The Transformative Food Systems Seminar (TFS) is a year-long, experiential graduate class at the University of Michigan that focused on strategies that can transform food systems into more sustainable, health- promoting and equitable food systems. We learned from change agents and hopeful solutions taking root across Michigan, the U.S. and other countries, and reflected on how to approach this work through systems thinking and an ethics of sustainability and justice. For the final project, students carried out a “backcasting” project. Their task was to propose a future vision where certain issues and inequities have been resolved and work backward to identify the technological, socio-cultural, and/or structural-policy-economic changes that would be needed to achieve that ideal future.
