Part I. Future Academic Plans: Congratulations on being to close to completing the course! What degree are you working toward?

Part I. Future Academic Plans: Congratulations on being to close to completing the course! What degree are you working toward? What is your progress in accomplishing your educational goals and what courses are you starting next month? Why did you choose these courses? (This portion of the forum is ungraded and replies to your classmates regarding their plans do not count toward you total number of replies, although you are certainly welcome to comment or give advice to your classmates.)

Now, onto the graded portion of this discussion forum.

Part II. Questions:

In order to allow time for your classmates to respond, an initial response should be posted no later than Wednesday, 11:55 p.m., ET.  Your response should be no more than 1-2 short paragraphs.  Since this is not a writing assignment but a discussion, you will not need to formally reference your work but need to attribute it to the source you found it, something likely you do in everyday conversation. For example, "Yesterday I was reading in the Washington Post that . . " or, "I found this interesting video on YouTube."

Local Agriculture Plan: In this initial response, research and summarize environmental impacts of agriculture and think about where you live. In an ideal situation, how would you feed the people in your local area (the answer from someone in Alaska should differ from someone in Hawaii)? What would system of agriculture would you recommend and why? There are not right or wrong answers, what is important for our discussion is how you apply environmental and agricultural principles that you have researched to your local area. Some ideas to include in your plan (Feel free to be creative):

• Crop production: How and from where would crops be produced? 
• Animal production: How and from where would animal productions be produced?
• Distribution Distance: How far away would fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy and processed foods travel? 
• Farming Methods: What methods of farming would be used? GMOs? Organic? Pesticides? Herbicides? Industrial methods? 

In your response, mention whether your ideas for local sustainable agriculture could be extended to global production and why.