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.

A common theme in speculative fiction concerns technological overreach. All manner of scenarios have been developed by science fiction authors and filmmakers, warning of the potential for subjugation, obliteration, or alienation as technologies grow in power and scale. Yet within environmental circles, even though the dangers inherent in technological development are well appreciated, environmental challenges are coming to be defined more and more as technical matters to be resolved via technological means. This article explores some of the meaning and limits of this contemporary environmental techno-optimism, through engagement with the “Culture” novels of Iain M. Banks. The Culture novels chronicle a space-faring, post-scarcity civilization, and stand as a kind of best-case extension, in environmental terms, of humanity’s present technological trajectory. The article wrestles with the potential for great benefit but also extraordinary risk that comes with treading down Banks’ path and outlines the kinds of questions that must be asked and answered in an increasingly technology-saturated world. The article distills lessons from comparing Banks’ novels to the “Biosphere 2” experiment. It also explores a few of the ways in which speculative fiction might be deployed in the classroom to better equip students and citizens to wrestle with existing and emerging technologies and their implications.