Agricultural Geography
Today's agriculture is sprung from historical changes but is at the same time part of current societal and environmental challenges such as climate change, just transition, migration and long-term sustainable food supply.
This is the theme of the course in agrarian geography, which provides a spatial and social science theoretical perspective on the geographical conditions and changes of agriculture.
The course contributes with a critical analysis of how society and people have organized food security locally, but also how global change processes affect agriculture and how these processes have local effects and imprints in landscapes all over the world. In peoples use of land, competition often arises between different interests in the landscape, such as cultivation of bioenergy instead of food, replanting of arable land for intensified forestry, recreation on former agricultural land in the form of golf courses or horse farms. Different forms of rights to land such as usufruct and what ownership actually means are treated in the course, issues that are important for historical and contemporary changes. Another central question concerns how today's agricultural work organization and social conditions relate to immigration and increasingly automated and data-driven processes.
Climate change and welfare perspectives differ between countries and continents in food security management. The economic conditions of agriculture are both locally conditioned and globally market-influenced, older economic geographical theories of location, scale and comparative advantage are used in the course in relation to contemporary theories of globalization, political ecology and agrarian economy to understand and explain current and historical change processes. The course thus has a special focus on the geographical factors that reinforce and change forms of farming in different places and how these relate to the global and societal context they are part of.
An analytical goal of the course is to develop and deepen the course participants' knowledge of the geographical conditions of agriculture in relation to both historical understanding and the societal and environmental challenges of our time.
-
Course structure
Teaching format
The teaching consists of lectures, seminar treatment of current research literature and excursions.
Assessment
The examination consists of an independent project and submitted seminar assignments.
-
Course literature
Note that the course literature can be changed up to two months before the start of the course. -
Contact
Course coordinator
- Visiting address
The Geo-Science Building, room X411
Svante Arrhenius väg 8, Frescati
Academic Counselling
- Visiting address
The Geo-Science Building, room X331
Svante Arrhenius väg 8, Frescati
Student Affairs Office
- Visiting address
The Geo-Science Building, room X326
Svante Arrhenius väg 8, Frescati
- Office hours
Tuesday and Thursday at 10.00–12.00.
- Phone hours
Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10.00–12.00.
