Agricultural Sciences

Meat consumption has long been an emotionally charged issue, but contemporary debates over the ethics of eating animals are growing increasingly heated, fueled by the fact that modern livestock agriculture is held responsible for approximately twenty percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. This system's aim has always been to profitably produce an abundance of animal protein and it does so with tremendous efficiency; humans eat so many chickens today that chicken bones are considered one of the primary geological markers of the Anthropocene. Although this plenty provides essential protein for human diets, it also comes at an immense cost to environments, laborers, and the animals themselves and has resulted in the dramatic restructuring of lands, markets, and culinary practice worldwide. This course helps students understand how and why large-scale meat production became a central part of today's global food system. To do so, it combines approaches from environmental, economic, and culinary history and focuses primarily on the agricultural exchanges between Great Britain, Continental Europe, and the United States, both of which had outsized influence in shaping the contours of food production worldwide. The course develops a greater knowledge of the histories of agriculture, food commodity markets, and individual consumption in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This is an individual study project. Students must have a well thought-through idea of the theme of the study. A faculty teacher is appointed as supervisor, and an agreement is signed between the student and the teacher describing the title, contents, and ECTS credits of the study. A supervisor normally meets with the student between two and four times to discuss the progress of the individual study, or any problems encountered. Most supervisors also choose to read and comment on parts of the study. Students applying to do an individual study must submit a detailed project description with their application. Exams for Individual Study Projects may be oral, written or a combination of the two. This version of the course is worth 12 quarter units and corresponds to a workload of 412 hours. 

To cope with all these aspects of food production, a food technologist should be able to translate these challenges into mathematical expressions, solve them, quantify the outcomes, and subsequently translate them into practical solutions. This course discusses basic principles of food technology like mass and energy balances, reaction kinetics, and equilibrium. Theory is applied directly to a wide variety of practical problems in food technology during the tutorial. Exercises on various topics such as food preservation, reactor design for enzyme reactions, and sterilization of food are solved.

The Individual Research Training Senior (IRT Senior) Course is an advanced course of the Individual Research Training A (IRT A) course in the Tohoku University Junior Year Program in English (JYPE) in the fall semester. Though short-term international exchange students are not degree candidates at Tohoku University, a similar experience is offered by special arrangement. Students are required to submit: an abstract concerning the results of their IRT Senior project, a paper (A4, 20-30 pages) on their research at the end of the exchange term, and an oral presentation on the results of their IRT Senior project near the end of the term.

This course covers the basics of viticulture and grape production. It discusses the choice and adaptation of plant material according to the soil and climate environment, product objectives, and regulations; monitoring health status, choosing treatments, and establishing the treatment schedule; strategic choices for vineyard management and improvement; and using all the data acquired to carry out a case study of vineyard management and improvement. 

This course concerns the modification of cultural practices to produce wine products in organic and biodynamic agriculture. It covers regulatory aspects and certification, the biological and physiological impact of organic and biodynamic viticultural practices, cultural aspects of the implementation of certification and conversion period, biodynamic principles, and specific viticultural practices. The course also discusses the economics of the organic, natural, and biodynamic wine market, and the economic impact of the conversion. Additional topics include vinification and conservation without sulfur dioxide, microorganisms in the context of organic wine production, ecology, and diversity. Finally, the course discusses regulations, practices, experiences, and constraints of organic agriculture. 

This course describes food production and preservation technologies that are relevant to the food industry. The course includes food production methods, traditional preservation processes, fluid flow, thermal preservation kinetics and methods (heating, cooling, freezing) as well as novel preservation technologies. Important processing principles (such as residence time, and heat transfer) and the consequences for products (shelf life and product quality) are discussed and quantified for various processes and products.

This course discusses the challenges of an increasing demand for meat, milk, and eggs produced in a manner that is environmentally sound and socioeconomically acceptable. It focusses on the production cycles of pig, cattle, and poultry production under Danish conditions. The course investigates the effects of management, housing, breeding, nutrition, productivity, health, animal ethics and welfare, resource consumption, and environmental impact of livestock production. It explores a range of different livestock production systems and works with the opportunities and challenges of implementing sustainable practices within them.

This course introduces the extent of the global agriculture and food production and its geographic location. Through a combination of lectures and exercises, the first part of the course identifies the factors that influence and adjust the global need for and production of food, as well as of the global trade with food. It then looks at the impact of different climatic and soil conditions on plant and livestock production in specific regions. In the project work, students go into detail in an individual area.