http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/28/7927077/berkeley-edible-education-lecture-series
Some of the world's preeminent food policy thinkers and
researchers are taking part in a new Edible Education lecture
series at UC Berkeley this spring semester, and their lectures are
being made available to stream online. Starting this Monday with
an introductory note from Michael Pollan (video above, jump to the
9-minute mark to skip the preamble), the series will be updated
weekly with contributions from Marion Nestle, Eric Schlosser, and
Raj Patel. You can stream those live on the day itself and
participate in a Q&A on Twitter and Facebook, or you can just
pick up the video on YouTube later on.
The decisions made when setting food policy, argues Pollan, have
broader consequences than most of us imagine. "Eating is, among
other things, an ecological act," he says, before detailing some
of the more devitalizing impacts of high-volume agriculture on our
environment and ecology. He also echoes the words of New York
Times writer Mark Bittman, another participant in this Edible
Education initiative, in asking for more political attention to be
granted to the centrality of food to so many issues:
"These are all related: You can’t address climate change
without fixing agriculture, you can’t fix health without improving
diet, you can’t improve diet without addressing income, and so on.
The production, marketing and consumption of food is key to nearly
everything."
The series will run all the way through the end of April, with the
final few lectures looking into ideas for a more sustainable food
system that can serve the planet's population without sapping its
resources as aggressively as the current one.