives in ways that harmonize with the broader Life forces of which we are a part. Living regeneratively involves the decision to be in improved relationship with the life forms and life forces that make this planet thrive.”  Students will be supported to document their learning using field notebooks and cell phones, then to reflect on and curate their learning using ePortfolios and StoryMaps.  See this link for examples as well as a daily photo journal of the winter 2025 study abroad program, Bittersweet: Cocoa and Permaculture in Jamaica (https://sites.evergreen.edu/bittersweetcaribbean/).

Students interested in applying for this study abroad program are required to enroll in the fall quarter 4-credit course, Cocoa and Permaculture in Jamaica: Preparing to Study Abroad. Students are also encouraged to enroll in the fall quarter program AgriCultures: Liking "Dubai Chocolate." Note: Passport application processes can take 6-8 weeks.

Anticipated Credit Equivalencies: Winter

4 - Introduction to Caribbean Culture and History 

6 - Temperate to Tropical Permaculture 

3 - Cocoa: Political Ecologies

3 - Student Research Project