How will we manage nitrogen in California agriculture over the next 20 years?

This afternoon and all day Thursday, 30 leaders in agriculture from around the state will gather in conjunction with staff from the Agricultural Sustainability Institute at UC Davis to discuss this question in a scenarios exercise.

Come see ASI director Tom Tomich speak on Weds., September 29, about "Linking Science with Action: Insights from Sustainability Science," as part of the UC Davis Graduate Group in Geography fall quarter speaker series.

Date: September 29, 2010
Time: 4:10 - 5:30 p.m.
Location: Wellman 00115
UC Davis Campus

This talk is part of the UC Davis Graduate Group in Geography's Fall Quarter speaker series titled "Geography of Sustainability: Science and Practice."

ASI is hiring a Communications Coordinator (Public Information Representative)  - 100%  (This position is located in the ANR Building on Hopkins Road.)

When: Saturday, October 2, 2010, from 4-5 pm
Where: Hoes Down Harvest Festival at Full Belly Farm, in Capay Valley  (about 45 miles from Davis); meet by the river bank

As the new school year begins we would like to take the opportunity for faculty, students and others associated with sustainable agriculture to meet and get to know each other. Many of us will be attending the Hoes Down Harvest Festival at Full Belly Farm on October 2nd, and this setting will be a great place for such a gathering.

2010 Field Day at Russell Ranch Sustainable Agriculture Facility is scheduled for Tuesday, June 22.

Field Day has a history of providing growers, students, lawmakers and the public with information about research results and new initiatives at Russell Ranch, which is part of the Agricultural Sustainability Institute at UC Davis.

The ASI external advisory board held its second annual meeting in early December to discuss where ASI has been and where it should go.

ASI and its affiliates are committed to being as transparent as possible to the public. As such, we are posting the report from this board meeting. Click on the link below to download the PDF version of the report.

2009 EAB Meeting Report

Steven Hamburg, chief scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, will speak at the King Lounge at Memorial Union on Tuesday, Feb. 9.

The talk, "A National Nitrogen Imperative: An Advocacy Perspective," will be from 12:10-1 p.m.

The UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program is collaborating with Verliant Energy Partners to launch a new approach, called solutions centers, to showcase the latest sustainable solutions to critical issues in agricultural and food systems.

The UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SAREP) has awarded $150,000 in grants to 14 projects that focus on sustainable food systems research and outreach. 

While all of the projects explore and support sustainable food production and marketing, this year's grant recipients' projects range in subject from health food access issues to rangeland stewardship. 

ASI director Tom Tomich and Food Systems Coordinator Gail Feenstra will be facilitating a course on food systems analysis for the winter 2010 quarter. Here is some information about the course.

Food Systems Analysis
Winter Quarter 2011
Mondays 2-5pm in 27 Wellman Hall

We recently contributed to the UC Food Blog and wrote about nitrogen. Check out a sample here, and read the rest over at the blog:

What makes food grow - and why that matters

There’s a lot of attention paid to where food comes from nowadays. Less attention has been paid to what helps that food grow, but that’s an important part of the equation. Whether organic or conventionally grown, the tomatoes, lettuce, plums and other food we eat rely on nutrients in order to grow. One of the most important nutrients for plant productivity is nitrogen.

Get ready for a brave new world. Hopefully we'll be able to inform, entertain and engage you, our readers.

Over the next few days, weeks and months, you will hear the voices from ASI, UC SAREP, Russell Ranch, the Student Farm and more as we bring you the latest and greatest in the work from our faculty and staff.

We look forward to hearing from you in the comments, via e-mail at asi@ucdavis.edu.

-- Ian Cahir, Communications Coordinator

Welcome new and returning students, faculty, staff and friends of the University of California.

Thank you for joining the UC Davis Student Farm, a program of the Agricultural Sustainability Institute (ASI) at UC Davis, at Fall Convocation 2013.

Rayne Pegg, from the USDA will visit the Davis Joint Unified School District on March 8 to observe one of the nation’s most-promising public school-lunch models.

District officials are honored to host the visit and showcase Davis’ pairing of commodity foods with local produce as well as community partnerships with Davis Farm to School, the Agricultural Sustainability Institute at UC Davis, Sutter Davis Hospital and the Davis Farmers’ Market. 

At the request of the California State Legislature, the University of California established the UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SAREP) in 1986 both to help Californians understand the significance of participating in a sustainable food system and to assist farmers and ranchers in developing and implementing sustainable production and marketing systems.

In celebration of  SAREP's 25th anniversary, we asked present and past collaborators to reflect on their work with SAREP, and on SAREP's history with California agriculture.