Course · Intro
How food actually works
How food is grown, moved, and priced — the biology, the farm, and the long chain to your plate — so you can see the system behind a meal and read a food claim for what it's worth.
Behind every meal is a system most people never see. This course teaches it from the ground up: how a plant turns sunlight into food, why living soil is a farm's real wealth, and the one factory reaction that now feeds about half the world. Then the system on top — why a single crop across a vast field is both cheap and fragile, why meat costs more than its price tag, who really earns the money in a loaf, and how a drought on the far side of the planet reaches your shop. By the end you can read a food claim and tell what holds up. Principles, not this season's headlines.
What you'll be able to do
- See where food really comes from — sunlight, living soil, and the nitrogen that feeds half the world.
- Explain how food is grown at scale — monoculture, the pesticide treadmill, and the true cost of meat and water.
- Follow the money and the miles from farm to plate — the farmer's slice, the commodity crops, waste, and price shocks.
- Judge a food claim for yourself — and decode it as Sound, Shaky, or Oversold.
Course complete
You finished every lesson. Put your name on it.
Module 1 — Where food comes from
Module 2 — Growing it at scale
One crop, vast fields
Explain the monoculture trade-off — efficient to grow, fragile to shocks.
The pesticide treadmill
Explain how spraying breeds resistance, so the dose must keep climbing.
Why meat costs more than it looks
Explain feed conversion — why meat takes many calories of feed per calorie of food.
The water you can't see
Explain the hidden water in food, and why some of it matters more.
Module 3 — From farm to plate
The cheap-food paradox
Explain why the farmer earns only a few pennies of the price you pay.
The commodity calorie machine
Explain why a few crops dominate, and why most never reach a plate as themselves.
A third is wasted
Explain where food is lost and wasted, and why it differs rich to poor.
When a far-off drought raises your bill
Explain why a small shortfall can cause a large price jump.