Beginning with our week one field trip to the NW Chocolate Festival (10.5.24), this program will prepare students for Evergreen’s winter quarter study abroad program: Bittersweet: Cocoa and Permaculture in Trinidad. We'll ask “What Makes Chocolate Good?” and hold the question open as we explore answers through our senses with chocolate tastings, through agricultural labor on the campus farm (or elsewhere), as well as through analyses of cocoa’s political ecology as a global, but north-south stratified, multibillion-dollar agribusiness commodity. We'll also ask why the world’s most expensive cocoa bean is linked to a practice of permaculture called syntropic agroforestry.
Although this course will include study abroad workshops and can be taken to prepare for experiential food and agricultural learning anywhere, a focus will be the stigma and historical trauma often associated with agriculture in the tropics. From literary explorations such as Valerie Loichot’s The Tropics Bite Back: Culinary Coups in Caribbean Literature, to youth-oriented regenerative agricultural initiatives such as GRuB and WHYFARM, we’ll pay careful attention to cross-cultural contemporary and historical accounts of land-based inequalities. How can the "the stigma" often associated with agricultural labor and racial capitalism be effectively understood and countered? Why are the majority of the worlds’ farmers underpaid, not-white, and women? Why are the majority of seed companies also petrochemical companies and the highest return on real estate investment gained in “farm” land?
By the end of fall quarter, interested and qualified students will have at least entry-level proficiency in agricultural and social media production, an appreciation for land-based experiential learning including historical trauma in the contexts of Caribbean and American agriculture, sensory assessment skills regarding bittersweet tastes, and a passport.
Anticipated Credit Equivalencies:
2 - Introduction to the Political Ecologies of Cocoa: (Post)Colonial Taste
2 - Food and Agriculture: Preparing for Experiential Learning Abroad
Registration
Signature Required
Priority registration will be for students also enrolled in Eating Media: Food as Medium and Message who are prepared to complete the Office of International Study's study abroad application for Bittersweet: Cocoa and Permaculture in Trinidad
Course Reference Numbers
Academic Details
Agriculture; Climate and Environmental Justice; Cultural Studies; Education; Food Justice; Food Studies; Food Systems; Gender, Sexuality, and Queer Studies; Media Studies, Media Analysis
$70 total fee covers admission to the NW Chocolate Festival ($30.00) and food labs in the SAL ($20.00).