Food, Agribusiness, and Beverage Electives

MGT 964 (GNAM): The Future of Food and Agribusiness: Health, Technology, and Sustainability (Damien McLoughlin)

This survey course addresses the main questions and controversies facing the leaders of global food and agribusiness firms and organizations. The course reaches from the primary producer/ farmer to the consumer and takes a global perspective. While this makes the module of specific interest to those working, or with a specific interest, in the food and agribusiness chain, the range of topics covered and the leadership perspective taken also makes this module one of general interest to those with ambitions in consulting, investment, private equity and entrepreneurship.

MGT 559: Marketing Strategy (Jiwoong Shin)

Marketing Strategy offers students the opportunity to develop skills and acquire experience in dealing with strategic marketing problems. The course aims at helping students look at the entire marketing mix in light of the strategy of the firm. This class will be most helpful to students pursuing careers in which they need to look at the firm as a whole. Examples include consultants, investment analysts, entrepreneurs, and product managers. Case studies will highlight marketing strategy exercise in consumer packaged goods, high tech, pharmaceuticals, and luxury goods.

MGT 555: Pricing Strategy (Soheil Ghili)

The course examines the pricing strategies used by profit, nonprofit, and public organizations. Topics include: pricing as a means of market segmentation, quantity discounts, product line pricing, product bundling, pricing over the experience curve and the product life cycle, pricing of durables, pricing in an oligopoly, legal aspects of pricing, and pricing in the public sector. Teaching methods include cases, lectures, and guest speakers.

ENV 618b: Anthropology of Smallholder Agriculture in Developing Countries (Carol Carpenter)

The premise of this course is that small-scale agriculture, its distinctive economic character, and its ecology shape each other in important ways. This course will explore smallholder farming in the developing world through ethnographies. It is often said that small-scale agriculture provides half of the contemporary global food supply (see for example Graeub et al 2016); in fact there are no good global statistics on small farm production, especially in the developing world (in which many nations just don’t have statistics on food production and farm size, Ricciardi et al 2018). This course argues simply that small-scale agricultural food production is important to both livelihoods and food security. If this is so, then the inter-linkages between farms, economies, and ecologies are important. These inter-linkages are also complex.

ENV 639a: Food Systems and Climate Services (J. Nicolas Hernandez-Aguilera)

There is an urgent need to address the sustainability challenges of agri-food systems in a changing climate. This course builds on mixed methods integrating applied economics, management and information, policy, and system analysis tools to understand (and potentially solve) the complex interactions of food systems with natural and human processes. This interdisciplinary course welcomes students with different backgrounds interested in sustainability, food systems, and climate management and policy at a global and Community based scale, with particular emphasis on the Global South.

ENV 653b: Maple: From Tree to Table (Joseph Orefice)

This course covers the cultural, industrial, and sustainable practices of non-timber forest products through the lens of maple sap and syrup. Maple sugar is a forest product unique to northeastern North America, and it has seen a resurgence in interest as global consumers seek nutritious, natural, and sustainably produced foods. This course covers the booming industry and culture around maple syrup, from backyard operations through modern 100,000-tap investment operations. Maple producers are on the front lines of climate change and forest health threats. The course provides students with the knowledge of how challenges related to forest health and climate change are directly impacting maple producers and how these producers are learning to adapt in ways that are environmentally friendly, ecologically sound, and financially competitive in a global market.

ARCH 2247: Soil Sisters (Mae-Ling Lokko)

This course aims to investigate a new paradigm for connecting agricultural waste to large-scale regional material supply chains, in which improving soil nutrition and soil resiliency underpin the design goal of providing cross-sectoral environmental performance through the provision of new biomaterial construction systems.

ARCH 4254: The (Built) Environment: Environmental Design and Urban Transformation in Practice (Jen Shin)

Over the next decade, cities and human settlements will remain a critical lever for addressing the climate crisis and ecological collapse. Contemporary urbanization differs from historical patterns of urban growth in its scale and rate of global change, touching on such dimensions as food and agriculture, land use, biodiversity, water, energy, governance, and more. Large-scale urban expansion of new and growing cities as well as continued development of established cities present opportunities for a new conceptualization of the built environment in the context of sustainability. As cities dominate the globe, the intersection between architecture and environmental action must be redefined. This course is designed for students who seek new terrain for architectural thought within the context of evolving environmental challenges.

Yale Sustainable Food Program

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