What Can Food Systems Teach Us About International Education?

As global challenges reshape agriculture, supply chains, and sustainability, agrifood is emerging as a lens for rethinking how universities prepare students to navigate complexity across disciplines and contexts.

Food is rarely treated as a starting point for international education. Yet it often reveals more about how global systems work than traditional study abroad models do.

A meal reflects culture and identity, but also supply chains, environmental constraints, regulation, technology, consumer behavior, and geopolitics. It is shaped as much by climate and policy as by taste. For this reason, food helps explain how international education is evolving, from exposure to deeper interpretation. Because food systems require students to move across science, policy, and human behavior, they highlight the capabilities international learning now needs to develop.

At Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, this perspective is shaping how international agrifood education is designed. Like many institutions, this shift is still evolving, but it points to a broader move toward engagement with real-world contexts.

From Food as Experience to Food as System

For many students, studying food and agribusiness moves them beyond simplified views of production and consumption. Questions such as what is healthy or sustainable quickly reveal layers shaped by culture, access, behavior, and environment.

This shift is visible in student experiences that connect geographies and systems. One example is Vardesh, a Food Production Management student from India at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, whose experience between India and Italy shows how food can be a way to understand sustainability and local economies across contexts. As explored in From equations to the soil: studying food systems between India and Italy, food is approached as a system shaped by environmental and social realities.

Research into consumer behavior adds another layer. One example is Berfin, a Turkish student in the Consumer Behaviour program at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, whose work shows how food decisions are shaped by habits, emotions, and social context as much as by information. As explored in Beyond the plate: the science of food consciousness, understanding food therefore requires engaging with both science and behavior.

Global Standards, Local Realities

Food systems are both global and local.

As Professor Tiehua Zhang of Jilin University notes, agrifood education is built on shared scientific foundations but remains rooted in local ecosystems and regulations. Students learn to move between these layers, observing how “global standards and local realities become something students can truly observe.”

This ability to navigate contexts is increasingly important. Food systems differ across regions but are interconnected through trade and shared challenges. International education, therefore, is not only about mobility, butabout comparison and interpretation.

Global developments reinforce this shift. Climate change is reshaping production, while supply chains are becoming more interconnected and fragile. In many regions, food is now treated as critical infrastructure, linked to water, energy, and public health. As Jacob Hosier of UC Davis notes, “in many parts of the world agriculture is now being treated as critical infrastructure,” a shift that is also changing how institutions think about skills and collaboration.

These dynamics are reshaping expectations. Students are seeking not only exposure, but the ability to understand systems and apply knowledge. As Wendy Hunt of Murdoch University argues, building “global confidence” depends on combining interdisciplinary knowledge with applied, cross-context experience (see Building global confidence through agrifood education).

Rethinking How Universities Design Learning

This shift is influencing how programs are structured.

Rather than remaining within a single discipline, they integrate food science, agriculture, business, and consumer behavior. The objective is not only expertise, but understanding how these areas interact.

Research infrastructure also plays a key role. Facilities such as CERZOO allow students to engage directly with sustainability, animal welfare, and precision agriculture. As described in CERZOO: a model of innovation, these spaces connect learning with real-world experimentation.

From Knowledge to Impact

The impact of this approach is visible in student trajectories.

The experience of Andjela Matković illustrates this shift. Through her studies in the Master in Innovation in Food Science and Technology – Michele Ferrero at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, she moved from seeing food as culture to understanding it as a system connecting research, industry, and consumers. Today, she works in product development, applying scientific knowledge to real-world challenges.

Students are not only acquiring technical expertise. They are learning to move between disciplines, interpret context, and connect knowledge with industry and society.

What Agrifood Teaches Us About International Education

The implications extend beyond food.

Fields that operate across domains, from climate to health and technology, are reshaping how universities respond to global challenges. They require models that emphasize integration, adaptability, and real-world engagement.

Agrifood provides a clear example because it links everyday experience with broader structures. It makes visible how decisions are made and how global and local dynamics interact.

For higher education leaders, this raises an important question: how can international education move beyond exposure and toward deeper understanding?

Food suggests one answer. It shows how learning can connect disciplines and contexts, preparing students not only to understand complexity, but to engage with it.

This content was paid for and created by the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. The editorial staff of The Chronicle had no role in its preparation. Find out more about paid content.