ABSTRACT
Education in agriculture has generally focused on the process of pro ducing food, fiber, and raw materials for industrial and other manufac turing. Courses and curricula are organized along narrow disciplinary lines, in large part because that is the way research and departments were established many decades ago (Altieri and Francis, 1992). Al though students have researched the components of agroecosystems, until recently there has been little attention to how the complexities of food and natural resource systems could be addressed through our clas sical offerings of courses and majors in current departments. The goal of this discussion is to expand the scope of our thinking about agro ecology. Skills, knowledge, and vision can be achieved in educational programs that are explicitly focused on the complexity of food systems and how alternative approaches can be designed for the future.
