MSc Sustainable Food Systems

Overview

Human development has been marked by extreme flexibility in diet. Language and culture have had profound ecological consequences allowing our species to extract energy from all points in the ecological hierarchy. There is almost nothing that human beings cannot eat either directly or indirectly. As hunter gatherers our Paleolithic ancestors transformed the ecology of their environment through the use of fire. More recently, over the last ten thousand years, the process of agrarianisation has seen a steady tightening of the grip of humanity on the eco-systems of the earth. During the Holocene human beings became one of the most significant sources of ecological change. Having spread out into every geographically accessible territory, the last two thousand years have seen a steady intensification of the flow of people, goods and information between communities straddling the Earth. And over the last five centuries humanity has achieved the integration of a truly global society. The ecological consequences of modernity are perhaps most evident with regard to our food provisioning systems. Over thousands of years, farming communities built up stocks of knowledge and expertise allowing a steady increase in the agricultural surplus available to 'fund' the expansion of material culture and social development. In the wake of globalization modern intensive farming and a mammoth food processing industry are coordinated in real-time by a space-age transport and logistical network orchestrated by a limited number of mammoth supermarket retailers. This course examines the ecological consequences of this food provisioning system and explores the possible alternatives. It includes a comparative analysis of intensive factory farming versus organic production systems vis-à-vis the security of food supplies, biodiversity, carbon footprints and rural economy. Other modules on the course examine possibilities for relocalisation of food economy and culture.

Indicative modules

It will include modules relating to agricultural systems, soil and water management, sustainable rural economy, project management, environmental economics, global resources, sustainable development, the slow food movement, bioregionalism, ecological anthropology, human ecology and food politics.