Farm-to-School Evaluation Report Gets National Attention: In September, Berkeley Food Institute (BFI) and our partners in the California Farm to School Evaluation released our first progress report on the impacts of the state’s $100 million investment in the Farm to School Incubator Grant Program. The goals for this state program include advancing climate smart agriculture, engaging small, midscale and farmers of color producers in farm to school procurement and improving access to local, organic food for school meals. Read the press coverage of the report here and here. The next progress report will be released this September.

Advancing Equitable Agrivoltaics Research and Practice in California: California leads the nation in on-farm renewable energy production but lags behind other states in agrivoltaics development or the co-location of solar and agricultural production. BFI is a member of an interdisciplinary team exploring equitable pathways for agrivoltaics in the state. In February, we had more than 40 people — researchers, farmers, solar developers and community partners — join a research workshop on the UC Berkeley campus to address the opportunities and barriers to agrivoltaics in California. With the shifting federal landscape, the Berkeley research group is now collaborating with other UC partners to identify private and state funding opportunities as well as exploring policy fixes. More on those issues from BFI Graduate Policy Assistant, Sarah Sarfaty Epstein can be found here.

New Webinar Series Reaches 1,000 Participants: In the fall, BFI launched our Lunch & Learn webinar series, highlighting current food and farm systems research and its connections with state or federal policymaking. Altogether, we hosted 10 Lunch & Learn webinars this year, reaching nearly 1,000 participants. The series covered a diversity of speakers and topics, including the Farm to School Program Evaluation findings, soda taxes and their health impacts, agricultural solutions to the climate crisis, farmworker safety and wellbeing research, ultra-processed foods and their connections to the tobacco industry and more. Our series will return in the fall. You can find recordings of the webinar series here.

Generating Unique Insights into Farm Labor: The work of the UC-Mexico Farm Labor Research Cluster, a multidisciplinary collaboration, continued this year with the development of research working groups, ranging from agricultural production, data and technology to law and migration and community health issues. The working groups are developing their joint research agendas and seeking funding to advance that work, which examines farmworker wellbeing. Led by Dr. Federico Castillo, a BFI affiliated project scientist, this unique collaboration brings an important cross-national lens to issues of farmworker wellbeing in the face of greater uncertainty and disruptions — from trade to climate change. 

Public Discussion on the Future of Food: On April 17th, BFI hosted a critical conversation on the future of food between Dr. Tim Bowles, associate professor of Agroecology and Sustainable Agricultural Systems, and journalist and author Michael Grunwald—the evening moderated by New York Times national food correspondent, Kim Severson. The event was co-sponsored by the Berkeley School of Journalism, Casa Sanchez, Nell Newman Foundation and the TomKat Ranch Education Foundation. It brought together journalists, food system leaders, students and researchers to address ideas about food scarcity and the role of industrial farming systems. While there were many areas of agreement about the harms of the industrial agricultural system during the conversation, a main point of disagreement was how to achieve a more resilient food system. Watch the recording of the event here.

Community Showcase is a Hit: We started our academic year with a very successful Community Showcase. Nearly 200 students, faculty, staff, community partners and donors attended the event at the Oxford Tract where we highlighted BFI’s research, education and policy engagement initiatives. We partnered with Rausser College of Natural Resources to celebrate BFI’s work. Please mark your calendar for our next Community Showcase on Friday, September 25th.

Young Scholars Gain a Food Systems Minor or Certificate: The food system is highly complex and so are its challenges. Thankfully, the food and farm sector recently gained 22 fresh minds equipped with a Graduate Certificate in Food Systems. BFI administers the certificate, which supplements a student’s primary graduate program — some students graduated with master’s degrees in public policy, public health, business or natural resources, among other degrees. BFI also supports the Food Systems Minor for undergraduates, which 27 students completed this year as part of their studies. This variety of skills and perspectives are much needed ingredients to meaningfully build an equitable food and farm system.

BFI Grants Support Student Food System Activities and Research: BFI awarded 10 UC Berkeley student groups with mini-grants to support a variety of food systems projects — from organizing panel discussions to conducting weekend long conferences. We also provided grants to five individual researchers to deepen scholarship into different areas of agriculture, from the origins of Japanese-American rice cultivation to harvesting Indigenous maize.

New BFI Cooking Workshops Support Meal Prep and Hands-on Food Systems Skills: BFI built upon our programming to support campus food security and healthy food access this year by developing a cooking workshops series. Learn more about our cooking workshops in this short blog.

Land as Wellness: As part of the Land as Wellness project at the Oxford Tract farm, a collaboration between Berkeley Student Farms, its eight student affinity groups and BFI, students were invited to participate in on-farm wellness programming. Land as Wellness integrates agroecology with student mental and physical wellbeing, emphasizing nutrition and food security. Through hands-on farming, nutritional education and wellness programming — from yoga on the land and more — Land as Wellness offers students an alternative to traditional campus wellness and recreation programming, teaching practical skills in food cultivation and providing opportunities to connect with the land.

Growing Food and Farmers: This year we saw tremendous growth in student and community engagement with on-campus food production that served campus and community food security. BFI’s Agroecology & Wellness program coordinator, ab banks, in partnership with the  Berkeley Student Farms (BSF) hosted farm workdays three times a week on the Oxford Tract, a UC Berkeley field research station and campus urban farm. More than 250 students, alumni and community members prepared beds, seeded, harvested and weeded, producing more than 600 pounds of produce. BFI works with the Basic Needs Center, a food pantry that serves food-insecure students, along with the People’s Programs, a community partner that provides bi-weekly produce boxes to West Oakland families. Along with the farm work days, students participated in farm education workshops — from tractor training to compost production skills building.

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