Community Engagement and Education

Through our extensive community engagement and education programs, the Berkeley Food Institute provides opportunities for students, staff, faculty, and community members to learn, lead, and create change together on pressing food systems topics.

Events and Forums

BFI offers a wide variety of public events on pressing food systems topics.

Graduate Certificate in Food Systems

The planned Food Systems Certificate program aims to prepare Master’s and Doctoral students to think critically about the multi-level, multi-system factors that affect food production, distribution, and consumption.

Food Systems Minor

The Food Systems Minor for UC Berkeley undergraduates is an interdisciplinary program of study that explores the role of food within the environment and society.

Campus Gardens

Our campus gardens and farms offer expansive opportunities for students, staff, faculty, and members of the community to engage in hands-on learning in botany, garden management, garden design, and sustainable agriculture.

Gill Tract Summer Short Courses

The Berkeley Food Institute presented two summer short courses in herbal medicine and urban agroecology taught at the UC Gill Tract Community Farm.

UC Berkeley Foodscape Map

This map aims to both reveal barriers to the full participation of historically marginalized community members in food-related learning and practice at UC Berkeley, and highlight opportunities and successes in overcoming such obstacles.

Food Justice Writing Contest

In Spring 2021 BFI hosted a writing contest to amplify the voices of the UC Berkeley student community on the topic of the intersections of food justice and COVID-19.

Graduate Student Research Fellows

BFI supported several graduate student fellows for the summer of 2020 to conduct research at the intersections of food, climate, and health.

Community Engagement and Leadership Fellows

This program provides graduate students with fellowships for participatory research with food and agriculture organizations to work on projects in alignment with BFI goals.

Food Recovery

The vision for this work is to sustain, coordinate and amplify existing campus efforts to reduce food waste and create structures for safely transporting and repurposing edible food waste specifically for food insecure students.

UC Global Food Initiative

The Global Food Initiative is a UC wide initiative that aligns the university’s research, extension, outreach, and operations in a sustained effort to demonstrate and develop solutions for food security, health, and sustainability.