March 23, 2017 Professor Nathan Sayre on his new book, The Politics of Scale: A History of Rangeland Science Scientists today recognize the flaws of old ideas about rangeland ecology, but the broader public (and especially many environmental activists) continue to believe that (a) livestock are the root cause of rangeland degradation, everywhere and always,…
March 15, 2017 By Carolina Prado, Graduate Student in ESPM, UC Berkeley In summer of 2016 I received a community engagement fellowship through the Berkeley Food Institute. I partnered with Phat Beet Produce, an Oakland based food justice organization that works on creating access to healthy produce in the city on a restorative economics model.…
March 2, 2017 By Nina F. Ichikawa This week was the biannual summit of the California Climate & Agriculture Network (CalCAN).* This coalition of farms, advocacy organizations, scientists, and policy experts seeks to advance climate solutions through sustainable and organic agriculture. When I first participated in CalCAN’s summit two years ago, I was struck by…
February 28, 2017 Civil Eats recently published an article highlighting efforts across the ten University of California (UC) campuses to increase the amount of sustainable food purchased by university food services. According to its 2016 Annual Report on Sustainable Practices, the UC system has already met its 2020 goal of procuring 20% of its food from…
January 26, 2017 By Nina F. Ichikawa, BFI Policy Director Kathy Ozer was born August 4, 1958, and taken from us way too early. We have lost a lion of the food and farming movement. In the more than quarter-century she led the National Family Farm Coalition, as well as co-founding or guiding other organizations,…
January 23, 2017 By Ann Thrupp, Berkeley Food Institute Executive Director This blog post originally appeared in the UC Food Observer on January 19, 2017. Over the past three years, I have been continually inspired by the remarkable level of student enthusiasm about education and activism tied to sustainable agriculture and food systems. At the…