Food Systems and Agroecology

Catalog description

This course looks at the various ways humans use natural resources and social systems to feed themselves. Critics of modern industrial agriculture argue that there are better ways to work with nature to design our food system. The course will examine those critiques and the alternative food systems that have developed in reaction to the environmental problems created by industrial agriculture. Alternative food systems examined include local, fair trade, small-scale and family farms and production systems such as agroecology, urban gardening, regenerative agriculture and other forms of sustainable agriculture. The course will focus on how more ecological forms of food production are linked to new ways for food producers and food eaters to relate to each other, including more just farm labor systems.