Food Equity, Ethics, and Politics

Ensuring food security for the growing global population is a grand challenge with many competing, contentious issues. Conflicts regarding land, technology, natural resources, subsidies, inequity, migration, and trade all play out in the food policy arena. Some argue that to effectively address food security, global food systems must be efficient, equitable, and sustainable. However, the political framing of how food systems are designed, function, and governed is determined by a complex set of networks of individuals and institutions with vested interests. This course is designed to introduce and guide students to:

•  Investigate the equity and ethical issues of food systems in policy and practice. 

• Think critically about various conflicting views of who is vulnerable, marginalized, and disadvantaged across food systems, why, and the consequences of those inequities.  

• Explore where there are inequities in accessing food and the implications of policies in achieving food security.  

• Examine the range of food policies and the political landscape of food in high-, middle-, and low-income countries that impact global food security, human nutrition, and broader aspects of health, food safety, economics, and the environment and climate. 

• Deliberate and debate who is responsible for ensuring food systems are equitable and through which policy instruments. 

The course borrows tools from food systems, political science, practical ethics, political philosophy, and theories of justice to illuminate these issues that determine our common future and the way we personally and socially relate to the food we grow and eat.