Laurel Bellante: Southern Arizona's Food Situation

Dr. Bellante is a geographer whose research and teaching focus on food justice, food systems, and global environmental change. Bellante lived and worked in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas for six years before returning to the U.S. to pursue master’s and doctoral degrees in human-environmental geography. Her research centered on small-scale Chiapas corn farmers struggling with a changing climate and neoliberal economic policies. Dr. Bellante teaches several undergraduate courses, from an introduction to critical food studies to food justice, ethics and activism. She also co-leads the university’s Food Systems Research Lab with Dr. Gigi Owen, staff scientist with Climate Assessment for the Southwest.