Winter 2007

Seminar on Alternatives in Agriculture:
Realizing New Possibilities

(PLS 190 – IAD 290, for undergraduates and graduate students, respectively)
Tuesdays 4:10 to 6:00, 101 Bowley
Guest speakers in this seminar will include farmers, community leaders and organizers, researchers and educators. They will help us explore a number of evolving approaches and efforts to improve the ecological, social, and economic outcomes of food and farming systems. We will focus on a number of local and regional examples and also look at how these examples fit into larger patterns nationally and internationally. Our general format will be an hour of lecture and questions from the audience, followed by a second hour of facilitated small group discussion. The seminar was first organized by students in 1975 and students have taken the lead in developing the themes, content and speaker lists for the course ever since.

Topics for 2007 will include:

• Successful alternative marketing models
• Farmers’ efforts to incorporate social justice and equity into their enterprises
• Challenges and opportunities related to social justice standards and certification
• Student efforts to create more sustainable campus food systems at UC Davis and elsewhere
• Non-profit & public initiatives to promote healthy rural communities & economies
• Analysis of the reliance on market solutions for ethical outcomes
• Public vs private corporate control of genetic resources
• Multi-functional urban agriculture on public land

Registration information:
Undergraduates: enroll in PLS 190-001, CRN 63635
Graduates: enroll in IAD 290-001, CRN 49613

For information, contact: Mark Van Horn, mxvanhorn@ucdavis.edu