Photo Courtesy of Hai Vo.

Strawberries may not come to mind when one thinks of justice, but this year’s second annual Strawberry and Justice Festival is intended to connect issues surrounding the delicious berry to larger issues of agricultural production, labor and pesticide application.

The event is entirely student-directed and will take place from 4-7 p.m. at the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS) farm on May 17. The festival is open to the public and all activities will be free of charge.

Event organizers hope to engage students with issues not only involving strawberry production, but agricultural justice in general.

“The focus is to take a largely celebrated spring fruit, strawberries, and talk about issues of production that are involved but invisible to the consumer at the grocery store,” said Aliesha Balde, UC Santa Cruz Food Systems Working Group (FSWG) co-coordinator and one of the event’s organizers.

The Strawberry and Justice Festival is hosted by the CASFS and FSWG. Funding for the event was provided by the Sustainable Food, Health and Wellness Initiative, which is a university-wide measure that funds various undergraduate projects to make such events free for students. Through the festival, organizers are hoping to create a community space for students to interact in a panel concerning food, justice and agricultural production.

The event will feature a panel discussing safer alternatives to strawberry production as well as a recent ban on methyl iodide, a toxic pesticide used in strawberry agriculture. Other activities will include fresh organic berry tasting, interactive tabling and an art and mural expression zone, in addition to addressing themes of labor, wage and workers’ ability to provide for their families. A live performance by local band Wooster will also begin at 5:30 p.m.

“We hope our activity will help make this social justice issue come to life for festival guests, since it is difficult to fully comprehend what farm labor is like, being that we are all removed from where our food comes from,” said festival coordinator Alexandra Villegas, who also serves as the Chancellor’s Undergraduate Intern for Dining and co-chair for the FSWG. “We have the luxury of being able to go to the farmer’s market or grocery store to buy our food, which makes it easy not to think about the hard work that goes into producing and harvest the food we eat.”

In addition to CASFS and FSWG, the festival is partnered with the Student Environmental Center (SEC), UC Santa Cruz Dining, Education for Sustainable Living Program, Sustainability Office of UCSC and the Science & Justice Working Group. In past years, the apprenticeship program at CASFS ran the event, but the FSWG has recently started playing a more active role in organizing it.

“Historically, the event has been a celebration of berries, the springtime, and serves as a community space for people to connect and learn about agriculture,” said Tim Galarneau, community coordinator for the Central Coast School Food Alliance and food systems education and research program specialist for CASFS.

After the event ends at 7 p.m., students are encouraged to attend a discussion concerning food waste. The discussion will take place from 7:30-9:30 p.m. in Social Sciences 1, Room 110. Guest speaker Jonathan Bloom, author of “American Wasteland,” will discuss the reasons why Americans waste food and ways we can reduce food waste.

The Strawberry and Justice Festival brings together many organizations for a chance to converse and connect themes of agricultural labor and justice, all while also enjoying live music and student-made, organic berry dishes.

“We’ll have opportunities to better connect and understand issues of labor, issues of pesticide application and production as well as challenges of farming, marketing and consumption,” Galarneau said. “It definitely goes beyond what choices are best in buying to what are the bigger problems and how can we in our everyday way of living be more mindful and supportive of a different vision in our food system and what will it take us to get there.”

All in all, festival organizers hope the event will stimulate learning and create a fun and refreshing environment for students to become educated and engaged in agricultural and labor issues.

“I believe that educating people on these issues and increasing general awareness,” Balde said, “is a form of pursuing justice in itself.”

Tucked between tall redwoods, the Bike Co-op allows students to go green without spending green. Photo by Devika Agarwal.

The transition from trash compactors to compost bins has resulted in 30 tons of waste converted into fertile organic matter. Photo by Devika Agarwal.

The Farm produces a bounty of fresh produce, available to all community members. Photo by Nita-Rose Evans.

All across the UC Santa Cruz campus, student and university organizations alike are working in unison to reduce carbon footprints, lead sustainable lives and define exactly what it means to go green.

UCSC has a history of being a leading university in the effort for sustainable campus life. While organizations on campus are consciously pushing for green living, it is easy to forget what UCSC has already accomplished and how exactly students can get involved.

“At UCSC, we’re about sustainability,” said Candy Berlin, program coordinator for UCSC Dining Services.

In 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) voted UCSC its sixth-largest green power purchaser among campuses across the country. And in August, Sierra magazine named UCSC seventh on their list of top 10 greenest colleges in the nation.

“There are many ways that students can get involved in this sustainability movement,” said Tim Galarneau, food systems education and research program specialist. “It is important to get involved and to know how to.”

Programs at UCSC like the Bike Co-op and the Farm work in unison to reduce UCSC’s carbon footprint. This, coupled with the continued efforts of Dining Services to advocate zero-waste, has helped promote the green movement to students across the campus and community.

Green Dining

“We are considered one of the leaders in college and university food service for sustainability,” Berlin said.

For years, UCSC has been taking initiatives to create a greener dining program on campus. The dining halls were certified as “green businesses” by the Monterey Bay Area Green Businesses Program, administered by the City of Santa Cruz. In November 2007, the city granted green certifications to the Porter/Kresge and Cowell/Stevenson dining halls, as well as University Catering.

In September 2008, Dining Services decided to remove trays from the dining halls in an attempt to diminish food waste and limit extra water usage.

Since the trays were taken away, UCSC has saved over 1 million gallons of water, and cut the ounces of food waste per plate nearly in half. The most recent measurement, which Dining Services calls a “food audit,” showed that food waste had been reduced from 4 to 2.3 ounces per plate.

“It’s much more than we expected, and after a year of being trayless we can measure it pretty well,” Berlin said.

Amanda Kimball, a third-year from Cowell, was one of the many students who experienced the transition to trayless dining.

“Without a tray, you can’t just grab whatever you want,” Kimball said. “It makes you think about what you can eat, not what you want to eat.”

With the UCSC dining halls serving over 23,000 meals a day, Dining Services has recently taken action in an effort to compost. All of the trash compactors have been converted to compost compactors, leading to approximately 30 tons of waste per week being hauled to Watsonville for composting.

In addition, the dining halls have begun to actively check with vendors to make sure that their packaging and paper goods — cups, cutlery, to-go containers — are all biodegradable.

“The need for trash cans will be really reduced,” Berlin said, “because literally everything will be either recyclable or compostable. That’s our goal.”

In 2004, UCSC formed the Food Systems Working Group (FSWG), a coalition made up of students, staff, faculty and community members that work together to improve the campus’s food system.

“Our purchasing preferences are to buy local, buy certified organic, buy direct and buy fair-trade,” said Scott Berlin, director of Dining Services.

A recent UC-wide mandate requires that every campus purchase a minimum of 20 percent of its food organically.

Not only is UCSC making efforts to exceed the 20-percent mandate in organic purchasing — Dining Services currently purchases about 28 percent organic — programs are being created to diminish the campus’s carbon footprint.

Dining Services plans to coordinate with individual colleges to create “Beefless Days,” on which one of the dining halls on campus will cut its beef and meat dishes. In addition, Dining is working toward having every Monday be “meatless” in an attempt to make students more aware of the delicious options of vegetarian dining.

By changing the way we eat and, more importantly, the way we think about what we eat, UCSC’s Dining Services department is making a vigilant and consistent effort to make meal options appealing to students in both taste and sustainability.

Bike Co-op

As people become more aware of what an impact carbon emissions from automobiles have, they beginning to cut back on their driving. In spring 2008, the volume of traffic through UCSC’s two campus entrances was reduced more than 16 percent since spring 2005. A count in October 2008 revealed that there are more than 1,200 bicycle riders per day on campus — an increase of more than 50 percent from just last spring.

But sometimes the green movement requires the kind of “green” that not all students have — bikes are expensive to buy and maintain. The Bike Co-op poses a solution.

A campus resource that allows students and faculty to rent bikes to ride around campus, the UCSC Bike Co-op is a full-service bike shop that is owned and operated by both students and members of the Santa Cruz community, all in an effort to manage carbon emissions and campuswide traffic conditions. It’s been serving the UCSC community for 16 years and has been an essential asset in the efforts toward sustainability.

According to UCSC student Hunter Veloz, a core member who has been with the co-op the longest, they provide service to approximately 2,000 students per quarter.

The co-op has core members that keep it running smoothly, but always provides a place for students to get some volunteering in. It even has programs that allow people to take care of community service hours through volunteering.

“We are always accepting volunteers,” Veloz said. “Generally we see anywhere from 5 to 15 volunteers per quarter.”

The co-op not only repairs bikes for students who already own them, but also rents out and sells bikes to students who don’t. “All of the bikes to rent and sell are donated,” Veloz said.

“I love bikes and the bike community,” said fourth-year Chris Loomis, a core member who has been with the co-op since he started at UCSC. “I have been able to learn everything about bikes and I like helping.”

The accessible core members make the Bike Co-op not only a place for sustainability, but a great place for community.

“It is so great to be involved on campus and to support the sustainability effort,” Veloz said.

The Bike Co-op wants to get students out on the roads, on their bikes, and on their way to sustainable living.

Harvesting Green Initiatives

Alan Chadwick became a pioneer of campuswide gardening when he encouraged his students to consider farming as a way of learning, and even a way of life. When students began skipping class to spend time in the garden with Chadwick, it was clear that the university needed to institutionalize the idea of gardening on campus.

The Alan Chadwick Garden, an organic garden established near Crown and Merrill colleges, can still be found today. Chadwick’s innovations led to the implementation of campus resources such as the Farm and the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS).

“Currently we run 130-plus member family called Community-Supported Agriculture,” specialist Galarneau said.

Members can come to the Farm every week on either Tuesday or Friday to pick up a box of fresh organic produce. Students can even use their meal plans and Flexi dollars for a box of fresh fruits and vegetables from the Farm.

There are currently about 30 students working as interns at the Farm. They not only work with the land, but also help to promote the farm-to-college movement at UCSC. About 300 universities are currently part of the farm-to-college effort. The values of farm-to-college are based around promoting relationships between institutions and regional food and farming sectors.

“Farm-to-college came about with the recognition that in our current food system there is a lot of disconnect between the eaters, the students, the producers and the farmers,” Galarneau said.
UCSC has been a major player in the sustainability movement for quite some time. And now the campus is continuing this movement in an effort to incorporate environmental preservation into students’ daily lives.

“We need to help lead the way the most, because of the size of our campus,” Galarneau said.

Through the Bike Co-op, on-campus farming, and the dining hall’s increasing efforts to promote sustainability, UCSC students can trust that the campus is doing its part.

“Other universities are even seeking us out for help in their green movements,” Candy Berlin said.

A second-year apprentice at the UCSC Farm stands outside a tent which uses solar energy. Photo by Alex Zamora.

Tim Becker came to the farm as a first-year and hasn’t left since.

The seed was planted in 2005, when he arrived at UC Santa Cruz as a proposed language studies major from Los Angeles who had no prior farming experience.

Then he got his hands dirty. During his first quarter, Becker spent Tuesdays and Thursdays harvesting food at the farm, waking up at 6 a.m. so he could eat breakfast at College Nine before spending his day working at the gardens. He became more rooted in agriculture his second year, when he interned at the farm 10 hours a week, learning the basics of gardening: weeding, planting, maintaining tools, compost and working in the greenhouses.

“I was in awe of this garden that I discovered so recently in my college experience, and I felt so lucky coming from L.A., this big metropolis where I never really experienced agriculture on that level,” Becker said. “When I found this place I realized how important it was for me to get involved on a deeper level.”

Becker, who graduated this past winter with a degree in environmental studies, is now an apprentice in the UCSC Farm and Gardens Apprenticeship Program, a six-month intensive program where farmers from all over the nation come to live, learn and work on the 32-acre UCSC Farm and 3-acre Alan Chadwick Garden.

Since its founding in 1967 by Alan Chadwick, more than 1,200 farmers have lived and worked on the farm to learn the nuts and bolts of organic farming and horticulture.

Many have since started their own farms and businesses and become chefs and educators all over the nation. One recent graduate, Blair Randall, started the Victory Gardens in front of San Francisco City Hall.

On April 13, Becker moved back to Santa Cruz with a mattress, some blankets, a dresser and his tent, much like all of the apprentices before him. However, Becker and his fellow apprentices will be the last group to live in these tents that line the periphery of the farm. As of June 2009, they will no longer be permitted to do so by the university due to building regulations.

In December 2008, the UCSC Farm and Alan Chadwick Garden launched the Grow-a-Farmer campaign to raise $250,000 in order to build permanent university-approved housing that would shelter the 38 apprentices that work on the farm each year.

Ann Lindsey, the fundraising coordinator for Grow-a-Farmer, expressed excitement for the eight four-person tent-cabins that will provide private rooms for 32 new apprentices.

“We want people [to] have a better place to live than a tent,” Lindsay said. “They’re going to be nice little structures tucked behind the plum orchards. They’re going to be a great place to live.”

Christof Bernau, the UCSC garden manager and instructor, views living on-site as a “very solid cornerstone” of the program not only because it provides first-hand experience, but also because its low cost allows for people of varying economic backgrounds to be able to afford to attend the program.

In addition, Bernau said that the community that develops due to on-site living arrangements provides a valuable opportunity for the cross-pollination of ideas and backgrounds.

“[The apprentices] come from a world of experience that they share with each other in part in the day-to-day, but in the off-hours as well,” Bernau said. “If people weren’t living there and were all off in these separate places, there would be a whole lot less community engagement.”

The month of May marked the last push to get businesses, restaurants and organizations to help fund the tent-cabins that would house the next generation of organic farmers. The support was overwhelming — over 50 restaurants and businesses in Santa Cruz and the Bay Area, such as Gabriella’s Café in Santa Cruz and New Leaf grocery stores, pledged to donate a percentage of their profits. The effort isn’t just a local one; restaurants in New York and Los Angeles also held events to benefit the campaign and foundations like Newman’s Own Foundation donated $50,000.

The work has started to pay off. As of June 1, Grow-a-Farmer had raised $213,000. County Supervisor Mark Stone proclaimed June “Grow an Organic Farmer Month” to honor the work the apprentices have done to provide sustainable and organic agriculture.

Aside from businesses, there have been individual donations ranging from $5 to $10,000, an effort that Martha Brown, senior editor at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, compares to the grassroots efforts utilized in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Brown said that the most gratifying part of the campaign was receiving donations from former apprentices who threw events at their homes and farms, using their connections with family and organizations to get more sponsorship.

“It’s so clear that they’re so passionate about giving people the same opportunity to have the same chance they had,” Brown said. “That’s been kind of a fun part of it, a whole community of people [coming] together to work on it.”

“Agriculture is such a social engagement. As much as it is about your involvement in the land, it’s about your involvement with people,” Becker said. “What we partially strive to achieve is a deeper relationship with our agricultural community. That’s what I realized coming here. I kind of fell in love with this place.”