Course Description

Food is fundamental to human life. As nourishment food is vital for our survival as a species. Beyond that, production and consumption of food has a complex set of society-environment interactions. Human manipulation of the environment allowed us to produce food surpluses nearly 10,000 years ago in the Middle Eastern Fertile Crescent. The first agricultural revolution provided humans the capability to create sedentary, permanent human settlements and allowed subsequent complex societies to form. The production and consumption of food across time and space has correlated with the emergence of human- influenced ecologies. The diffusion of new plant and animal species (such as by the Colombian Exchange) not only changed the way we eat, it also transformed lives in Africa, the Caribbean and Europe, and eventually across the globe. More recent selective breeding of crops and animals for food and fiber and genetic modification and biological manipulation of animals and crops to increase production and defend against pests (the Green Revolution) is a further, major force in transforming the globe’s environment, native agricultural diversity, human health, water resources, soil erosion and climatic change.

This course will implement a comparative global perspective, using food as a vehicle to analyze the intertwining processes of food policy, food production, consumption, and food commodity networks in relation to the treatment and pay of workers, the impacts on health, environmental issues and climatic changes. In this course we will cover 1) an analysis and understanding of food-ways, 2) policies and the industrialization of food, health and safety of workers and the health and safety of consumers; and 3) food policies and production and their environmental impacts. We will end on an upbeat note with an analysis of food practices, self-reliance and the health of the environment. Case studies from the farms and shores of Southern Maryland to Mexico, Africa and Brazil will help guide our understanding of food as vehicle for analyzing environmental topics.