Our Vision

Balancing our food system and planetary health to create a better world.

Our Mission

To develop change makers and leaders who improve global health through science, innovation and positive actions that recognize the critical connections between soil, plants, animals, humans, and the environment.
We will achieve our Mission by:

• Ensuring agricultural systems promote planetary health – sustainable stewardship of Earth’s natural resources, improved human health and animal welfare – through research and teaching.
• Addressing critical societal and cultural issues through engagement between faculty, staff, students, Indigenous peoples, and local and global communities.
• Collaborating within and across disciplines to conduct research with purpose and impact.
• Utilizing our physical and virtual spaces to enhance teaching, research and community development.

What We Do Differently

Experts in our faculty — including our students — are developing workable solutions that address global issues in the areas of health, sustainable food systems and managing our limited resources. We learn together, ask questions of each other, innovate, iterate and collaborate across disciplines and industries to solve problems. Through co-op work terms, field experiences, community projects and international study, our students develop a rich complement of skills and competencies that not only gives them a competitive advantage upon graduation, but that pushes them farther down the road to creating lasting change.

The world needs saving. We create the thinkers who go out and do it.

The Faculty of Land and Food Systems at a glance

Dean’s Welcome

Dr. Rickey Yada, Dean

Welcome to the Faculty of Land and Food Systems. While you’re here, I hope you gain an understanding of the type of community we create for our students, faculty, and staff.

Our mission is to develop change makers and leaders who improve global health through science, innovation and positive actions. This is done by understanding the interdependencies of all things that impact our planetary health.

Embedded in our Faculty name is a word that stands out: systems. This signals our approach to work, our interdisciplinary method of problem solving. We strive for our academic work to span from farm to fork, from lab to consumer, or from individual to society. We have much to learn from our collaborators, based on listening as well as doing.

Students come to us with a strong sense of global responsibility, passionate about creating positive and lasting change. We believe that by providing them with the opportunity to learn outside the traditional classroom — whether it’s through an internship in their chosen field, taking part in a community-based experiential learning project or studying overseas — we can enhance their education and help them develop the skills they need to make their mark.

I can personally attest to the quality of education that our students receive, having once been a student here myself. When I returned as Dean in 2014, this was particularly rewarding for me. I’m looking forward to working together and helping to shape the future of the Faculty of Land and Food Systems.

Download Dr. Rickey Yada biography (brief).
Visit Dr. Rickey Yada’s profile.