Studying Food & Agriculture at Yale 

We bring together different disciplinary perspectives to better understand the challenges and opportunities embedded in food and farming systems, small and large.

Food systems problems are “wicked,” in that their solutions cannot be generated within the bounds of any singular discipline or department. Combined with the socioeconomic imperative to study problems with consequences that are quite literally planetary, food offers Yale students a prism through which to take a liberal arts approach that careens through conceptual frameworks and diverse academic literatures.

At the Yale Sustainable Food Program, studying food takes many forms across campus. Faculty members and graduate students take their students to the Farm for field-based and embodied inquiry. YSFP-invited guest speakers and staff members guest teach in Yale College courses. Undergraduates probe food-and-ag-related lines of inquiry through knead 2 know, our Melon Forum, and our Chewing the Fat series. And Yale offers over 20 courses on food and agriculture each semester, with demand for on-campus programming at an all-time high. A major goal of the Yale Sustainable Food Program is to help guide both undergraduates and graduate students looking to incorporate food and agriculture into their course of study.