99-333 Agriculture, Food and Environment
Instructors: Dr. Larry Patrick and Renee Roy
Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6:30-7:50 PM
Location: Porter Hall 125B
Fall 2008
Course Description
This course reifies Michael Pollan’s (2006) recent assertion that food must be good for the stomach and for the brain. Our present (omnivore’s) dilemma, as it were, is that we in America don’t think about our food. This course takes its participants from the mindless act of consuming food to the brink of true astonishment over the power and impact food production has exerted on the human race and on earth systems over the last ten thousand years. Students taking this course will encounter the agriculture revolution itself and its full impact on societal organization and on natural systems wherever it spread. Both historical and geographical approaches are used to bring students mindfully to their latest encounter with the foods they eat.
Detailed analysis will be given to the relationship of food production to the themes of 1) subsistence livelihood (anthropology and cultural geography), 2) food surplus and the rise of urban-based patriarchy (sociology), 3) the environmental impact of industry-model agriculture (ecology and political economy), 4) today’s agriculture in the context of peak oil (economics), 5) today’s agriculture and the question of its water/carbon footprint, and 6) contemporary, post-industrial farming practices including sustainable agriculture, organic farming, and urban/peri-urban farming in today’s metropolitan areas of the world. Please contact Larry Patrick (larrylpatrick@gmail.com) or Renee Roy (renee.roy@gmail.com) with any course-related questions.
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