As a part of UC Berkeley’s Latinxs and the Environment Initiative, student Magaly Santos traveled to Mexico City and Oaxaca this summer to learn about agriculture, water management, and how rural communities adapt to climate change and preserve their cultural heritage.
On organic farms, workers are exposed to fewer pesticides. “For me, that’s the key,” Tim Bowles said. “The chemical exposure that conventional agriculture brings is very, very real for the people who are embedded in growing it."
“If we don’t know how much water is flowing through our rivers and streams, it makes it very difficult to make decisions on how to allocate it,” said BFI affiliated faculty Ted Grantham. “We need to know how much water is available, and we need to know how much water is being used. And California is actually really deficient in both of those areas.”
A UC Berkeley study led by Rachel Morello-Frosch is the first to evaluate PFAS contamination from pesticides in California, and the first environmental justice study on the issue.
Since 2013, the Berkeley Food Institute (BFI) has cultivated a campus community dedicated to bringing together UC Berkeley academic resources in partnership with communities to shape a just, equitable, and sustainable food system.
In a study led by the University of Copenhagen, the positive effects of diversified agriculture were abundant, while negative effects were hard to find.