Sustainably Feeding a Growing Planet

This is a novel, interdisciplinary course which was originally developed as part of my sabbatical with the Food Security and Environment Program at Stanford University in 2011-2012. I have subsequently collaborated with Uris Baldos to further develop the course into a permanent offering at Purdue University. A textbook, from Springer, is designed to accompany the course as well as facilitate its offering at other universities:

Hertel, Thomas W. and U.L.C. Baldos, 2016.  Global Change and the Challenge of Sustainably Feeding a Growing Planet, New York: Springer, E-book available at: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-22662-0.

While the course is inter-disciplinary, students benefit from having some prior exposure to economics as well as some experience with simulation modeling their chosen field. The course meets twice a week and each week introduces a new theme related to the interface between agriculture, the environment and food security. The Tuesday meeting brings in an outside speaker who is an expert in the topic, be it climate change, hydrology, biodiversity, etc. This guest lecture is followed by a student led discussion of the week's required readings. The Thursday meeting is devoted to economic analysis of the issues under discussion. Students regularly undertake lab assignments which involve running the SIMPLE model of global land use, food and environment security, developed by Uris Baldos and myself. The latest version of SIMPLE, SIMPLE-G, allows for geospatial analysis of economic determinants of land and water resource use. Each lab introduces a new long run driver or a new margin of economic response to scarcity. Given its simple structure, these model-based excercises are an excellent way to learn about the basics of demand and supply and how they bear on long run land use, food prices, nutrition, biodiversity and environmental outcomes. 

During the final six weeks of the semester, in addition to covering new topics in class, students work on class projects using the SIMPLE model. These cover a wide range of topics, including issues as diverse as: the impact of urbanization on global cropland, the implications of reduced meat consumption for global land use, the implications of water scarcity for food and environmental security, the consequences of climate change for nutrition, the impact of forest carbon sequestration policies for food prices, etc.

To access a recent article about this course, click here.

To download the syllabus, click here.