SD 3575 - Food Security and Sovereignty (3)

When Offered: On Demand
This course explores the distinctions between food security and food sovereignty, and the approaches to food provisioning and distribution that follow from food security or food sovereignty perspectives. We will explore the relationship between farming and food insecurity. Farmers and farm laborers are among some of the world’s most food insecure. We will examine the role of competition in a world market characterized by unfair trade rules, price volatility, corporate dominance, and speculation; as well as examining a range of strategies intended to improve farmers’ livelihoods, including new agricultural technologies, integration into global value-chains, fair trade, and food sovereignty. The course will explore the relationship between environmental degradation and food insecurity, and also consider how some efforts to improve agricultural productivity have resulted in adverse ecological and social effects. Additionally, we examine the institutions involved in food aid and export-oriented food production, and explore how these institutions address, ignore, or exacerbate inequality in the global food system.