Geographies of Food and Farming,   GEOG 256

Farming and food production connect us to the landscapes in which we live, and increasingly, farming and food connect us to patterns and practices of globalization. Each year the world produces more food than ever before, yet factors such as centralization of production and competition beset developing regions, accelerate losses of rain

forests from Indonesia to Brazil, and increase calls from academics, and NGOs to meet accelerating demands for food around the world.

To understand these issues, we focus here first on the first principles: the physical environmental factors (mainly climate patterns, water resources, and soil material) that delimit agricultural regions of North America. As part of this discussion, we consider ethical, political, and cultural aspects of food production. We then use these frameworks to examine alternative practices and, to a limited extent, other regions.

Physical geographers ask a variety of questions that help explain agricultural production. Why things grow where they do? Why don’t they grow elsewhere? How do these patterns matter for the people who grow and consume biological resources? How do these human activities shape (or threaten) our environmental systems, and why?

We have two central goals in this course:

1) to understand how basic concepts in physical geography work and how they shape social, economic, and cultural conditions; and

2) to gain a deeper understanding of this critical topic, food and farming, which will continue to shape our communities and our environment in dramatic ways.

GEOG 280/URBS 280 Sustainability planning: Putting theory into practice

1:30-2:45 Tuesday/Thursday

We all want a sustainable future, but how do we get there? Sustainability plans are one approach. Sustainability plans try to provide a road map for putting sustainability principles into practice, and to seek co-benefits for social justice and public health, while teaching us about energy, systems, food systems, and other components of our environmental footprint.

In this course we examine different approaches to sustainability plans, from New York City to the Vassar Campus, as well as examining examples from Germany to China. As part of the class, students will develop portions of a sustainability plan that incorporates their knowledge into a realistic guidance document.