Geography
Global Food Security
Module code: 005GS
Level 6
30 credits in spring semester
Teaching method: Seminar, Lecture, Workshop
Assessment modes: Coursework, Essay
Achieving food security for 10 billion people while reducing the environmental footprint of agriculture is a major challenge of the next century.
In this module, you'll discuss papers on the multiple dimensions of this challenge, including the biophysical, economic, nutritional, sociopolitical and institutional.
Taking a global perspective on issues, you'll draw on global-scale research, as well as case studies from different regions of the world to understand the geography of agricultural production, its environmental footprint and malnutrition.
Key topics include:
- global change and sustainable agriculture
- food security
- impact of climate change: mitigation and adaptation potential of agriculture
- water and food issues
- hunger and famines
- emerging issues in food security: GMOs, labels, diets, urban agriculture, organic agriculture and food waste.
Module learning outcomes
- Evaluate the main dimensions, metrics and indicators of food security.
- Understand and evaluate the different dimensions to food security using the current literature in global sustainable food security.
- Recognise the significance, assumptions, and limitations of arguments related to these dimensions of global food security and their applicability over time and across space
- Formulate academic arguments about contemporary food-security related issues and present them in varied forms.