Current Classes

Food Systems and community resilience (SAFS 620)

This course is designed to provide a broad overview of the food system in the U.S., to better understand how this system shapes the food we eat, and the character and health of our communities, and our environment. We will use a systems perspective to think about the discrepancies between nutritional guidelines for health, and what is currently available, affordable, accessible, and cultural appropriate in different communities. We will consider the ways race, class, and gender and sexual identity shape access to food and to people’s participation in the agriculture and food system as food workers, farmers, consumers, and decision makers, both within the industrial system and in alternative agri-food networks.  In the second part of the course, we will explore different approaches to alternative food system development. Students will learn to critically evaluate food system related policies, programs, and collaboration aimed at improving farmers’ livelihoods, environmental sustainability, food justice and community resilience.

Food Systems Solutions: approaches to increasing Sustainability and equity

(ANFS 850/SAFS 750)

We will study a range of solutions to address cross-cutting issues in the food system, including unsustainable farming systems, inequitable access to nutritious food, dietary patterns that promote chronic disease, and the lack of sustainable livelihoods for farmers and food chain workers. Students will learn to critically examine policies, programs and social movements aimed at increasing the equity and sustainability of the food system. We will identify the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches, recognizing the limits and blind spots, uneven impacts, and leverage points of the proposed solutions we study.   

Seed to Sea: Sustainable Food Systems (NUTR 730/830)

Using a coupled human and natural systems lens, this course examines how individual, community, national and international policy and practices influence dietary practices, and in turn how dietary patterns impact food production, the environment, and human health.  Thus, the study of the diverse human and natural system interactions will be integrated throughout the course as we work toward a more comprehensive understanding of the intersectionality of human nutrition needs & wants with food system structure and function. Indictors of food system stress, include but are not limited to increased demands on soil and water resources, decreasing crop biodiversity, diminishing yields from the sea, climate change and escalating energy costs that are coupled with inequitable food access, racial and gender discrimination, unjust working conditions for those employed in the food system and compromised health. These sample indicators provide evidence of global, national and regional food systems that are not on a sustainable trajectory. The course will examine what is meant by a sustainable food system and explore how the food system both influences and is influenced by cultural, environmental, scientific, health, racial, social, political and economic practices and policies.