[Isa Ferrall and Laney Siegner, ERG Graduate Students]

As the rains fell generously on Northern California last winter, many local farmers eagerly anticipated the healthy plants and high yields sure to come in this year’s growing season. California’s water problems are far from solved (especially when it comes to groundwater levels that remain well below average in aquifers across the state), but the high soil water content produced lush green hillsides that just two years ago were golden brown from years of intense drought. This fall, with the harvests still coming in, the time is ripe to share in the bounty, support a local farmer, and join a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) operation! Nothing keeps you in touch with the seasons better than local food; it’s time to get your squash and pumpkin flavors from a local farm instead of that pumpkin spice latte.



For the well-informed, data-driven ERG graduate student, the choices of which CSA to pick can be paralyzing. Which farm is the closest, does the most to reduce food waste, uses the most sustainable agro-ecological practices, or supports minority farmers? Which one is going to give me the right amount of veggies, ones that I know how to cook rather than random mystery vegetables I’ve never heard of?


These questions have hung in the ERG air for months, from conversations in the student kitchen to Isha’s Water Group dinner last winter. We’ve finally decided to put together a choice table to highlight the distinguishing features of several local CSAs, with the hope that it will help ERGies select their dream CSA. Because the question should not be whether or not you join a CSA, but rather which CSA works best for your life. Read on for inspiring sources of ingredients to use for your next eggplant parmesan, butternut squash soup, persimmon bread, or other delicious home-cooked meal.

Local CSAs

Farm/CSA, Location	Distinguishing feature	How much food?	Cost	Pick up options	Home delivery
Full Belly Farms Capay Valley, north of Sac. (*Laney gets this one, ask for more info!)	Certified organic, leader in restorative farming practices. Veggies, value added products and flowers	Good amount for 2 people (or dinner party), can pick up every week or every other	$19/box for 4 boxes; $16.50/box for yearlong payment (48 weeks)	Tons of options in Berkeley and Oakland, every day of the week, bring own bag to pick up	Yes (+ $7/week)
Phat Beets Mostly Oakland farmers, others from Central Valley (Stockton, Hollister, Merced) (*delivered to ERG kitchen every other week)	Supports local minority-owned farms and Oakland high school students who run a Youth Pickle Co., proceeds go to free veggie vouchers for local clinic	Half-share is good for 2 people, lots of variety of fruits (citrus), veggies and herbs, can get every week or every other	$17 for half-share (plenty for 2 people), $34 for full share	Lots of options for pick up, sometimes at personal residences, Tuesdays and Saturdays, come in paper bags	No
Imperfect Produce Various sources, large family farms in CA (*ask Julia and Isa for more info and up to $20 off your first box!)	Reduces food waste by selling foods that aren’t conventionally marketable in grocery stores (as the name implies)	Depends on your choice of box size, small organic produce box (recommended) good for 2 people	Organic mixed, regular mixed, all veggie and all fruit options; $15-17 for small organic produce box	N/A	Yes, normally Saturday mornings($3/box)
Live Power Community Farm Mendocino County	Horse- and solar-powered biodynamic farm	Veggies, fruits, flowers, grains and meat (varying amounts)	$43.45/week for full season (varies seasonally; contact farm for more info)	N/A	Delivered on Saturday mornings by local members
Frog Hollow Farm’s Happy Child CSA Brentwood CA (1 hr from Berkeley)	Legendary certified organic farm	All fruit CSA, plus dried fruit, honey, olive oil, eggs, etc.	$15.50-$73 (mini share to triple share), available weekly or biweekly	Pick up at many East Bay locations and farmer’s markets	Yes (mail order)
Sea Forager Seafood SF Bay	Small scale fishermen using sustainable practices	Fillets, shellfish, and small whole fish; can select dinner for 2 or 4 people	$24-47 depending on amount	Pick up at The Local Butcher Shop in Berkeley, Fridays 3-7, weekly or biweekly	No (only in SF, $8 more)
Acta Non Verba: Youth Urban Farm Project Oakland, CA	Farm is planned, planted, harvested and sold by K-8 youth in Oakland		$25/week	Farmstand sales (located in Tassafaronga Park)	Yes
Prather Ranch Meat Co. Humboldt County family ranches	Meat CSA- beef and pork	You choose	$129/month, can get monthly or bi-monthly deliveries	N/A	Free home delivery in CA!
Marin Sun Farms Marin/Pt. Reyes, CA	Sustainably raised meat; firm commitment to ecological livestock production	You choose- meat or poultry boxes	$70 (small box) - $212 (large box)	N/A	Home delivery to East Bay

The positive testimonies have been piling in from ERGies: CSAs help you cook more, eat healthier, consume sustainably… and they are real time-savers when it comes to reducing trips to the grocery store. Cost is variable and, in some cases, there is a premium for sourcing food sustainably (especially meat). We hope our table shows, however, that you can still find an option that will work for your budget.

If you don’t have the ability to commit to a weekly or bi-weekly CSA, or are still finding your match, fear not! There are many other ways to get your food from local farms in the meantime, starting with farmers’ markets. Below, we compile a list of the most accessible farmers’ markets from Berkeley. As with the CSAs, cost is variable, often with premiums for prime locations. But again, budget friendly options do exist. Whether or not you end up going home with more than you can carry, simply going is a fun way to connect with your local community.

Local Farmer's Markets

Farmer’s Market	Location	Timing	Notes
North Berkeley	Shattuck and Rose, Berkeley	Th 3-7pm	Combination of food, art, crafts, and music
Saturday Downtown Berkeley	1931 Center St, Berkeley	Tu 2-6:30pm Th 3-7pm Sa 10am-3pm	Fun scene of vendors, art, music, families, and community
South Berkeley	Alcatraz and Adeline St, Berkeley	Tu 2-6:30 pm	Very accessible, accepts SNAP/EBT, great selection and diversity of vendors
Temescal	5300 Claremont Ave, Oakland	Su 9am-1pm
SF Ferry Building	One Ferry Building #50, San Francisco	Tu 10-2pm Th 10-2pm Sa 8am-2pm	Lots of vendors, fun to take ferry to SF, waterfront views along Embarcadero, nice breakfast/lunch spot!
Lake Merritt / Oakland	Lake Park Ave, Oakland	Sa 9am-2pm	Beautiful setting for a farmer’s market!
SF Civic Center	United Nations Plaza, San Francisco	We 7am-5:30pm Su 7am-5pm	Cheaper than Ferry Building, but more gritty
Alemany	100 Alemany Blvd, San Francisco	Sa 6am-1pm	Very large wholesale market, need a car

Supporting local farms and gaining knowledge about where your food comes from is healthy for both people and planet. We have created these choice tables with a Berkeley home-base in mind, but we encourage you to apply these ethics wherever you call home to purchase your food sustainably, eat seasonally, and support your local economy.

Have fun and bon appetit!

Photos by Isa Ferrall and Laney Siegner.

The views expressed here belong solely to the authors of each entry and are not representative of the position of the Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley.

[Laney Siegner, ERG graduate student]

“Only in the past decade has farm to school emerged as a movement to change the way children understand food and to offer farmers new markets for what they produce.” (Beery & Joshi, 2012) 

Tasting reception at Monterrey High School featuring food produced by participating districts in the California Thursdays initiative.

At the Asilomar Conference Grounds, there was a palpable excitement for those present of being in rooms full of farm to school enthusiasts. Although hailing from a variety of backgrounds and job titles (teachers, farmers, school administrators, food service directors, school “chefs,” non-profit leaders, school board members, parent volunteers, and academic researchers), all were enthusiastic about the premise of providing real, healthy food to schools from local farms.

The Farm to School program in California currently involves over 85 school districts, of which Berkeley Unified School District was the first district in the country to pass a progressive food policy recognizing the connection between healthy eating and effective learning. On May 4-6, 2015, over 250 California “first responders” to the national health care crisis convened in Pacific Grove, CA for a state-level Farm to School conference.

Conference attendees were encouraged to take a "holistic view" of how fresh produce contributes to school curriculum and education. Laney is the corn with the tennis racket on the left.

Sam Farr, Democratic Congressman from California, delivered opening remarks asserting that the crew gathered before him were first responders in the sense that providing healthy food grown on local farms to students in school was a fundamental strategy for reducing childhood obesity and the associated lifetime health care costs that put such a strain on the national system. From an ERGie perspective, I am used to hearing such interdisciplinary analyses of the benefits of a particular program like Farm to School. This was just the first in a series of frames placed around Farm to School programs, from health and nutrition to environmentalism, to climate change, and improved math and science education.

... it is important to note a central theme of the conference: the need to more rigorously evaluate programs consistently across districts and states...

This basic idea of farm to school has become “revolutionary” thanks to the modern industrial food system, a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions (due to transportation, concentrated animal waste streams, land use change, and chemical fertilizer inputs) environmental degradation and adverse human health outcomes. Not to mention the loss of aspects of culture associated with the loss of small farms and farmers as a way of life in this country. Issues of food are issues of culture: food is what we are and want to be. If we want to be diverse, full of variety, connected, healthy, and environmentally “literate,” than our food system has to be those things first.

As a means to promote biodiversity, local economic development, social justice, secondary education, and environmental and human health, school gardens or farm-to-school programs are pretty compelling solutions to contemplate. They hit so many targets with one arrow. However, before getting too carried away with the idea, it is important to note a central theme of the conference: the need to more rigorously evaluate programs consistently across districts and states; the need to collect numerical data year after year, and the need to move beyond anecdotal “success stories” towards scientifically driven empirical results necessary to secure sustainable funding for such programs.

CA Thursdays is an initiative started by the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley. 

It is my hope, as a researcher and former educator, that Farm-to-School can be embedded as part of a holistic approach to secondary school reform. According to the “3 pillars” of the U.S. Green Ribbon School award program, schools must meet building, operations, and curriculum standards in greening their school. To meet these criteria, for example, cafeteria food might be procured from local farms and supplemented by an on-site garden-classroom; the school implements energy efficiency and waste recycling/reduction measures in buildings; and the curriculum across subjects is reflective of the realities of climate change and today’s environmental problems,

To see what some schools have been on to with Farm to School programs, conference participants were invited to Monterey High School for a “California Thursdays” tasting reception of what local school districts are offering to their students. The California Thursdays initiative was created by the Center for Ecoliteracy and piloted in Oakland Unified School District; currently 42 districts participate in serving meals sourced from California ingredients on that day of the week (totaling over 250 million meals annually).

The results were impressive, colorful, and delicious; a promising sign of things to come in building the world we want the next generation to inherit. For more info on CA Farm to School programs, policy initiatives, and resources for schools, go to http://www.farmtoschool.org/our-network/California.

Note: The views expressed here belong solely to the author of each entry and are not representative of the position of the Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley.

[Alana Siegner, ERG MA]

Working on a school garden in Boston 

On a typical day walking to class, my eyes are caught by the sight of persimmon trees arching over the sidewalk offering their unusual fruits, small backyard gardens bursting over fences and property lines, and lime bushes camouflaging their green citrus offerings in a cloud of bright green leaves. Urban agriculture seems to be very much alive and well in Berkeley, especially by my East Coast-rooted standards. But, I believe there is more to the story than the superficial pleasure. I take in the fact that these food production centers exist; scattered among city and residential streets in the Bay Area. In my first semester out in California, I’ve made it a mission to learn more about and participate in the movement that is urban agriculture.

Me with some enormous collards from the Oxford Tract

My direct experiences in the urban agriculture scene have been universally positive; my research into policy and land use disputes has shown the controversial nature or flip-side of the urban-ag coin. Tuesday mornings at the Claremont Middle School garden in Oakland, and Friday mornings in the UC Berkeley Student Organic Garden (SOGA) often have me up to my elbows in compost, soil, or over-sized collard plants. I teach a weekly lesson in the Claremont garden to boisterous groups of 6 to 8th graders with the help of a volunteer garden manager who coordinates the garden lessons during an elective period at the school. The students at Claremont, as well as students I used to teach in Boston, have responded in meaningful and often hilarious ways to their first hands-on experiences with certain plants, which hopefully will make their way increasingly into school lunches.

I was inspired to explore more school garden projects in the area, and made it out to the Edible Schoolyard at MLK Middle School, the famous Alice Waters-backed project. The level of organization and productivity at that site was amazing: orderly rows of flowers and vegetables integrated into gazebo-like structures, a toolshed cleaner than my apartment, a wood-fired pizza oven, solar panels, and chickens wandering freely.
Also part of the Urban Garden Ecosystems class I’ve been taking this fall are the weekly lab sections in SOGA, where I’ve been learning the agroecological principles of soil building, intercropping, and seed starting. The harvest yields have often sent me back to ERG bearing trash bags full of basil, greens, and kale. These experiences led to the enthusiastic re-writing of the popular country song “Cruise,” as “baby you a song, you make me wanna roll my shirt sleeves up, and plant” -- a song my group and I performed at our final project presentation last week.

Chard harvest one day this Fall from SOGA

Behind these rosy experiences is a larger debate on competing land use claims -- development vs. environment. San Francisco made headlines earlier this fall for its trailblazing urban ag bill, AB 551, the Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones Act, but also for worsening the housing crisis with this policy. The author of the Atlantic Monthly article argues that urban agriculture on vacant lots is more appropriate to a city like Detroit, rather than SF where rent prices are sky-rocketing and there is a need for increased urban density; leave the gardens for the rooftops, he argues, not on developable lands. A controversy closer to home is the Gill tract redevelopment plans by the University. Starting in 2012, students and local organizers have been “occupying the farm” and arguing with the university over the proposed redevelopment of this land in Albany, part of a land-grant university system that they argue should become a center for urban agricultural research rather than a grocery store and affordable housing development. The fight for the land was featured in a recent documentary that premiered in Berkeley, “Occupy the Farm.”  

While these debates are far from settled, I believe decentralized centers of organic food production are the best way forward for building food security and resiliency in any community. As a solution to climate change, I see great potential in organic soil carbon sequestration, and eating locally grown produce reduces food-miles traveled that in turn reduces transportation-related emissions. I will continue arguing against the injustices of the current industrial food system, the consequences of eating a diet saturated by high-fructose corn syrup, and in favor of the merits of integrated systems like aquaponics structure. Growing food in small spaces, whether for a tiny home or urban restaurant like the soon-to-open Perennial restaurant in SF, is the way of the future.

A flower from the Spiral Gardens community gardening center

Some day my sister and I hope to open a farm-school where gardens and environmental education are center stage, where students learn in outdoor and real-world classrooms. We want to have lavender bushes, goats, and honeybees, among other things. Until that day comes, I will keep learning from urban farmers and tasting hybrid persimmon varieties at the Berkeley farmer’s market.



Note: The views expressed here belong solely to the author of each entry and are not representative of the position of the Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley.

[Erica Newman, ERG PhD]

Dear everyone,

Next time you find yourself in a grocery store, go look at the freezer section and the fish counter, and see if they have Orange Roughy. If you don't see it, that's good. Don't ask for it, or they'll think you want it.

If you do see it, though, talk to someone in charge. Tell them you want them to stop carrying Orange Roughy because it is being over-fished. They will wonder why you care; don't let this bother you. You can suggest that they carry trout instead, because it's about the same, flavor and texture-wise. The same goes for a restaurant with Orange Roughy on the menu. You might talk to the chef or the restaurant owner.

That's all. If you want, you can tell me you did it, and it will brighten my day.

Courtesy J.D.M. Gordon and Mar-Eco.no

The Orange Roughy is a member of the Slimehead family, and considered a food fish despite its unappetizing extraction. They live in family groups, and can live to be about 150 years old. When they get fished, a whole family line will disappear. You don't want to eat an old fish because they sequester toxins and heavy metals, but additionally, given their social structure, eating one is like walking into a family reunion and eating someone's grandmother.

The Orange Roughy doesn't reproduce quickly or often, and they lay a lot fewer eggs than other kinds of fish. Too many of them are currently fished, and they are not replacing their population numbers fast enough to keep up. Eating one is the equivalent of eating 50 or 100 of a fast-reproducing fish. There's a lot we don't know about them. Maybe they're intelligent. Who knows?

So don't eat them, and ask other people not to, either.

Go out and do the world a favor!

Happy holidays everyone,
Erica

P.S. More natural history facts and information on the Orange Roughy (Hoplostethus atlanticus) here and here.

P.P.S. Start eating sustainable seafood with the help of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s searchable guide: http://www.seafoodwatch.org/



Top Photo: Faroe stamp 251 orange roughy (hoplostethus atlanticus). Artist: Astrid Andreasen.


Note: The views expressed here belong solely to the author of each entry and are not representative of the position of the Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley.