This spring, the Berkeley Food Institute with our UC partners launched the California Organic, Agroecological and Regenerative (COAR) Transitions Initiative, which is a research, education and policy initiative across UC & UC ANR. COAR extends and sustains knowledge and networks to accelerate transitions to more resilient agricultural and food systems, while also working to improve food sovereignty within California. Through engaged and policy-aware research as well as action-oriented educational activities, we use agroecology as a transdisciplinary framework to build on ongoing transition efforts, including organic and regenerative agriculture in collaboration with local, regional, and statewide farmer and tribal organizations, NGOs, and government agency partners. The initiative is supported with funding by the UC Office of the President and begins in 2025 and will carry through to June 2029.

BFI Policy Director, Neha Sanghera, co-leads the policy team; BFI Education Director, Jezra Thompson, co-leads the education team, and BFI Faculty Director Tim Bowles serves as a co-principal investigator and leads one of the COAR research projects. If you would like to learn more about the project, please email us here.