Beyond Tomatoes: The Botany of Traditional Tuscan Life

Catalog description

There are more than seven billion humans on the planet, each of whom need to eat every day: inefficient food production and distribution practices are contributing to faster use of non-renewable fossil fuels and accelerating environmental degradation. What modes of food production and consumption may be viable, sustainable responses to this problem? What are some alternative models of food production? How are people responding to increasing inequalities relating to food availability? What can we learn from Italian food cultures in terms of sustainability? This course focuses on the radical increase in food production over the last 70 years and the ecological and social problems it has created. It will explore the possible solutions that have been suggested that include incorporating historical agricultural techniques that are more responsive to local ecology: the organic movement, regenerative farming, Slow Food, and the shift towards local food. We will critically assess these movements and analyze their potential to change the trajectory of the global food production system, which is likely to collapse without some form of rapid intervention.