Sustainability of Food Systems: A Global Life Cycle Perspective with Jason Hill

Key Takeaways

Hamburger or hummus, organic or conventional, Mediterranean diet or McDonald's? What dietary choices are truly the most sustainable when we consider that what we eat affects not just our health, but also the environment and the well-being of those involved in its production. My name is Jason Hill, Mcnite Lang Grant Professor of Biorproducts and Bios Engineering at the University of Minnesota. I'm excited to be teaching this course, Sustainability of Food Systems, a global life cycle perspective. This course will provide you with an overview of our world's food system and its many impacts from the individual to global scale. You will gain further appreciation of the complex implications of choices that are made along the food supply chain. You will be encouraged to think critically about how the global food system may need to change to adapt to future economic and environmental conditions. This course is organized around 15 questions that span the full life cycle of food production and use, including everything from food and dietary composition to food processing and delivery to the health and environmental implications of what we eat. Other members of our University of Minnesota faculty with expertise in these areas will assist us in answering these questions. In this course, you will have the opportunity to participate in discussions with your colleagues who themselves will be from all over the world. I've chosen case studies, readings, and other resources to emphasize that we can only make responsible decisions about what to eat when we consider the entire global food supply chain and its full set of economic, environmental, and social consequences. Our world's population is projected to grow both in numbers and in wealth in the coming decades. Meeting future food demand, and doing so in a sustainable fashion will require that we greatly increase the amount we produce and improve the efficiency by which it makes it to our tables. Please join me as we explore today's global food system and how we might improve its sustainability, both for our benefit and that of future generations.