Students explore food, climate and health — through the lens of India

Modern agriculture is the most environmentally consequential activity that humans engage in. It has a profound impact on climate change, soil quality, water availability and risk of pandemics. However, agriculture itself is highly sensitive to climate change. In 2023, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), in collaboration with the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI), launched a new PIIRS Global Seminar: “Food, Climate and Health: An Indian Exploration.” The for-credit course ran from June 19 to July 28 and brought students to Bengaluru (Bangalore) and neighboring agricultural communities to learn how India is adapting and leveraging ancient methods of water management and soil replenishment to tackle its 21st century challenges. 

Several Global Seminars are offered each summer with the goal of teaching across disciplines and making concrete connections between pedagogy and place, and “Food, Climate and Health: An Indian Exploration” exemplifies the sort of immersive experience students have through the seminars. Students lived on and worked in a modern research campus set in an agricultural community, and were exposed to methods of regenerative agriculture, both ancient and novel, that offered solutions to carbon sequestration and antibiotic-free livestock practices. The seminar was led by HMEI senior research scholar Ramanan Laxminarayan, whose primary research interests include public health and infectious diseases. “The students spent a lot of time on the ground,” he said. “Students learn more in a field-based course [like this] than they could ever get on campus.”

Katie Rohrbaugh ‘25 is a fan of PIIRS Global Seminars: she serves as a PIIRS Global Seminar Representative, an ambassador of sorts to her fellow students, and has traveled to Kenya (2022) and India (2023) chasing her varied academic pursuits. “I’m a history major who is also interested in agricultural science,” she said. “Some of the oldest sustainable and organic [farming] practices have been created and used in India. ‘Food, Climate and Health’ was the perfect mingling of my interests.”

Her seminar-mate Kajal Schiller ‘24, a psychology major earning minors in statistics and machine learning and neuroscience, was attracted to the course’s multi-disciplinary approach. But her interest in enrolling in the seminar was personal as well: Schiller is an adoptee and has wanted to return to India ever since she left as a child. “All I've ever wanted in my whole life was to travel outside the U.S.,” she said. “Once I was in India, I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ I had so much fun.”

“Food, Climate and Health: An Indian Exploration” included significant fieldwork, visiting lectures by experts, and cultural excursions. Two creative assignments — a group exercise in which students cast themselves as operators of a 50-acre wheat farm transitioning to regenerative agriculture and a final paper in which each student imagined themselves as a senior bureaucrat in charge of food policy for the Indian government — formed the academic backbone of the seminar.

Schiller found the guest lecturers to be particularly edifying. Maria Thaker, professor of Ecology at Indian Institute of Sciences, for example, “spoke about the ecological effects of wind power in India,” Schiller explained. “She talked about how much just species diversity has gone down because of windmills all over India. It was cool to have experts talking to us about their own research and contemporary concerns related to the course materials.”

Rohrbaugh appreciated learning from practitioners in the field. At an organic farm outside Bengaluru, she saw agroforestry, or the intentional integration of trees and shrubs into crop farming systems, in practice. At Biligiri Ranganatha Swamy Temple (BRT) Wildlife Sanctuary, members of the Soliga tribe, the sanctuary’s indigenous inhabitants, invited Princeton students into their homes and onto their farmland. “We were able to see how farming techniques impact people’s lives and how they are used by indigenous communities in protected spaces,” Rohrbaugh  said. “It was eye-opening to talk to people and hear their perspectives.”

In addition to studying climate change, food availability and health, students developed a working knowledge of Hindi, one of India’s many regional languages. PIIRS lecturer Robert Phillips led thrice-weekly Hindi lectures and accompanied students on several field trips where they could practice their conversational skills. “We had a pretty limited vocabulary and grammar,” Rohrbaugh said. “But it was a valuable experience. The Global Seminars try to equip you with some language experience, so you’re not going around and over-relying on Google Translate.”

“I had conversations where I butchered at least seven words and the woman who I was speaking to was slightly confused,” Schiller added. “But I still learned because I listened and focused on her words.”

Despite its short duration, the seminar has shaped their academic trajectories, said both Rohrbaugh and Schiller. Rohrbaugh has spent much of her four years at Princeton figuring out how to mesh her love of history and the environmental sciences. “This class, in particular, solidified my desire to go into academia,” she said. “I was concerned that, with my background, I wouldn’t be able to do such a thing. Being [in India] made me realize that I could.” She is currently waiting to hear on admission decisions from graduate programs in soil science.

Schiller’s on-campus research focuses on rumination as a symptom of depression, and her experiences in India have her chasing new avenues of thinking. In India, she learned more about the the country’s spate of farmer deaths by suicide; according to government data, more than 10,000 people in the agricultural sector ended their own lives in 2020 due to overwhelming debt. “The point of my research is to mitigate rumination and prevent someone from spiraling,” she said. “A chain of events leads to the point where [a farmer’s] only option is to commit suicide in order to help their family. Is there a resource or education to mitigate and stop such a tragic finale?”

In summer 2024, a second cohort will return to India to nurture the seeds that were planted in 2023. The Global Seminar will include more field-based learning and additional opportunities for travel, says Laxminarayan. “Our students are enthusiastic, excited and energetic,” he says.