Addressing social inequities has been recognized as foundational to transforming food systems. Activists and scholars have critiqued food movements as lacking an orientation towards addressing issues of social justice. To address issues of inequity, sustainable food systems education (SFSE) programs will have to increase students’ equity-related capabilities. Our first objective in this paper is to determine the extent to which SFSE programs in the USA and Canada address equity. We identified 108 programs and reviewed their public facing documents for an explicit focus on equity. We found that roughly 80% of universities with SFSE programs do not provide evidence that they explicitly include equity in their curricula. Our second objective is to propose an equity competency model based on literature from multiple fields and perspectives. This entails dimensions related to knowledge of self; knowledge of others and one’s interactions with them; knowledge of systems of oppression and inequities; and the drive to embrace and create strategies and tactics for dismantling racism and other forms of inequity. Integrating our equity competency model into SFSE curricula can support the development of future professionals capable of dismantling inequity in the food system. We understand that to integrate an equity competency in our curricula will require commitment to build will and skill not only of our students, but our faculty, and entire university communities.

The decreasing cost and increasing availability of new technologies capable of improving household energy efficiency, generating and storing renewable energy, and decarbonizing major end use appliances have begun to significantly transform many residential communities across the U.S. Despite these positive developments however, the degree to which disadvantaged communities (DACs) have been able to participate in and benefit from these transformations remains far from equal. Using historical time series data at the zipcode level within Los Angeles County, we document the scale and extent to which DACs continue to be left behind. These data show per-capita levels of electricity and natural gas consumption within DACs that are, on average, about half of those seen within their more affluent counterparts. We argue that the magnitude of these differences reflect a fundamental departure in the use of energy from purposes of sufficiency to those of excess. We introduce a set of forecasts that show the extent to which current inequities in per-capita energy consumption, rates of vehicle electrification, and adoption of rooftop solar PV are likely to persist under the status quo. In conclusion, we suggest that the redistributive investment of public funds for the purpose of accelerating DAC participation in energy system transformations constitutes a socially optimal investment strategy – one which reflects the dramatically higher marginal utility of units of energy consumed at levels of sufficiency rather than excess.