Reading Seeds, Planting Ideas
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Recipe for America
Jill Richardson with Michele Simon
March 10, 2010
7:30-9:00 pm
101 Morgan Hall, UC Berkeley (map)
Join us March 10 at 7:30 pm for a conversation with Jill Richardson, author of Recipe for America, and Michele Simon, author of Appetite for Profit.
The dynamic conversation will run the gamut of food issues - the Farm Bill, community food projects and councils, food labeling, school lunches, food safety, and animal agriculture. Be part of the conversation to learn how you can take action from voting with your fork and beyond.
Jill Richardson got involved in food policy activism after working for several years in health care and observing the high rate of diet-related chronic illness among the American patient population. She blogs at La Vida Locavore . Recipe for America : Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It is Jill's first book . Marion Nestle hails Richardson as “a fresh voice in the movement to create a healthier and sustainable food system. This book will be part of the burgeoning food social movement, as it provides a guide to the most important issues and how to work on them” and Civil Eats calls Recipe for America "a handbook for the sustainable advocate in training."
Michele Simon is a public health lawyer who has been writing about the food industry since 1996. She has a master's degree in public health from Yale University and received her law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She specializes in legal strategies to counter corporate practices that harm the public's health and lectures frequently on corporate tactics and policy solutions. Michele has written extensively on the politics of food, and her first book, Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back,was published by Nation Books in 2006.
You can RSVP and invite friends through our Facebook invite.
Farm City
Novella Carpenter with Nathan McClintock
April 7, 2010
7:30-9:00 pm
101 Morgan Hall, UC Berkeley (map)
Novella Carpenter loves cities-the culture, the crowds, the energy. At the same time, she can't shake the fact that she is the daughter of two back-to-the-land hippies who taught her to love nature and eat vegetables. When Carpenter moved to a ramshackle house in inner city Oakland and discovered a weed-choked, garbage-strewn abandoned lot next door, she decided that it might be possible to have it both ways: a homegrown vegetable plot as well as museums, bars, and concerts mere minutes away. She closed her eyes and pictured heirloom tomatoes, a beehive, and a chicken coop.
Every day on this strange and beautiful farm, urban meets rural in the most surprising ways. What started out as a few egg-laying chickens led to geese, ducks, and two turkeys, Harold and Maude, who tend to escape on a daily basis to cavort with the prostitutes hanging around just off the highway nearby. When rabbits and two three-hundred-pound pigs were added to the mix of livestock and crops they were fed from the dumpsters of the cities finest restaurants. And no, these charming and eccentric animals weren't pets; she was a farmer, not a zookeeper. Novella was raising these animals for dinner.
For anyone who has ever grown herbs on their windowsill, tomatoes on their fire escape, or obsessed over the offerings at the local farmers' market, Carpenter's story will capture your heart. And if you've ever considered leaving it all behind to become a farmer outside the city limits, or looked at the abandoned lot next door with a gleam in your eye, Farm City is both a cautionary tale and a full-throated call to action.
Novella will be joined by Nathan McClintock, doctoral candidate in geography at UC Berkeley and member of the Oakland Food Policy Council , to discuss the broader implications of how agriculture fits into cities now and in the future.
You can RSVP and invite friends through our Facebook invite.
Farmers for the 21st Century
Lisa Hamilton with Carole Morrison, Tony Malmberg, and Jered Lawson
April 21, 2010
7:30-9:00 pm
101 Morgan Hall, UC Berkeley (map)
Moderator Lisa M. Hamilton , author of Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness, will be joined by three agriculturists who are doing more than growing food: Carole Morison , the defiant Maryland poultry farmer featured in “Food Inc.”; third-generation rancher and holistic manager Tony Malmberg; and farmer Jered Lawson, founder of Pie Ranch, in Pescadero.
Over the past decade, our relationship to food and how it is grown has transformed. But what about our relationship to the people who grow it? There is hope in the legions of new, young, and urban farmers cropping up around the United States , and yet overall, our country's agricultural community is shrinking by the day. The panel will discuss how the role of farmers in our society and in our lives is shifting, and what still needs to change in order to bring about a truly sustainable food system.
Writer and photographer Lisa M. Hamilton focuses on agriculture, particularly the stories of farmers and ranchers. She is the author of “Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness.” Her work has also been published in The Nation, Harper's, Christian Science Monitor, Orion , and Gastronomica.
For 23 years, Carole Morison raised chickens for international corporations on her farm in Maryland . Her story as a farmer is featured in the Academy Award-nominated film “Food Inc.” An activist for the rights of family farmers, she co-founded the Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance and now works as an agricultural consultant specializing in local food systems.
Rancher Tony Malmberg has raised cattle in the West for more than four decades, including thirty-one years in the foothills of Wyoming 's Wind River Mountains . A leading teacher of Holistic Management, he is the co-founder of the Brown Revolution Fund, an international climate mitigation effort based in holistically managed grazing.
Since 1990, farmer Jered Lawson has been linking communities with local farms through the Homeless Garden Project, farm-to-school programs, food policy councils, and more. He is the founder of Pie Ranch, Pescadero's renowned farm and farmer-training organization and the original partner of Mission Pie in San Francisco.
Optionally, you can RSVP and invite friends through our Facebook invite
Righteous Porkchop and Uncertain Peril
Nicolette Hahn Niman and Claire Hope Cummings
April 28, 2010
7:30-9:00 pm
101 Morgan Hall, UC Berkeley (map)
Factory farms and patented, bioengineered seed. These two juggernauts of modern agriculture strive to apply industrial uniformity and assembly line control to non-uniform living systems. In the last 30 years, agribusiness firms have developed then orchestrated the adoption of technologies with dubious benefits and long term dangers both unknown and unknowable. How did this culture of technology gone wrong come to be in American agriculture and how do we plot a course back to a sane future, where we utilize sensible technology for feeding ourselves? Join Nicolette Hahn Niman, author of Righteous Porkchop , and Clair Hope Cummings, author of Uncertain Peril , in conversation as they discuss these questions and more.
Nicolette Hahn Niman is an attorney and livestock rancher. She was the Senior Attorney for the environmental organization Waterkeeper Alliance where she was in charge of the organization's campaign to reform the concentrated livestock and poultry industry. Much of Nicolette's time is spent speaking and writing about the problems resulting from industrialized livestock production. She has written on the subject for the New York Times , The Atlantic Monthly Food Channel , Huffington Post, and CHOW. Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms is Nicolette's first book.
Claire Hope Cummings is an environmental lawyer, journalist, and the author of Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds . Claire's stories focus on the environmental and political implications of how we eat and how food and farming reconnects us to each other and the places where we live. She has farmed in California and in Vietnam , where she had an organic farm on the Mekong Delta. For four years she was an attorney for the United States Department of Agriculture's Office of General Counsel. For the last 15 years, Claire has been active in the local food and farming movement in the San Francisco Bay Area, including helping to found the Marin County food policy council.
Optionally, you can RSVP and invite friends through our Facebook invite.
Presented in cooperation with
Program followed by book signing and seed exchange. Come early and stay late!
For more information email agrofoodecology@gmail.com
All Agrariana events are open to the public. $5 donation requested at the door. Free with UC Berkeley student ID. No one turned away.
Wheelchair accessible. For disability accommodation requests and information, visit http://access.berkeley.edu . Please contact Danny Kodmur at (510)643-6456 (voice) or (510) 642-6376 (TTY) or accessibility@berkeley.edu for communication services and mobility services. Please try to make your service request with as much advance notice as possible.