Molly Anderson
Partridge Chair in Food and Sustainable Agriculture Systems
(207) 801-5729 | manderson@coa.edu

We welcome Dr. Molly Anderson to the COA community. Molly has focused her career on food systems issues. She is especially interested in effective multi-stakeholder collaborations for sustainability. Her professional writing and speaking is on food security, food politics, food rights, food sovereignty and sustainability metrics. She was a Coordinating Lead Author on the North America/Europe section of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development.

Most recently, Molly has been consulting on science and policy for social justice, ecological integrity and democratic food systems. Prior to that, she held two interim positions at Oxfam America 2002-2005 and a faculty position at Tufts University, where she taught, administered programs, built partnerships and conducted research for 14 years. She co-founded and for five years directed the Agriculture, Food and Environment Graduate Degree Program in the School of Nutrition Science & Policy at Tufts. She also directed Tufts Institute of the Environment. She was a national Food & Society Policy Fellow 2002-2004, and currently is a Senior Wallace Fellow at Winrock International.

Molly serves on several advisory boards related to sustainable agriculture. She is on the Standards Committee and works on Social Criteria for the ANSI Sustainable Agriculture Standards initiative, administered by the Leonardo Academy. She is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition.

Molly is the inaugural holder of the Partridge Chair in Food and Sustainable Agriculture Systems. Feeding the world's 7 billion people imposes enormous impacts through the production, distribution, preparation, and consumption of food. The study of sustainable agriculture practices at COA engages students in examining the myriad social, cultural, political, ecological and economic implications of the ways our food systems work - or do not work. From rural development to the politics of globalization, students are encouraged to use interdisciplinary perspectives to understand, critique, and work to improve global and local food systems. This program chair in sustainable agriculture and food systems has been fully funded by the Partridge Foundation.

Courses Taught

HS779Fixing Food Systems: Sustainable Production & Consumption

This course will examine food systems and efforts to make them more sustainable by increasing their health, environmental and social impacts. Students will be introduced to different approaches to food system reform including voluntary corporate social responsibility; rights-based approaches; boycotts and other resistance strategies; and building alternatives such as food coops, farmers? markets and community-supported agriculture (CSAs). They will also study several different methodologies for understanding the full impacts of food systems (life-cycle analysis, ecological and social footprinting, contextual analysis, social return on investment, indicator reports). Students will work in teams to investigate a reform strategy that especially interests them, applying an analytical frame and critiquing its usefulness. The course will include at least one Saturday field trip to visit sites that are implementing food system reforms. Level: Intermediate. Class limit 20. Lab fee $20. *HS*

HS794Food, Power and Justice

This course will examine power and politics in the food system: which actors hold power over resources, decision-making and markets, which actors want to hold more power, and how they are contesting or defending their respective positions. We will study the role of social movements, as well as governmental and non-governmental actors, in domestic and international food systems. Students will learn to identify the main actors in food politics and discover how to track their actions and agendas. They will also gain experience in conference organizing, teamwork, and public speaking. Students will be evaluated on demonstrated ability (and growth or deepening of ability) in thoughtful and respectful classroom participation, small group interaction, writing and public speaking. Level: Introductory/Intermediate Class Limit: 15

HS811Hunger, Food Security and Food Sovereignty

Meeting future food needs has risen to the top of the global agenda since 2008, when sudden surges in the cost of staple foods led to riots in many countries and an increase to over one billion people worldwide who could not access enough food for a healthy diet. This course will examine food crises and famines in history and today: what caused historical famines, and what is causing more recent price volatility? What is different about today's food crises? What measures have been proposed to reduce the number of hungry and feed insecure people, and how effective are they? How do we know? This will be a service learning class, in which each student will choose an organization that is trying to tackle hunger and food insecurity with which to serve. We will be working carefully with host organizations to ensure that students are able to contribute meaningfully and learn from their contributions. Evaluation will be based on class participation, a service-learning project, and regular reflection papers. Level: Intermediate. Prerequisites: None. Lab fee: $50. Class limit: 16. *HS*

HS825COA's Foodprint: Our Local Food System

The food supply for most cities and small towns in the US depends on foods raised as efficiently as possible, manufactured into forms that are less perishable, and shipped long distances from centralized warehouses. This food system is largely responsible for some of the nation?s largest and most troubling environmental and social challenges, from water pollution to obesity to climate change. This course is designed to provide students with the background and skills to analyze local food systems by examining the ?backstory? and impacts of food system choices at COA. Where does COA?s food come from? Can we produce more of our own food? Should we? What are the impacts of the food purchasing and consumption decisions we make at COA, and what is the rationale and regulations behind purchasing decisions? How do impacts differ when foods are sourced from COA?s farms, locally, within the state, or internationally? Students in this class will work with dining hall and farm managers to analyze current practices and examine alternatives. The particular emphasis of this course will vary from year to year, and students will build on analyses done in previous years. Topics and issues addressed may include: life-cycle analysis to compare environmental and social impacts of different production and consumption options; basic nutrition principles; food standards and regulations, especially as they apply to campus dining facilities; motivations for food choices and how people acquire them; social marketing; and local supply and demand for food grown with environmentally- or socially-responsible methods (including foods grown on COA?s farms). In carrying out research projects, students will learn skills such as: descriptive statistics and data analysis, life-cycle analysis, survey design and interpretation, and qualitative research methods. Surveys and exploration of social marketing will provide opportunities to consider ethical research guidelines and apply for institutional

HS838Systems Dynamics

We hear regularly about "ecosystems", the "health care system", the "public educational system", the "food system" and the "global financial system". But what is a system, and what is "systems thinking"? The latter has become a buzz-word in many fields, put forward as a way to achieve breakthroughs in dealing with entrenched problems. Certainly systemic problems require systemic solutions; but this does not imply that all problems are best solved with holistic or systems thinking. This course will parse different systems into their generic components, examine when and where systems thinking is useful and appropriate, and explore how this approach can provide insights in various fields. It will begin with general elements of systems thinking, such as stocks; information, energy and material flows; feedback loops; and regulatory mechanisms. It will proceed to examine specific systems, such as those dealing with health care, food, and education, and students will learn first-hand through panel presentation show various actors within a system view barriers and leverage points for systems change differently. Students will experiment with simple computer-aided systems modeling. They will have the opportunity to model a system of their choice, and draft papers about leverage points for changing this system. We will interact with visiting staff from Elm Farm Organic Research Centre (ORC) in England on setting up systems research projects on COA's farms, and take advantage of distance learning resources that ORC provides on the farming systems approach. Evaluation will be based on class participation, final project and reading critiques. Level: Introductory/Intermediate. Prerequisites: none. Class limit: 16. Lab fee: none. *HS*

HS845Redefining Food Systems Efficiency

"Efficiency" has been the driver and justification for agricultural innovation in industrialized societies, including the United States, over the past 60 years. Efficiency has meant in practice the replacement of human labor with synthetic chemicals, petroleum and mechanization. The results have been dramatic increases in production and productivity, but also massive displacement of the rural population to cities, the death of rural communities, environmental degradation, scale changes in agriculture, and growing contributions from agriculture to global environmental change. Thinking about "efficiency" in the long term, rather than with its common short-term meaning, would incorporate the full costs of agricultural practices, such as their impacts on the environment, animal welfare, rural communities, and the possibility of making a decent living as a farmer or wage worker in agriculture. This course will examine the most innovative practices in the Northeast that point toward long-term food system efficiency and sustainability. Participating students in Maine will examine the Northeastern food system and its current issues in depth through films, research and interviews with practicioners. Students will document what they learn and combine their interviews and documentation into the story of food system innovation in the Northeast. Course lectures will be videotaped for students in England and Germany who take the course through distance learning. COA students will interact with British and Germany students to allow comparisons of how young people in different industrialized countries think about sustainability and long-term efficiency in the food system, as well as comparisons of the actual practices and the level of innovation across countries and across food system sectors. Evaluation will be based on class participation, essays and assignments, and participation with students in England and Germany. Level: Intermediate/Advanced. Prerequisites: some expe

HS855Introduction to Sustainability

Introduction to Sustainability is a gateway into current thinking and practice on sustainability in multiple fields. It will use examples of people and organizations trying to move toward more sustainable practices in city planning, transportation, food systems, energy, business operations, housing design, consumption, waste disposal and other areas. Guest speakers who are working to implement more sustainable practices in their businesses and society will help introduce students to the most current thinking and practice in their fields. Although most of the class will be grounded in specific examples, we will begin with controversies over the meaning of sustainability and address how it can be measured and evaluated. The last part of the class will deal with socio-cultural changes needed to move individuals and societies toward more sustainable practices and how these can become part of the warp and woof of the way we live. Students will be evaluated based on participation in class discussion, regular journal entries, completion of individual and group assignments, and independent projects and presentations that explore and share practices in a specific field of particular interest to each student. Level: Introductory/Intermediate. Prerequisites: none. Class limit: 18. Lab fee: $25. *HS*