This special forum includes many examples of teaching methods that help students to understand the ecological, economic, and cultural significance of farms and food. The following two assignments are the main learning experiences in my course Rice: Connecting East Asian Societies, 1900–2022. These projects help students to examine, describe, and analyze physical and textual primary sources and use their insights to make evidence-based arguments about the production and consumption of rice. The projects would be useful for students and teachers who may live far from rice-producing regions and have little experience with the crop in the field. Both assignments are also adaptable to a range of teaching contexts: fully in-class, semiremote, or fully remote.
In the first assignment, students treat a rice product as a primary source that can reveal much about the people and society that consume it. By examining the text and images on the item's packaging...
