Program Notes

Staff Activities

SAREP associate director Jenny Broome served on the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Agricultural Sustainability Institute implementation committee. The report is under internal review and will be finalized and submitted to Dean Neal Van Alfen by mid-summer.

Broome co-hosted UCD visitors from the Veneto region of Italy, Antonio Zamboni and David D’Andrea, who participated in the spring sustainable agriculture speaker series organized by Mark Van Horn, UC Davis Student Experimental Farm director, and graduate students in International Agricultural Development. She also supervised three UC Davis Humphrey Fellows as they completed a project at SAREP (see “Humphrey Fellows collaborate with SAREP”).

Broome presented information on integrated gray mold management for Sacramento Valley strawberries at a field day organized by UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE) farm advisor Chuck Ingels. The field day was for small farmers, many of whom are Asian immigrants who relocated to the region. Ingels is a former SAREP perennial cropping systems analyst.

Broome, SAREP director Sean L. Swezey, SAREP education coordinator David Chaney and visiting scholar Chulgoo Kang presented a poster at the fourth California Conference on Biological Control: Biological Control and Organic Production at UC Berkeley in July. They provided preliminary results from an email survey on UC organic farming research and extension that Kang conducted in the spring of 2004. A SAREP report will be produced this fall. Scott Kingston, a UCD student working with SAREP, helped layout and design their poster, and a poster presented by Aimee Shreck, SAREP post-doctoral student, SAREP food systems analyst Gail Feenstra, and Christy Getz, UC Berkeley. Their poster, “Social Sustainability, Farm Labor, and Organic Agriculture: Findings from an exploratory analysis,” presented initial findings on the implications of organic agriculture for California farmworkers, and was funded by the Institute for Labor and Employment. Researcher Sam Prentice and Swezey presented a poster “National Organic Program Technical Advisory Review Process: Case Studies.” Swezey gave the introductory remarks during the third day of the conference, which focused on organic farming. He also presented information detailing his research with trap crops for pest control in organic strawberries. He will speak on “IPM in Organic Systems: California Organic Cotton Production” at the International Congress of Entomology in Brisbane, Australia in late August.

Broome presented a poster on her EPA-funded research into validation of a weather-driven disease risk model for management of gray mold in strawberries at the American Phytopathological Society meeting in Anaheim. At that meeting she was part of the panel “Organic Foods—From Production to Market,” during a day dedicated to sustainable agriculture (available here). She discussed “Organic farming and plant disease research by the University of California 1987-2004.” She will also be part of a panel at the Rural Sociological Society’s 67th annual meeting in Sacramento. The panel will cover the “Politics of Sustainability: Genesis and Evolution of the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program at the University of California,” which will provide an opportunity to engage social scientists in a reflection on the goals, social movement, and science of sustainable agriculture, and how they relate to SAREP and UC. Shreck, Feenstra and Getz will present a paper on “Social Justice and Sustainable Agriculture: The ‘Labor Question’ and the Organic Agriculture Movement in California” at the meeting.

Feenstra participated in a National Association of Farm Direct Marketing conference in Sacramento where she made a presentation on farm-to-school programs, and two meetings of the national Agriculture of the Middle Task Force where she met with California growers and nonprofits interested in local initiatives to preserve midscale agriculture. She gave a food systems presentation at the UC Garden-based Learning Workgroup in Davis, a food systems/food security presentation at the California Public Health Association in Oakland, and presented the keynote address on food security at the Childhood Hunger/Food Security conference in Alberta, Canada.

Feenstra also made a farm-to-school presentation at the Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Conference at Lake Tahoe and at the Maternal and Child Health Conference in Chicago. She attended the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society Conference in Hyde Park, NY and is working with interested parties at UCD and nonprofits to organize the national conference in Davis in 2007; contact her at gwfeenstra@ucdavis.edu for more details. She has also been working with the Roots of Change-funded Vivid Picture Project to identify a sustainable food system in California (Web site).

Feenstra and Jeri Ohmart, SAREP’s organic and food systems program assistant, are conducting evaluations of the Davis and Winters farm-to-school programs and the California Department of Education’s Linking Education, Activity, and Food (LEAF) program in Berkeley. Feenstra and Ohmart attended the LEAF team meeting in San Diego, where Ohmart made a presentation representing the 10 LEAF grantees. The program is striving to create healthier school environments by linking food service, physical education and science curriculum.

Ohmart made a presentation at the UC Garden-Based Learning Workgroup at UCD. She and Feenstra have developed an innovative way to study children’s food selections—taking hundreds of digital photos of lunches and analyzing portions. Ohmart participated in the second annual California Food and Justice/Community Food Security Summit in Los Angeles.

Ohmart began a part-time appointment as UCD School Gardens Project coordinator, which includes projects linked to SAREP’s farm-to-school work. Its mission is to integrate garden activities and food awareness into the school curriculum, helping children identify healthy lifestyles, concern for the environment, and academic achievement through land-based learning. A series of fall 2004 workshops is being offered on these topics; contact Ohmart at jlohmart@ucdavis.edu.

Lyra Halprin, SAREP public information representative, and outreach coordinator for the UC Davis College of Agriculture Sustainable Agriculture Farming Systems (SAFS) project, coordinated the June 2004 SAFS field day at UCD’s Russell Ranch (see “Conservation tillage, sustainable ag field day showcases research”)