<p>Michael Pollan, who has probably done more than any other single living person to change the way people think about food, majored in English Literature at Bennington. Rachel Carson, to whom the foregoing sentence would apply if you struck the word “living,” was originally an English major at Chatham College, but switched to biology.</p>
<p>I know three young people with serious interests in this area. One is currently at the Ag School at Cornell and (I think) majoring in Plant Science, although he may have switched to Environmental Science and Sustainablity. One went to Hamilton, and was initially an Environmental Science major, but as his interests shifted more and more to agriculture and food did a design-your-own major on Philosophy of Agriculture. The college could not have been more supportive – he got funding for research, they paid a SUNY professor who was expert in the area to supervise him, and they put up seed money and a huge purchase commitment for a CSA project he started. He had a dream college career. The third was a kind of Linguistics major at NYU who got into food issues working at an organic farmer’s market.</p>
<p>In other words, there are lots and lots of ways to skin the cat, and it doesn’t always actually matter whether a college has a major that sounds right or not.</p>