Winter break trips celebrate 25 years of connecting students with international dairy industry

By 2006, the number of students interested in the international trips more than doubled, and Van Amburgh worked to design two separate opportunities for underclassmen and upperclassmen.

“For underclassmen without much international experience, Italy is an easy place to engage. Food is part of the culture, and they are very open about their system and production,” he said. “High quality, hand-made artisanal cheeses and other foods are produced on a larger scale and sold at a reasonable price, so it provides a different perspective.” 

For upperclassmen, the last three trips were designed in a partnership with members of China Agricultural University in Beijing, where students from both universities partner on solutions to challenges faced in the dairy industry. 

“Trips like this offer a safe and comfortable way to dip your toes in that world to see things the average person cannot,” said Case Schaap ’20, who participated in both the Italy and China trips. “Italy offers a unique perspective and a different approach to dairy that I can take home to look at our own industry—Italy uses every square inch of land; they farm every hillside, river and valley. Literally, food was the connection. In contrast, the Chinese perspective is factory-oriented: clean, high quality, efficient.”

In 2008, after the melamine-tainted milk scare, the Chinese government developed a large-scale, technology-driven dairy system to overcome consumer distrust. Now, Chinese dairy students are highly educated about dairy biology, but many lack first-hand exposure to farms. When they collaborate with Cornell students, each brings unique knowledge about how the industry operates.

“In China, our students learn to put observations in a global context. We take a step back and throw out assumptions from North America, where we are used to capitalism and a democratic system,” said Blake Nguyen DVM ’12, lecturer in Dairy Management and director of the Cornell Teaching Dairy, who led this year’s China trip. “China operates under constraints of resources with population pressure. Hunger has given rise to different perspectives on food production and using resources differently." 

To date, 1,056 students have participated in this international programming. The experience often inspires students to continue their cross-cultural learning by studying abroad. By graduation, 90% of Dairy Fellows and other students focusing on dairy management have participated in an international experience.

“On all of the trips I felt like you’re drinking out of a firehose. Then on the flight home, with the opportunity to digest, I feel energy to create something new out of this experience,” said Thomas Mueller ’20, who participated in the Italy trip and then spent a semester in Shanghai as a global sustainability student. “When I was in China, I felt like there was opportunity everywhere. Now I ask, how do I take this and apply it. I knew I could come back to Cornell with the resources here to start asking good questions.”

Nguyen said, “By incorporating these trips with the rest of our courses, we are working hard to provide a science-based education to the future players in a food system that operates responsibly within the political, economic, social and environmental constraints that the modern world presents.”

Julie Berry ’97 is a freelance writer for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.