Mission
The Agricultural Business and Food Systems (ABFS) academic program explores the social and economic dimensions of agriculture and food systems and prepares students for careers in business, policy or advocacy related to issues in agriculture, food security, and food justice. Majors also develop a solid foundational understanding of principles and ideas from natural science disciplines as they relate to ABFS learning goals. As an interdisciplinary program, ABFS draws on courses from environmental economics, environmental policy, food science, plant biology, nutrition, and many other disciplines, to complement its core offerings. By connecting the study of food systems to diverse ways of understanding the world, the ABFS curriculum takes students on a clear path toward understanding complex relationships between different components of food systems, while enabling them to build concrete skills in business management, quantitative analysis, and systems thinking.
The program is an interdisciplinary major developed by the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resources Economics and the Department of Human Ecology. The program is administered out of the DAFRE offices on the first floor of the Cook Office Building, 55 Dudley Road on Cook Campus.
The Undergraduate Program Director for ABFS is Dr. Ethan Schoolman, Associate Professor of Human Ecology. Dr. Schoolman may be reached at ethan.schoolman@rutgers.edu.
New and interested students should write abfs@sebs.rutgers.edu with questions about the program.