PLSCI 5140 - Global Cropping Systems and Sustainable Development

(CU-ITL, CU-SBY, EC-LASP)

Spring. 3 credits. Student option grading (no audit).

Co-meets with GDEV 4140/PLSCI 4140.

A. McDonald.

With accelerating demands for food, feed, and fiber along with increasing recognition of the importance of agricultural systems to ecosystem services and rural livelihoods, the requirements of agricultural systems are simultaneously intensifying and diversifying. This course introduces foundational concepts that explain the distribution, productivity, and ecological impacts of the world’s major cropping systems from an interdisciplinary perspective, including soils, climate and water, markets, policies, and institutions. Through systems thinking and process-based agronomy, an emphasis is placed on assessing solutions for resolving core challenges to the sustainable development goals in the context of global change. Students gain insights into sustainable intensification technologies as well as the social process that support innovation. Evidence synthesis through a geographically-anchored case study and active participation in class discussions are required.

Outcome 1: Describe the biophysical and socioeconomic factors that interact to define and differentiate global cropping systems.

Outcome 2: Articulate major drivers of change and how they are influencing, and will likely continue to influence, the structure and function of global cropping systems.

Outcome 3: Diagnose core challenges to improving food security, profitability, and ecosystem service outcomes as they differ across major cropping systems from an integrative sustainable development perspective.

Outcome 4: Translate principles to practice by critically reviewing sustainability challenges in selected cropping systems and developing insights into intervention priority setting that will drive more effective agricultural development programming.

Outcome 5: Collaborate and communicate with a peer group to frame problems and potential solutions in a common logical model that is supported by evidence and systems thinking.