She’s picked vegetables on West Coast farms, worked to improve health, education and housing in immigrant communities on the Texas-Mexico border and, most recently, spent a semester in Peru, where she attended Pontificia University and worked with a non-governmental organization on food security.

As a double major in agricultural economics and Latin American studies—with an academic record that led to a recent Outstanding Sophomore Award from the Wisconsin Agricultural and Life Sciences Alumni Association—Patricia Paskov is trying to get the big picture on food.

It all started with a little story. “My grandfather, an immigrant from a tiny island in Croatia, claims to have survived the earliest years of his childhood on the milk of one goat,” says Paskov. “I, on the other hand, grew up in suburbia and probably spent most of my childhood believing that food grew on grocery store shelves.”

As a young adult, Paskov resolved to learn more about where food comes from. A “three-week, no-frills farm experience” in California, as she describes it, gave a new focus to her life. “I began to understand that food is an undeniable social, economic and political force,” Paskov says.

Her interest in food policy grew during an internship with the Oakland-based nonprofit Food First, which conducts global work on food systems and is located near a part of the city that at the time had 30,000 residents but no grocery stores. “It’s almost as if this reality has prompted the community to take some of the most progressive steps forward in food justice,” Paskov says. “Community development programs, NGOs, and farm-to-plate programs abound in Oakland, igniting a role of agency amongst everyone.”

Paskov sees her life’s calling as helping to make the world a better place food-wise. “I see myself working in the public or third sector, contributing to international decisions regarding food, agriculture, national resources and rural development,” she says. “In the upcoming years, population growth and climate change will largely affect how the agricultural market functions—and food policy will be a more important field than ever.”

This article was posted in Agriculture, Fall 2013, Food Systems and tagged Agricultural economics, CALS, Farming, Food crops, Food science, Horticulture, International, Nutritional Science, Patricia Paskov, Sustainable agriculture.