Fence Posts to Blog Posts: An Exploration of the Classroom in Experiential Food Systems Education

Abstract

Food education for undergraduate and graduate students has grown far beyond the common land grant institution’s agricultural goals and the culinary school’s production methods. Access, justice, equity, and sovereignty have made their way into the lexicon of food. To this end, there is value in information sharing and experiential learning from experts in the field (quite literally: farmers, processors, distributors, food service workers, farmhands, community activists, and government officials) combined with the academy (researchers, academics, and scholars) that builds a framework to create a truly transdisciplinary education and critical reflection. I draw on my experiences as a student, and as teaching assistant and instructor in non-traditional food systems classrooms in this chapter. Ultimately, I urge the reader to consider an imperative direction in food systems education that may be the best platform for what follows: creatively structured, critically and community engaged, student-centered learning experiences.