Introduction

An estimated of 1.3 billion tons of food, about 30 percent of global production, is lost or wasted annually while 800 billion go hungry. Much of this waste happens in the United States.

In San Diego, between one-third and one-half of community college students faced food insecurity.

The numbers are shocking. But there is something we can all do about it. With this assignment, we will address the food waste and food insecurity epidemic by analyzing its core causes and while considering ways that we can advocate for solutions and change.

Reading and Writing Skills

Over the course of this assignment, we will continue to work on developing key academic reading and writing skills, which you will use throughout your career as a student and which constitute the basis of most scholarly writing. We will be annotating and close reading texts, dissecting parts of argument, evaluating different types of sources, taking into consideration the purpose and audience of our writing, and finally creating our own arguments by developing strong thesis statements, incorporating sources into our argument and thoroughly explaining and analyzing evidence to convince our intended audience of our argument and to hopefully make a change.

Focusing Questions

Through our reading and writing over the next few weeks, we will be considering and discussing the following: What are the primary causes of the current food waste and food insecurity crisis? What are the best solutions to this crisis?