Feeding the world’s population while ensuring the environmental sustainability is one of the world’s ‘grand challenges’. As we look ahead to the middle of this century, will the world’s agricultural resource base be up to the task of meeting the diverse demands being placed on it by growing population, rising incomes, growing biofuel production and rising demand for land-based environmental services?

This online resource contains materials based on a graduate-level course  offered at Purdue University on global food sustainability. It heavily draws from the textbook "Global Change and the Challenges of Sustainability Feeding a Growing Planet" by Thomas Hertel and Uris Lantz Baldos including supplementary reading materials and lab assignments using the SIMPLE model. 

The course is designed for 14 weeks with each week allotted to a  topic on global agricultural change. Beginning the week with an overview lecture by a faculty member with expertise in this area, followed by student-led discussion of the readings and book chapter - leading into discussion of the lab assignments and a review of the basic principles of economics.

Half a dozen lab assignments which use the SIMPLE model are spaced out over the first 10 weeks of the semester. The labs are drawn from the empirical examples at the end of each chapter, sometimes consolidating several themes into one assignment.

For comments / questions / recommendations, please contact Uris Baldos (ucbaldos@gmail.com)

Date Modified: 07/2016

Site is under construction and will be finished by August 2016