Abstract
Food production, consumption and trade are inextricably connected to health, livelihoods and the environment. In an increasingly globalized food system, commodity chains are complex and socio-cultural relations paramount. Conventional agriculture education programs and even non-traditional sustainable agriculture programs, do not always explicitly address food systems with global, structural and socio-cultural perspectives. As part of a three-year National Institute of Food and Agricultural postdoctoral research grant, I developed a curriculum for an undergraduate-level Sustainable Food Systems program. The program was comprised of six interdisciplinary courses that emphasize place-based learning, political ecology and agroecology. I created this curriculum through a case study at Fort Lewis College, a public liberal arts college in Durango, Colorado. Results from a survey of students at the college, interviews and surveys with food systems practitioners and literature review all combined to inform the direction of curriculum development. The developed courses are interdisciplinary, field-based, experiential and project-based. I piloted three of these courses and found that students established deep critical thinking skills around values-based controversial issues and were able to articulate solutions for complex place-based food systems problems.
 16 Hilimire_NACTA Journal.pdf | [ ] | 258 kB |
