Facebook
X (Twitter)
Reddit
Pinterest
Tumblr
LinkedInPosts Tagged: Global Food Initiative
Two new ways to get involved in the Global Food Initiative
In July 2014, UC President Janet Napolitano launched the UC Global Food Initiative (GFI) and ANR continues to play a major role in the GFI. Two new examples are a special issue of California Agriculture that is in the planning stages and a food-research video competition for UC students that the Nutrition Policy Institute is co-sponsoring. A call has gone out UC systemwide to participate in these projects.
Special issue of California Agriculture
ANR's peer-reviewed research journal California Agriculture is planning a special Global Food Initiative issue for summer 2017. Developed in partnership with GFI leaders at ANR, UCOP, the 10 UC campuses and the UC-affiliated national laboratories, the issue will mark the third anniversary of the initiative's launch.
The issue will feature a collection of original research papers in the GFI subject areas: nutrition, food security, food sourcing, food equity, food literacy, food recovery, food waste, local food systems, sustainable agricultural production, sustainable fishery practices, sustainable urban agriculture and climate smart agriculture. A call for papers is going out to researchers throughout the UC System.
ANR researchers working in these areas are encouraged to submit papers. Please see the call for manuscripts for full details. Abstracts are due for initial review by Oct. 1, 2016, with complete manuscripts to be submitted by Nov. 18.
If you have questions, contact Jim Downing, executive editor, at jdowning@ucanr.edu and (530) 750-1352.
Food research video contest
The World Food Day Video Challenge, co-sponsored by ANR's Nutrition Policy Institute, the UC Davis World Food Center and the GFI, is open to UC students. Students from all the UC campuses are invited to submit videos up to three minutes long that feature UC research. It could be about their own research or your research.
The winning team will receive $1,000 and an opportunity for team members (up to 3) to attend the Borlaug Dialogue International Symposium in October.
One objective of the contest is to raise awareness of the depth and breadth of food-related research and outreach being performed across the UC system.
Please encourage GFI fellows and UC students at your locations to participate by submitting a video by Sept. 7, 2016.
Details about the challenge are at foodvideos.ucdavis.edu. If you have questions, read the FAQs or contact WFC's Amy Beaudrealt at abeaudreault@ucdavis.edu or NPI's Ron Strochlic at rstrochlic@ucanr.edu.
UC commits $3.3 million to improve student access to nutritious food
The online survey was administered to a randomly selected sample of students from all 10 UC campuses in spring 2015. It is part of the UC Global Food Initiative, which promotes a nutritious, sustainable food supply.
According to the NPI survey, 19 percent of the nearly 9,000 participating UC students indicated they had “very low” food security, which the USDA defines as experiencing reduced food intake at times due to limited resources. An additional 23 percent were characterized as having “low” food security, defined by the USDA as reduced quality, variety or desirability of diet, with little or no indication of reduced food intake.
According to the UC news release, UC has developed an action plan tailored to the needs of individual campuses while maximizing coordination among them. The plan includes:
- Expanding food pantry storage and access
- Increasing collaboration with state and county offices to register students for CalFresh, California's nutrition assistance program
- Establishing and expanding awareness campaigns on student support services and food access
- Expanding the existing Swipe Out Hunger programs, which allow university students to donate excess dollars on their meal plan to reduce hunger on campuses
- Integrating food preparation and secure storage space into new student housing design and construction
- Enhancing financial aid communications about housing and food costs
“Among students who reported food insecurity in the past year, we found that for 57 percent this was a new experience – not one they had faced as children,” says Ritchie. “This suggests that students who are on their own for the first time would benefit from financial literacy training and additional information about financial aid, nutrition assistance, and making healthy choices on a limited budget.”
The report Student Food Access and Security Study, authored by NPI research analyst Suzanna Martinez, UC Santa Barbara sustainability coordinator Katie Maynard and Ritchie, can be downloaded at http://npi.ucanr.edu.
University of California initiative to address global food needs
UCOP released the following announcement about the UC Global Food Initiative today. UC ANR is a key player in this UC systemwide effort. The direct link to ANR's fact sheet is http://ucop.edu/_files/food-initiative/anr-food-factsheet.pdf.
University of California initiative to address global food needs
President Janet Napolitano today (July 1) announced a major University of California initiative intended to marshal resources across the UC system to address global challenges related to food.
The UC Global Food Initiative grows out of a commitment by Napolitano and the 10 UC campus chancellors to work collectively to intensify and expand the efforts of the world's premier public research university to support healthy eating, sustainable agriculture and food security.
Napolitano noted that by the year 2025, the world's population will grow by another billion people. Already, she said, 1 billion people go to bed hungry every night, while another half billion suffer from obesity.
“Our goal is far-reaching,” Napolitano said. “It is to do all we can to help the world learn to feed itself in ways that are healthy and sustainable in the use of resources.
“Our starting blocks for this initiative are our 10 campuses, our Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,” she said. “That power of 10-plus makes UC well poised to take on this challenge on a scale not possible by any other higher education entity in the world.”
The initiative's reach, Napolitano said, will be both external and internal – on campuses, among faculty and students, in research labs and in communities through UC outreach. It will build on efforts already under way. It will identify best practices and share them widely within UC, California, and, ultimately, the nation and the world.
The Global Food Initiative will expand on UC's tradition of innovative agricultural, health and environmental research by further incorporating other disciplines such as law, humanities, education and social science to better shape, impact and drive food policy discussions.
The initiative is not limited to seeking any single solution or set of solutions to the many, inter-related food issues confronting the world around food, Napolitano said.
“The idea,” she said, “is to provide the intellectual and technical firepower, as well as the operational examples needed for communities in California and around the world to find pathways to a sustainable food future.”
Emphasizing that student engagement is key, Napolitano announced, as one of her first actions, the funding of three $2,500 President's Global Food Initiative Student Fellowships to be awarded on each campus to undergraduate or graduate students. The fellowships will fund student research projects or internships.
Among other early efforts to be undertaken as part of the initiative are the following:
- Internally, campuses will heighten their collective purchasing power and dining practices to encourage sustainable farming practices, and model healthy eating and zero food waste; food pantries and farmers markets that exist on some campuses will be spread to all 10. Partnerships with K-12 school districts to enhance leveraging procurement for these purposes also will be explored.
- Food issues will be integrated into more undergraduate and graduate courses, catalogues of food-related courses will be developed, and demonstration gardens will be made available on each campus to increase opportunities for students to participate in experiential learning.
- Data mining of existing information will be deployed to help develop insights and action plans for California agriculture and responses to climate change.
- New policies will be enacted to allow small growers to serve as suppliers for UC campuses.
In describing the building blocks for the initiative, Napolitano noted that the university's agricultural outreach and public service programs – in every California county and more than 100 nations – bring UC resources to individuals and communities to help them access safe, affordable and nutritious food while sustaining scarce natural resources.
UC has long been active in addressing issues related to food. For example, UC research taught Californians how to remove salts from the alkali soils in vast stretches of the Central Valley, transforming barren landscape into one of the world's most productive farming regions.
Similar work continues across the UC system. To cite but a few examples, the Berkeley Food Institute is studying the relationship between pest control, conservation and food safety on Central Coast farms; students and faculty at UC Santa Cruz are transforming the field of agroecology; the World Food Center at UC Davis stands with 26 other centers dedicated to food and agriculture on that campus; the cutting-edge Healthy Campus initiative at UCLA taps all members of the campus community.
Napolitano announced the UC Global Food Initiative at the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley this morning, joined by members of the university's Food Initiative Working Group, including Alice Waters, founder of the Edible Schoolyard program and Chez Panisse Restaurant and Café; UC Santa Cruz Professor Daniel Press, executive director of the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at that campus; and Ann Thrupp, executive director of the Berkeley Food Institute at UC Berkeley.
Related links
UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources
View or leave comments for ANR Leadership at http://ucanr.edu/sites/ANRUpdate/Comments.
This announcement is also posted and archived on the ANR Update pages.
