The production and distribution of food is a very contentious issue which has implications for politics, economics, culture, the environment and ethics. Analyses of food, how it's produced, processed, distributed and consumed, exemplify many themes established as 'core' to geography: inequality; power; environmental sustainability; the links between ideology; policy and practice; and the contested nature of science. This module holds that the food business, as currently organised, is globally inequitable, environmentally unsustainable, ethically indefensible and scientifically suspect. Studying 'the food business' exposes bizarre anomalies in our contemporary global political and economic systems. While millions still suffer from conventional malnutrition associated with insufficient diets, a new form of malnutrition associated with obesity and unhealthy diets is emerging as a major global health crisis. Industrial food production is being exported to the developing world just as its social and environmental costs are under scrutiny in the developed world. This module evaluates the problems and potentialities of a globalised food provisioning system with reference to specific case studies in the North and South. Specific themes include: old and new conceptions of food security; equity and sustainability in food provisioning systems; globalisation and food provisioning; corporate control and democratic accountability in food systems; the international trade and food; rural crises in the North and South; technology and food production; environmental impacts of contemporary food production systems; globalisation and industrial agriculture; challenges for the 21st Century

10 Lectures to introduce the core themes and perspectives (10 hours)
10 Seminars/workshops employing a variety of strategies to encourage students to engage with the material and each other. (10 hours)

The remaining 130 hours should be used to prepare for the seminars, workshops and examination.

One examination (100%) [Learning outcomes 1 – 6]
2 hours in length – two essays in two hours (each worth 50%)

Young, E (2012) Food and Development. Routledge, London

Clapp, J (2012) Food [Polity Press, Cambridge, UK]

Patel, R (2008) Stuffed and Starved London Portobello Books]

Roberts, P. (2008) The End of Food, Bloomsbury

Robinson, G (2004) Geographies of Agriculture. Prentice Hall, London

Millstone, E and Lang, T (2003) The Atlas of Food. Earthscan, London

Atkins, P and Bowler, I (2001) Food in Society. Arnold, London

None.

1) Critically evaluate the geography of contemporary malnutrition, its manifestations in both under nutrition and obesity in the developed and underdeveloped world including an appreciation of the use and abuse of relevant nutritional statistics
(KNOWLEDGE & UNDERSTANDING, APPLICATION)

2) Demonstrate an advanced systematic understanding of historical and contemporary trends in food production and distribution and their causation and consequence.
(KNOWLEDGE & UNDERSTANDING, ANALYSIS)

3) Demonstrate an advanced ability to describe and explain the emergence of industrial food production and its social and environmental implications and critically evaluate the rationale and potential for alternative food provisioning systems.
(ANALYSIS)

4) Demonstrate and advanced and critical understand the contested nature of the concepts ‘food security’ and ‘food sovereignty’ and their relevance to contemporary food politics and critically evaluate the role and responsibilities of agents at various stages and scales of the food system.
(ENQUIRY, ANALYSIS, APPLICATION)

5) Express and communicate knowledge and ideas clearly and concisely
(COMMUNICATION)