Program Overview

With agroecology, food sovereignty, and other non-conventional food and farming approaches at its centre, this course aims to equip you with an in-depth understanding of some of the biggest issues confronting contemporary food and farming systems, and the solutions required for their remedying.

This course:

• Covers a dynamic range of cross-cutting and mutually enriching topics of relevance to 21st century food and farming, including agroecological and other non-conventional food and farming practices; the impacts of climate change on food and farming; gender and food systems; community resilience; farming ecology; issues of power, voice and positionality in food system governance; agriculture and fragile environments; Indigenous approaches to food and farming; water systems; and more.
• Explores examples and case studies at different scales and geographical and social contexts, local to global, North and South.
• Draws from and introduces you to a range of knowledge systems, including natural and social science, but also ‘people’s knowledge’ and participatory methods of social inquiry.

Why you should study this course

• This course is currently one of the only courses of its kind, enabling you to analyse the complex interactions between social and natural systems, theory and practice, scientific and non-scientific knowledge, politics and people, and how these shape food and agriculture outcomes.
• Students on this course are embedded in the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR), an international research centre. Many of the centre’s current 50+ researchers contribute directly to the MSc programme, providing you with opportunities (subject to availability) to get directly involved in CAWR research and their expertise is available to help you to tailor your own study and research specialisations.
• We aim to provide a relaxed and informal learning environment and take student wellbeing seriously. Every student will have access to a personal tutor.
• The course is delivered at CAWR’s teaching facilities4 at the prestigious Ryton Gardens, which houses modern lab facilities, a five-acre organic farm and extensive and beautiful organic gardens.
• Course content is complemented by dedicated career advice for MSc students, specifically tailored to the field of ecologically sustainable and socially just food and farming and the organisations working therein.