Global Food Security: Addressing the Challenge

This free online course, a massive open online course (MOOC), from Lancaster University, UK, introduces the issue of food security and explores some of the different ways in which it has been described both in research and in practice, and considers key concerns for the future. It will run for 8 weeks and require 3 hours study per week with a certificate on completion. The start date has yet to be announced.

The central concern of the course is ‘How we will feed an extra two billion people by the middle of this century?’ Focussing both on UK agriculture and on food supply chains in other parts of the world, it will examine how food has shaped our environmental and social landscapes. While everyone would agree that food security is ‘a good thing’, ideas about what it means in practice and how it should be achieved vary tremendously. Proposed developments to address global food insecurity range from technological inventions in the efficacy of large-scale agriculture through social and cultural innovations in local food production and consumption.