This annual uniquely UC Berkeley course, now in its eighth year, explores the future of food, its diverse systems and movements. Edible Education 101 is a two-credit weekly lecture series that brings renowned experts—leading academics and practitioners—to campus to share their visions, research, and experiences about food and its critical role in our culture, well-being and survival. The food system is a complex web of interconnected relationships and disciplines. It is also estimated to be at least a $12 trillion dollar business globally. The way food tastes, is produced, distributed and eaten has everything to do with our personal, public and planetary health and sustainability. Edible Education 101 reveals the systematic links between agroecology, agronomy, anthropology, biology, business, cooking, economics, nutrition, philosophy, policy, sociology, technology and the arts. Past lecture topics have included organic agriculture, school lunch reform, food safety, hunger and food security, global inequities in food, chef-seed breeder collaborations, urban agriculture, food sovereignty, and local food economies.
This course is different each year it is offered, keeping the content fresh and unique. It is a special co-creation of the faculty, student learners, and distinguished guests who bring their perspectives and passions to the course in ways intended to inform and inspire you. At EE 101, the class sessions and readings aim to guide you to develop food-systems intelligence—a personal understanding of how the diverse facets of the food system relate and depend on one another, especially one's own role as a participant in the food system and how individual and collective choices, actions and behaviors affect it. We’d like to see our next generation of eaters and leaders develop consciousness and intention as “systems actors” and systems thinkers.

Food Innovation Studio is a two-unit course that enables graduate business school students (and related graduate students and professionals in diverse disciplines including food science, engineering, public health, environmental studies, law, and computer science) to identify, define and solve novel and pressing challenges and unmet needs in the broader food-system. Learners develop insights into the systemic interdepencies that impact personal health and planetary sustainability and work to conceive, test and launch high impact, market-based solutions. The course emphasizes mission-driven business designs that not only create competitive financial outcomes, but positive social and environmental impact as well. The course supports teams of learners to develop an innovation or new venture using a rapid, lean entrepreneurial process. The disciplines of human-centered design, lean-launch, rapid prototyping, business model development, venture formation and venture pitch-presentation are blended into an accelerated experiential learning program over 11 weeks. The course also attracts leading food industry leaders and entrepreneurs as guest speakers and mentors. The actual course topics and projects are originated and chosen by the student teams.

Entrepreneurship for Farmers is an immersive, experiential learning program to give farmers the opportunity to learn from and collaborate with each other and industry experts as they develop their entrepreneurial skills under Will Rosenzweig’s guidance and leadership. Farm owners and managers run complex, nuanced businesses. Those seeking to do so in a manner that is both economically and environmentally sustainable must apply creativity, vision and grit to their work. There now exists a variety of progressive farmer training programs and apprenticeships. This initiative will complement these types of programs, and support farmers in applying the principles of entrepreneurship to their farm businesses. It is a week a week-long program with a practical and useful business framework in hand that complements their expertise in regenerative agriculture and empowers them to apply proven entrepreneurial practices to their farming business. Each farmer will finish the week-long program with a practical and useful business framework in hand that complements their expertise in regenerative agriculture and empowers them to apply proven entrepreneurial practices to their farming business.

Starting a food business these days is pretty easy. Sustaining and scaling a food business? Not so much. How do you choose the right path to take your food business to the next level—with intensity, efficiency and authenticity? Industry-leading faculty, with expert, business-building experience, will guide you through a rigorous process of discovery to move you from insight to execution, generating new growth options, and charting the most promising path to scale. After three immersive days of doing, experimenting and thinking, you’ll leave with actionable insights, heightened skills in identifying (and choosing between) opportunities, a cadre of advanced business tools and methods for analysis and decision-making, and your best scaling options codified in an investable launch plan.