180.644.86
Food System Resilience
Location
Internet
Term
2nd Term
Department
Environmental Health and Engineering
Credit(s)
2
Academic Year
2024 - 2025
Instruction Method
Asynchronous Online
Auditors Allowed
Yes, with instructor consent
Available to Undergraduate
No
Grading Restriction
Letter Grade or Pass/Fail
Course Instructor(s)
Contact Name
Frequency Schedule
Every Year
Resources
Prerequisite
Introduction to Online Learning
Natural and human-made crises challenge food systems, particularly when co-occurring. Even without crises linked with climate change, pandemic, price rises, supply chain disruptions, etc., our food systems have long failed to provide healthy, safe, sufficient, and culturally acceptable food to all.
Provides an overview of how acute and chronic disasters affect food systems, describes actions to support food security, and discusses public health roles. Shares stories and insights from guest speakers at the cutting edge of policy, practice, and research, from community to global scale. Explores concepts of food systems, resilience, preparedness, and equity. Reviews strengths, limitations, and unintended consequences of responses. Discusses how systemic factors (e.g., poverty, racism, and unsustainable food systems) affect outcomes. Challenges students to explore diverse perspectives and constraints, build on assets, and envision responses for emergency needs and longer-term systemic change.
Learning Objectives
Upon successfully completing this course, students will be able to:
- Explain concepts of food system resilience, resilience attributes, food security and food systems
- Discuss at least two key vulnerabilities and two opportunities to strengthen resilience within each of the following: agriculture, food supply chains, consumer food security
- Apply course concepts to news media articles about current disaster situations
- Critique at least 3 food-related responses to a selected crisis, including identifying unidentified negative consequences
- Use a structured approach to identify a strategy to address food-related consequences of a selected disaster
- Discuss how politics and systemic factors (such as racism, immigration, poverty, gender roles, policy, media, food access, nutrition, food supply chains, food animal production, etc.) affect outcomes
Methods of Assessment
This course is evaluated as follows:
- 60% Short written assignments (3 - each worth 20%)
- 20% Knowledge Checks
- 20% Participation