UC SAREP is required by the California Legislature’s 1986 Sustainable Agri- culture Research and Education Act to have both public and technical advisory committees to advise the university on program goals and make recommendations on the 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 universitywide faculty and staff with knowledge and experience related to sustainable agriculture and makes recommendations about the scientific merit of grant applications. Each PAC or TAC member serves for three years. New advisory committee members are profiled here, with continuing members listed at the end.

Technical Advisory Committee

STEVE BLANK is a farm financial management Extension Specialist in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Davis, and is the Academic Assistant to the Vice Provost of Academic Planning and Personnel. He is particularly interested in financial and risk management, the economic viability of agriculture, risk management methods and farm-level decision-making, financial decision-making of firms, and the rural/urban interface.

CAROLINE S. BLEDSOE is an associate professor of soil ecology at UC Davis in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources. She specializes in the effects of mycorrhizal fungi on plant nutrition, particularly in woody species. A secondary interest is the creation of biological databases for the study of long-term ecological processes, such as the effects of organic farming on soil organic matter. She is particularly interested in the ecological outcome of organic vs. conventional agriculture, how to assign economic costs of organic vs. conventional agriculture, and the linkages between diet and health.

ROBERT GOTTLIEB is director of the Pollution Prevention Education and Research Center at UCLA, and is an adjunct professor in the Department of Urban Planning at that campus. His expertise is in the area of environmental, resource, and toxics policy, and food systems, community food security, and social movements. He is also interested in agricultural pesticide use and direct marketing.

BLAINE HANSON is an Irrigation Specialist in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at UC Davis. His areas of expertise include irrigation scheduling; all phases of microirrigation systems; furrow, flood and sprinkler irrigation; soil salinity, agricultural water quality, and irrigation pumps. He is particularly interested in non-point source pollution of ground water and surface water by agriculture, and water conservation and subsurface drainage problems of the San Joaquin Valley.

JOAN WRIGHT is an Extension Specialist in Community Studies/Extension in the Department of Human and Community Development at UC Davis. Her areas of research are program evaluation related to nutrition, family and consumer sciences; and public issues analysis associated with rural lands, wildland fire, and other natural resource issues. She is interested in value-added products in agriculture; rural land use; and water allocation policy.

Continuing PAC/TAC

Public Advisory Committee: Catherine Brandel, Jenny Broome, Cynthia Cory, David Costa, Leonard Diggs, Marion Kalb, James Liebman, Ron Mansfield, Andrew Rubin, Bryte Stewart, Michael Strauss, Brock Taylor, Don Villarejo and Angus Wright.

Technical Advisory Committee: Edith Allen, Tim Hartz, Don Klingborg, Craig Kolodge, Janet Savage, Tom Shultz, Rob Thayer, and Lucia Varela. [Note: Don Klingborg is serving a second three-year term.]

Biographies of continuing PAC/TAC members appeared in the Summer 1996 (Vol. 8, No. 3), Winter 1996 (Vol. 8, No. 1), Summer 1995 (Vol. 7, No. 3), and the Fall 1994 (Vol. 6, No. 4) issues of Sustainable Agriculture.

Retiring PAC/TAC

Advisory committee members who have rotated off the PAC or TAC in 1997 include: PAC: Gail Gant, John Roberts. TAC: Scott Johnson, Terry Prichard. UC SAREP is very appreciative of the work that advisory committee members do for the program.