Geography of Food and Agriculture

Catalog description

Food is a fundamental human need that impacts our health, shapes our cultural identities, influences our daily lives, and guides our politics from local to international scales. Thus, agriculture is one of the most important human endeavors, but also one which has had one of the largest impacts on the earth system. This course explores the geography of food and agriculture from a critical perspective. It examines the ecological, social, and political economic aspects of a range of agricultural production systems, from large-scale commercial monocrops to small-scale agroforestry and permaculture homegardens. It examines some of the largest contemporary challenges to agro-food systems in our age of globalization and their sustainability and social justice implications, such as population growth, climate change, and biofuels. Semester(s) Offered: Fall, Spring, Summer