Overcoming Agricultural Illiteracy at a Land Grant University.

While the current perception towards agriculture is generally positive in U.S. education, actual knowledge of agriculture and the number of students graduating in agriculture-related disciplines continues to decline.  There is a critical need to increase the talent pipeline into agricultural disciplines to address future challenges of food security and climate change.  Because the role of agriculture is poorly understood in general education fields and by the general public, a class entitled Soils and Civilizations was developed and has been taught at the University of Tennessee for 9 years to approximately 2500 undergraduate students. Through surveys and open-ended essays, the impact of the curriculum has been studied with respect to student awareness and opinions about agriculture and its social and environmental significance in the rise and fall of civilizations, and its impact on the environment as well as climate change.  This curriculum presents students with at least 8 examples of civilizations whose agricultural practices were not sustainable resulting in the collapse of those civilizations, and 3 examples of civilizations that developed agricultural practices that were sustained for hundreds and even thousands of years.