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LinkedInPosts Tagged: Community Development
To connect more farmers with buyers, UC publishes community food guides
Over the past year, many farmers have had to navigate rapid shifts in marketing practices since the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted traditional food-supply systems. During this time, establishing relationships with local vendors has become necessary for growers to maintain and increase profits.
To create a more connected and sustainable environment for local farms and markets, it has become crucial to understand the network of growers and identify critical gaps and central hubs in regional food systems, according to University of California Center for Regional Change Director Catherine Brinkley.
To help farmers establish connections with restaurants and produce sellers, Brinkley has created online resources for markets and farmers to identify opportunities to build relationships with local vendors in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Clara and Yolo counties – and, most recently, in Sacramento, Placer and El Dorado counties.
Creating direct relationships with vendors is key in areas such as Sacramento County, home to California's capitol, one of the nation's highest producing agricultural counties, and rising rates of food insecurity.
“To draw attention to the transparent marketing connections between farms and markets in the county, we gathered online information about farms that advertise where their products can be found and the markets that advertise which farms they support,” said Brinkley.
With support from the Sacramento Region Community Foundation, Valley Vision, a regional nonprofit, is coordinating efforts to update the Sacramento Regional Food System Action Plan, which covers El Dorado, Placer, Yolo and Sacramento counties. Brinkley's guides are assisting in this effort to understand how the regional food system is changing and connecting with growers and consumers.
Similarly, Brinkley's team has helped Santa Clara County's efforts to create a food plan by supplying a community food guide and farmland mapping.
Often, farmers connect directly with community members at farmers markets, through community supported agriculture (CSAs), and form relationships with buyers at local restaurants and institutions committed to supporting the community's combined needs for a healthy diet, soils and development. By building a community food system, Brinkley hopes farming practices and consumer needs will become more transparent and adjust to help better meet the needs of ecosystems, farmers, farm workers and consumers.
Establishing a more integrated and complex community food system could benefit the community beyond growers and markets, generating regional pride and mutual support. By proudly showcasing the farms and markets that sell or donate food to them, farmers markets, grocery stores and restaurants could build trust in the food system – and boost name recognition for many of the contributors.
“It is our hope that this research will encourage farmers, vendors and those within the community to create connections and utilize their purchasing power in ways that will support their local agricultural community,” said Brinkley. “Building coalitions of growers and sellers can help promote sustainable farming practices within the area, which support farm workers, the environment and fellow consumers.”
Brinkley's team also highlights avenues for building greater equity into the food system with a focus on self-identified growers and market managers of color as well as where farms and markets donate to food banks and seek to alleviate food insecurity.
The online publications developed for Sacramento, El Dorado, Yolo and Placer counties includes mapping of transparent market connections, a food system assessment to help understand how the many farms and markets are connected, which markets are essential to the network, and which types of marketing practices are dominant within these counties.
The guides are produced in partnership with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, Community Alliance with Family Farmers, the Edible Schoolyard Project, Valley Vision and the California Alliance of Farmers Markets.
Brinkley intends to produce guides for all 58 California counties. “Community Food Guides” for El Dorado, Placer, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Francisco, Santa Clara and Yolo counties can be downloaded for free at https://brinkley.faculty.ucdavis.edu/home/research/california-county-community-food-guides
UCCE advisor Rachel Surls receives 2018 Bradford Rominger Agricultural Sustainability Leadership Award
The Agricultural Sustainability Institute at UC Davis has announced that Rachel Surls, UC Cooperative Extension sustainable food systems advisor for Los Angeles County, is this year's recipient of the Eric Bradford and Charlie Rominger Agricultural Sustainability Leadership Award.
The Bradford Rominger award, given yearly, honors individuals who exhibit the leadership, work ethic and integrity epitomized by the late Eric Bradford, a livestock geneticist who gave 50 years of service to UC Davis, and the late Charlie Rominger, a fifth-generation Yolo County farmer and land preservationist.
“In her three decade career with UCCE, Rachel has developed a strong program addressing some of our most critical issues in sustainable agriculture,” says Keith Nathaniel, the Los Angeles County Cooperative Extension director. “She does so with innovative strategies, working with all aspects of the LA community. After 30 years doing this work, she continues to be active in the community she serves.”
In Surls' career, gardening has been a tool to build science literacy for school children, to increase self-sufficiency for communities impacted by economic downturn, and to create small businesses for urban entrepreneurs. As the interest in and support for urban agriculture has grown, she has been in the heart of Los Angeles, ready to respond to the needs of the city's farmers and gardeners.
Her role at Cooperative Extension started as a job to help start school gardens in LA. “I would drive to any school that wanted me and help them dig in the gardens,” Surl said. “I could find teachers who were interested in starting gardens, but I couldn't find principals and administrators to support it.”
Early on, some counseled Surls to find an area of expertise that was more serious than community and school gardens. Despite the criticism, “I just chugged along, doing what I knew was good and what I cared about,” Surl said.
And over time, the value of these programs has become more apparent, and support for them has grown. Surls continued along, working to start community gardens at public housing facilities, and overseeing the Los Angeles County UC Master Gardener program.
In 1997, she stepped into a role as the UC Cooperative Extension county director, ensuring the success of extension efforts for all of Los Angeles County for the next 14 years.
In 2008 came the great recession, and with it an uptick in public interest in home grown food.
“We were getting more and more calls in our office on how to be more self-sufficient,” Surls said. “The economics of the time rattled people, so they were thinking more about how to grow their own food, and how to maybe make some money by selling what they grow. And people needed the support and guidance to do that.”
Surls and her partners are working to meet that need through workshops in California's largest metropolitan areas and a website of resources to help new urban farmers get a leg up on farming in the city. Surls is also a member of the leadership board for the Los Angeles Food Policy Council.
The energy around urban agriculture today is palpable. And a career path that was once not taken seriously now is.
“That has really changed in our institution and culture,” Surl said. “We're hiring people to do this work!”
Persistent and focused, Surls' work is one of the reasons that progress is happening.
Surls will receive the award at the Celebrating Women in Agriculture event in Davis April 3. The event is free and open to the public. Learn more about the event here.
UC ANR to host exchange in Northern California promoting business partnerships across the Americas
The tenth Americas Competitiveness Exchange on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (ACE) will be held for the first time in Northern California in October. To promote partnerships, the exchange will bring economic and political leaders from across the Americas and beyond to visit Northern California's world-class innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems, and to experience the best California has to offer in food, wine and local products. The milestone “ACE 10” is sponsored by the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, Central Valley AgPlus and other California partners.
From Oct. 21 to 27, approximately 50 high-level economic and political leaders from across the Americas, selected through a competitive application process, will participate in ACE 10, which will highlight innovation and entrepreneurial activity.
ACE 10 program themes include:
o Improving health: Bioscience, food safety, healthy food access and nutrition
o Feeding the world: Sustainable food systems & communities, food security, ag tech
o Maximizing resources: Resource management, water and energy, waste-to-energy uses
o Fostering resiliency: Environmental sciences, mobility, global leadership
o Innovation ecosystems: Innovation communities, supporting entrepreneurs, financing ventures
“The University of California is pleased to host the milestone ACE 10 in Northern California to highlight our world-class innovation and entrepreneurship that drives local and regional economic development,” said Glenda Humiston, UC vice president of agriculture and natural resources. “We look forward to building new and lasting partnerships across the Americas.”
The ACE 10 program will start in San Francisco at UCSF's renowned biotech research center and start-up incubator in Mission Bay, followed by a visit to NASA Ames Research Center. The tour includes stops in Santa Cruz, Monterey, Salinas, Fresno, and Davis, and will conclude in Sacramento. Site visits will focus on food and agriculture, water and energy technologies, life and environmental sciences and advances in manufacturing.
“It's a tremendous honor and important opportunity for Northern California to host the 10th Americas Competiveness Exchange,” said Valley Vision's chief executive Bill Mueller. “Hosting this global delegation gives California not just the chance to showcase our assets, but also provides an unmatched platform to build global economic and research alliances.”
Gabriel Youtsey, UC ANR chief innovation officer agrees. “Innovation and entrepreneurship are California's biggest ‘exports' to the world and we aim to set off the next wave of innovation in our state's distinct areas of strength: food, agriculture and life sciences.”
The agenda is designed to provide the delegates opportunities for interactive learning, sharing of best practices, networking and partnership development as they travel from the coast to the inland areas of the state. “During the tours, our visitors will discover opportunities and create new collaborations that will continue to flourish long after they return to their home countries,” Humiston said.
ACE toured the Arizona-Southern California corridor in 2016. The most recent exchange, ACE 8, was held in Florida in December 2017. ACE 9 will be held in Israel and Germany this June where the baton will be passed to Humiston to take lead on ACE 10.
Valley Vision—a civic leadership organization headquartered in Sacramento that is committed to building a prosperous and sustainable future—is a co-host for ACE 10, along with UC ANR. The Northern California leadership team also includes California State University, Fresno and California State University, Chico; the cities of Davis, Fresno, Sacramento, Salinas, San Francisco and Santa Cruz; Bay Area Metro and Monterey County. The successful bid to host ACE 10 is an outgrowth of the Central Valley AgPlus food and beverage manufacturing consortium.
The principal ACE convening institutions are the U.S. Department of Commerce, through the International Trade Administration (ITA) and the Economic Development Administration (EDA); the U.S. Department of State; the Government of Argentina;and the Organization of American States (OAS) as the Technical Secretariat for the Inter-American Competitiveness Network (RIAC). ACE is a core component of the Work Plan of the Inter-American Competitiveness Network.
Past examples of mutually beneficial partnerships developed by ACE exchanges include:
• Research centers and co-ops such as Organic Valley in Wisconsin and Escuela Superior Integral Lecheria (ESIL) of Villa María in Cordoba, Argentina, working on business and export development in the dairy industry;
• Young entrepreneurs from UNITEC Honduras interacting and collaborating with the entrepreneurship ecosystems led by UC San Diego;
• An industrial internship program between Canada and Mexico through Mitacs, a Canadian not-for-profit research and training organization, and Mexico's National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT).
