A Student’s Road to Presenting in Wisconsin

Sierra Stubbs is a rising senior majoring in Human Health. She was awarded a Summer 2018 Conference Grant which she used to attend the Agriculture, Food, Human Values, and Society Conference.

For the last year, I have had the opportunity to assist Dr. Reznickova with her research on the participation and/or exclusion of low income people in farmers’ markets around Atlanta. I took a class with Dr. Reznickova, and because I loved the class I frequently went to her office hours. The topic of research came up, and when I told her I was interested in learning how to conduct research, she told me about her study. I am so glad that she offered me the opportunity to assist her with this research, as this study is very unique and important. During our literature review, we found that many studies about farmers’ markets, the local food movement, and low income participation typically implied that low income people feel excluded from alternative food spaces, or do not want to attend farmers’ markets due to the typical crowd of white, affluent customers. However, many of these studies do not speak with people experiencing low income status before making these generalizations. So, we sought to change this by talking to low income people who do and do not attend farmers’ markets about their motivations, barriers, feelings, and experiences.

When I first got started, I did not expect to be as heavily involved as Dr. Reznickova allowed me to be. She let me, along with the other research assistant, conduct many of the interviews. Additionally, we were very involved in the transcription and coding of the data as well as the creation of the poster for the final conference presentation; all of these tasks were challenging but I am glad to have those skills under my belt now. We got to make charts, demographic maps, and I certainly learned a lot about using Excel to analyze demographic data. My favorite part about this research experience was getting to conduct so many interviews; I loved talking to lots of different and interesting people about their lives and experiences. No two people that we spoke with were even close to similar, and I will greatly miss waking up early on beautiful fall weekends to go to different farmers’ markets. After finishing up our interviews, we realized that the people we were interviewing greatly valued the community they experienced at farmers’ markets and none of the participants felt excluded. We also found that of the participants who did not go to markets, many of them valued eating healthy, fresh, and local, and just did not know about the market’s existence or have transportation to get there.

Getting to share our findings at the Agriculture, Food, Human Values and Society Conference in Madison, Wisconsin was such a wonderful experience. Not only was this conference attended by scholars whose research I have read in class, but I had the privilege of being the one who presented our work to them. Countless scholars came and spoke with me about our research and findings, with many saying they wanted to replicate the study in their cities. While it was nerve-racking, I am so incredibly grateful that I had the opportunity to present this research at such an amazing and interesting conference surrounded by the celebrities in this field of agriculture and food studies.

Visit the Undergraduate Research Programs website to learn more about applying for Conference Grants.