Summer 1995 (v7n3)
	New PAC/TAC Members Join SAREP UC SAREP is required by the California Legislature's 1986 Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Act to have both public and technical advisory committees to advise the program on its goals and make recommendations on its competitive grant awards. The Public Advisory Committee (PAC) includes individuals actively involved in agricultural production, as well as representatives from government, public organizations, and institutions of higher education. The Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) is made up of California university and college faculty and staff with knowledge and experience related to sustainable agriculture. Each PAC or TAC members serves for three years. New members in 1995 are listed below. Public Advisory Committee CATHERINE BRANDEL has worked for many years in the San Francisco Bay Area searching out specialty growers and purveyors, first as the original forager for the Great Chefs of France cooking school at the Robert Mondavi winery, and since 1983, for the restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Now a chef at Chez Panisse, Brandel is active in promoting an understanding of sustainable agriculture within the community of cooks. She is active in the San Francisco Public Market Collaborative, and is co-chair of the Chefs Collaborative 2000, an international educational project to advance sustainable food choices. She is particularly interested in the availability of sustainably produced food, the viability of family farms, and developing a rural-urban connection through direct marketing of food. MARION KALB is the executive director of Southern California's 20-market Southland Farmers' Market Association, the largest non-profit group of certified farmers' markets in the west. She negotiates regulation agreements with state and local officials to benefit farmers involved in direct marketing, and works with cities and non-profit groups to organize and improve certified farmers' markets. She is interested in educating consumers about sustainable agriculture, food security issues and helping farmers work through bureaucracies. RON MANSFIELD is a grower, packer and shipper with Goldbud Farms in Placerville, El Dorado County. He raises cherries, plums, peaches, nectarines, pears, apples and winegrapes, and packs and ships high maturity fresh fruit. He is particularly interested in pesticide reduction, exploring the farm profit potential when it reflects the risk of implementing sustainable practices, farm labor value, and nutrition. JOHN ROBERTS is the vice-president of The Center for Living in Harmony, a nonprofit educational and charitable organization in Valley Center, San Diego County, and the director of research and applied growing operations at Little Creek Acres, the Center's 10-acre research, education and demonstration site. Emphasis at Little Creek Acres is on small-farm/small-scale sustainable practices. Primary research developments include selection and adaptation of open-pollinated cultivars, sustainable soil fertility development and management, accelerated/enhanced plant propagation practices, and production of high-nutrition content produce and seeds. He is interested in legislation and policies favorable to the promotion of scientifically verifiable sustainable ag methods, and biotechnology compatible with sustainable agriculture. BRYTE STEWART is a partner in a family farm in Rio Vista, Solano County and its native grass seed business, Conservaseed. The operation produces winegrapes, pears, cherries, and California native grass seed, and partners are interested in introducing new organic philosophies to existing conventional practices. Stewart is also interested in educating the public about the positive aspects of the U.S. agricultural system. DON VILLAREJO is an agriculture policy analyst at the non-profit California Institute for Rural Studies in Davis. His areas of interest are agricultural policy, business and credit investigations, the farm labor market, immigration policy and western agriculture, water policy, agricultural pesticide use and policy, the structure of agriculture and agricultural land ownership. Technical Advisory Committee EDITH B. ALLEN is a natural resources Extension Specialist in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at UC Riverside. She is interested in the agriculture/wildland interface, and specializes in restoration ecology and plant community ecology. She has done research on weed competition, plant response to mycorrhizae, and nitrogen deposition from air pollution and other human activities that promote weed growth. She is the associate editor of Restoration Ecology. SCOTT JOHNSON is a pomology Extension Specialist at the UC Kearney Agricultural Center in Parlier. He works with many cultural practices, but emphasizes irrigation, nutrition, planting systems, crop manipulation, and rootstocks of peaches, plums, nectarines and kiwifruit. He is cooperating with pest management researchers and Extension personnel in integrating these cultural practices into more sustainable orchard systems. Additionally he is interested in fruit quality, nutrient cycling and water conservation and quality. JUAN VICENTE PALERM is a professor of anthropology at UC Riverside and the director of UC MEXUS, a statewide program that focuses resources of the nine UC campuses on U.S./Mexico issues and people, and collaborative research between Mexican and U.S. scientists. A Mexican anthropologist with research experience in Spain, Mexico and California, he is interested in farm labor, migration and rural communities. TOM SHULTZ grew up on a dairy farm in Northern California, and is now a dairy advisor with the UCCE office in Tulare County. His specialties are all phases of dairy management, feeds and feeding, animal stress from the environments, waste recycling and labor efficiency. His is particularly interested in resource use, environmental issues, and reducing misinformation or lack of information on ag issues. He was formerly a ruminant nutrition professor at the University of Venezuela. LUCIA G. VARELA is a North Coast Integrated Pest Management advisor. She works in pears, apples and grapes in California's North Coast. ANGUS WRIGHT is a professor of environmental studies at California State University, Sacramento. His areas of research include pesticides and farmworkers, immigration and farm labor, comparative agriculture development of the U.S. and Latin America, environment and equity in rural society, and biodiversity and agriculture. The author of The Death of Ramon Gonzalez: The Modern Agricultural Dilemma, Wright is working on a book on property rights and the environment in the U.S. and Latin America. Continuing PAC/TAC Public Advisory Committee: Peter Cooey, Jennifer Curtis, Frank Dawley, Gail Gant, and Craig Underwood. Technical Advisory Committee: Ben Faber, Donald Klingborg, Holly George McCann, Don Nielsen, Ellen Rilla and Carol Shennan. Biographies of the continuing PAC/TAC members appeared in the Summer 1993 (Vol. 5, No. 3) and the Fall 1994 (Vol. 6, No. 4) issues of Sustainable Agriculture. [ Back | Search | Feedback ]