Sustainable Food Security: Crop Production

University of Florida via edX

Overview

Exploring the monumental challenge of feeding nine billion people by 2050 without depleting Earth's reserves, the "Sustainable Food Security: Crop Production" course delves into production ecology and the critical "availability pillar" crucial for food production. This enlightening course covers the essentials of crop production, addressing why yields vary globally and the agro-ecological factors influencing production systems' diversity.

The program further investigates strategies for bridging yield gaps and their relation to sustainability visions. Offered online, this course attracts a diverse international audience, enhancing participants' understanding and actions towards global food security and food systems. Professor Ken E. Giller leads the course, focusing on crop production’s bio-physical foundations, diagnosing yield formation constraints, and evaluating yield gaps across global production systems for superior resource management.

Hosted by Wageningen University and Research, known for its exemplary research and education in "healthy food and living environment", the course boasts a systems-based approach to food systems, integrating primary production into the wider context of global food security.

As part of the XSeries program "Sustainable Food Security", this course joins others in a series aimed at educating on sustainable feeding of the world's burgeoning population and wealth. Additional MOOCs in the series include "Sustainable Food Security: Food Access" and "Sustainable Food Security: The Value of Systems Thinking", making this program essential for those looking to make impactful strides in sustainability.

Offered by the University of Florida on edX, this course aligns with multiple sustainability categories and SDGs, including SDG 1: Poverty, SDG 2: Hunger, Agriculture, SDG 6: Water, SDG 13: Climate, SDG 15: Land, and SDG 17: Partnerships, positioning it as a vital educational tool for addressing some of today’s most pressing global challenges.