Fall 2024 brought with it lots of new faces to the Fresh Focus team, including a new Lead Student Farmer, three new College Core Fellows, and many new interns!
Fall was also a busy quarter for the Fresh Focus team, as we established a new seed saving bed to grow and collect seed from indigenous heirloom plants. Students also stretched their event planning muscles and collaborated with a seed saving library to host a dinner utilizing the crops we grew from heirloom indigenous seeds.
The Fresh Focus team had an exciting and abundant summer, full of new community connections, friendship, delicious food, and an almost never ending supply of cucumber and squash!
A year of work together toward ecologically, socially and economically sustainable food systemsThe photos below capture a few highlights from a year on the Student Farm, sharing a very incomplete (but nonetheless astounding) picture of what the team of students and staff were able to accomplish. Alongside these stories, we'll soon compile numbers - interns, courses, pounds of food distributed, events and visitors, field trips, vegetable varieties, tons of compost, ground squirrel burrows - that convey a little of what goes on.
A busy fall! The Fresh Focus team said goodbye and THANK YOU to coordinator Judy Jun, welcomed a new team of Lead Student Farmers and interns, and got on with the business of increasing food access and promoting food justice and sovereignty at UC Davis. Read highlights from Fall Quarter activities and learn more about the dedicated team of Lead Student Farmers, Student Farm interns, and staff.
Campus is quieter in summer, but with two Lead Student Farmers, Fresh Focus's team kept summer students supplied with fresh produce, grown by summer students. In the impact report linked below, read highlights from the quarter, including distribution to partners in Knights Landing and Davis Night Market, and learn more about the dedicated team of Lead Student Farmers, Student Farm interns, and staff.
The Student Farm is looking for someone passionate about food justice to lead our Fresh Focus program. The Fresh Focus program supports food access and food sovereignty efforts on campus and in the community, through gleaning and program-specific production at the Student Farm, collaboration with Aggie Compass, Basic Needs, and student support centers around centers, and convening of conversation about food justice and food culture at UC Davis.
UC Davis’ student-led program in organic farming will expand to include new crops and new partners, with the aim of exporting its educational the model to other institutions. The expansion is being funded with a $2-million grant from the Organic Research and Extension Initiative, part of the United States Department of Agriculture.
We are hiring two Lead Student Farmers in Fresh Focus, our food access, food justice, and food sovereignty program. To apply, find the position on Handshake.
Working with UCD's talented Kelly Nishimura and the entire Student Farm community, Ecological Garden Lead Julia Schreiber has been talking to staff, students and community members to update the map that welcomes people. Sitting near the corner of Extension Center Drive and Orchard Park Drive, the current map started out beautiful and has gotten more beautiful, but less readable, with age.
