Conference Schedule

 

April 7th, 2022

9:00 AM	Land Acknowledgement with welcome by Dean Fontaine
9:30 AM	Keynote Speaker: Rowen White
10:25 AM	Coffee Break hosted by Monkey Business Café (MBC)
10:45 AM	Chia Café Collective Cooking Demo
12:20 PM	Lunch available for purchase at MBC Food Truck
1:10 PM	Black Community Development through Urban Farming
2:10 PM	The Sustainable, Optimized Urban and Latino-driven Agriculture (SOULA) Project
3:10 PM	Food System Mapping: Geospatial Analyses to Identify Inequities and Build Food Sovereignty
4:10 PM	Historical Database of Climate Adapted Agriculture in Los Angeles
5:00 PM	Conference End

*Schedule subject to change

April 8th, 2022

	SoCal AG-SURFS	SoCal AG-SURFS	ESG Sessions
9:00 AM	Contributed Presentations: Queer Feminist Food Justice "Farming the Campus"		ESG Conference Start
10:00 AM	Opening Speaker: Dan Saladino
11:00 AM	Coffee Break hosted by MBC
11:10 AM	Project Rebound Cooking Demo: "Eating Well on the Go"
12:00 PM	Lunch available for purchase from MBC
12:30 PM	U-ACRE Session
1:30 PM	Tour of the Aboretum with Abe Sanchez	Sustainable Seafood	ESG Poster Session
2:30 PM	Temalpakh Farm Session	Composting Workshop	ESG Conference End
3:30 PM	Southern California Sustainable Agriculture Consortium	"Paya: The Water Story  of the Paiute" Film Screening
5:30 PM	Conference End

*Schedule subject to change

Detailed Description of Schedule: 

April 7th, 2022

• Land Acknowledgement with Welcome by Dean Fontaine:
  • The Land Acknowledgment will be given by Acjachemen Nation/Juaneño Band of Mission Indians spiritual leader, Adelia Sandoval. For this ceremony, Adelia has requested that attendees bring a small bowl of soil with them. Dean Sheryl Fontaine  is the Dean of College of Humanities and Social Sciences at California State University, Fullerton. 
• Keynote speaker: Rowen White
  • Rowen White is a Seed Keeper/farmer from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne and a passionate activist for indigenous seed and food sovereignty. She is also the director and founder of Sierra Seeds, an organic seed cooperative focusing on local seed production and education, based in Nevada City, California. 
• Monkey Business Café
  • Monkey Business Café is a fully operational restaurant and catering enterprise that serves as a work experience/job training site for emancipating foster youth and other at-risk young people. Part of the produce used at Monkey Business is grown at the Fullerton Arboretum's farm with help from students in the U-ACRE program and CSUF's service learning classes. 
• Chia Café Collective Cooking Demo
  • This cooking demo will be led by Abe Sanchez of Chia Café Collective. Abe Sanchez is a founding member of the Chia Café Collective, an organization dedicated to the revitalization of California’s Indigenous food that published the 2010 cookbook, Cooking the Native Way.  For the cooking demo, he will be preparing local Indigenous dishes with plants gathered from the Fullerton Arboretum.
• Black Community Development through Urban Farming
  
  • This workshop will be led by Jamiah Hargins, founder of Crop Swap LA, and Taylor Harrison, founder of Plant Plug LA. Crop Swap LA's mission is to grow food on unused spaces, creating sustainable jobs and local, nutrient-rich food in communities affected most by food insecurity.
  • Plant Plug LA started in 2019 as a "curbside nursery in South Central LA". Harrison sells and distributes fruit and vegatable seeds from her urban farm. 
• The Sustainable, Optimized Urban and Latino-driven Agriculture (SOULA) Project
  
  • The Sustainable, Optimized Urban and Latino-driven Agriculture (SOULA) project at San Diego State University aims to provide innovative solutions to food insecurity by promoting interdisciplinary collaborations and indigenous science, while fostering a pipeline of diverse workforce in the field of food and agriculture. Integral to this work was the development of curricula, experiential learning activities, and hands-on research projects (i.e., an indigenous to urban agriculture course, a food security internship, and an ethnographic field school) all of which incorporated knowledge and techniques native to Oaxaca, Mexico. These opportunities were available to over 100 students, including 34 Latinx students, who explored the cultural roots and technical footings of indigenous agriculture and food practices. Students recognized that methods developed by indigenous peoples are of high scientific value and can be used to solve current food security challenges. Six raised beds, two greenhouses, a flow hive, a chicken coop and run, two outdoor and two indoor hydroponic systems were built and continue to house research projects for students. This session will showcase select SOULA activities and will feature the following topics: 1) an overview of the SOULA project, 2) integrating milpa farming and urban agriculture, 3) hydroponic production of antioxidant-rich mustard greens, 4) entomophagy in Oaxaca, Mexico, and 5) tracking cultured proteins in the food chain.
• Food System Mapping: Geospatial Analyses to Identify Inequities and Build Food Sovereignty
  • Led by Professor Aaron Fox of Cal Poly Pomona, this session will explore maps of food deserts, defined as low-income neighborhoods where residents do not have easy access to a supermarket and how they fail to represent the various social and grass-roots efforts to build community food security. Urban farms, community gardens, and other efforts to provide safe, culturally appropriate, nutritious food are often abundant in these areas but are not represented in these maps. Typical food system maps also do not give context or identify the historical and current injustices that are often the root causes for food insecurity. However, geospatial tools and methodologies can help develop richer and more contextualized analyses of our food system and encourage community alliances that enhance food sovereignty and social justice. This session presents efforts across Southern California to develop maps and analyses that incorporate urban farms, community gardens and other grass-roots efforts to build neighborhood food sovereignty. This session will also present geospatial analyses that identify the inequities that underlie food insecurity.
• Historical Database of Climate Adapted Agriculture in Los Angeles
  
  • In this session, Professor Choi Chatterjee of Cal State LA and her graduate students, Esmeralda Del Rio and Chris Gurrola and will present an overview of their research project, "The Historical Database Climate Adapted Agriculture". They have been on  creating a historical database centered on two main inventories: 1) A record of edible and medicinal plants that have thrived continuously in the Los Angeles basin for the last 300 years; 2) A record of sustainable agricultural practices that have evolved in the Southern California region. They will provide an overview of the building of the database. Esmeralda and Chris will present their findings on a few edible and medicinal plants that were cultivated by the indigenous peoples of Southern California. Their research is based on 18th century travel literature, ethnographic accounts by missionaries, travelers, and government officials in California. As described in several Spanish travelogues, the Prickly Pear (Nopal), that can grow in poor soils with little water, served as an important component of the indigenous diet. The pads of the cactus were cooked as a vegetable dish or used to enrich bread. The cactus apple or “tuna” was eaten fresh, juiced, or preserved as fruit leather. Their research will provide historical information on the myriad uses of native species endemic to Los Angeles. They hope that this will encourage urban communities to grow more indigenous plants that will increase biodiversity in Los Angeles.

April 8th, 2022 

• CSUF ESG Public Health Symposium on Food Insecurity
  
  • This symposium will discuss food insecurity, its impact on our health and well-being, and how existing programs and strategies are addressing the need of the large number of food insecure individuals during the pandemic. The symposium includes sessions focused on the efforts to alleviate food insecurity among college students and families with young children. A student poster session will showcase the innovative research and work students in Southern California universities are doing to address food insecurity. To increase access and allow the entire community to participate, this program is being offered free of charge and virtually. 
• Queer Feminist Food Justice Activism in Southern California
  • Nearly two decades ago, Avakian and Haber (2005) penned their foundational volume that sparked momentum in the nascent field of feminist food studies. Since then, Sachs and Patel-Campillo (2014) conceptualized a feminist food justice, and Parker et al. (2019) called for the need for intersectionality in feminist food studies. Although scholars have examined the experiences of queer farmers or explored the applications of the eco-queer movement to food studies there is a paucity of work focused on queer feminist food justice. As a coalition of feminist and queer activist-scholars who study and are deeply embedded in food justice activism in Southern California, we ask: What can queer feminist perspectives, experiences, and methodologies bring to food justice and food studies? How can activist-scholars collaborate with those who are already enacting a queer feminist food justice that embraces anti-racist and anti-capitalist approaches? Drawing on three years of participatory ethnographic research with diverse food justice activists who organize and run a low-cost organic farmers market, we explore the practical and theoretical implications of queering feminist food justice. More specifically, we demonstrate how queer feminist food justice enacts transformation while exposing and challenging the predominantly white, elite, and cisheteronormative spaces of farmers markets. This presentation concludes with some pragmatic directions stemming from the critiques highlighted therein. This presentation will be presented by Teresa Lloro and Jefferey Roy, professors at Cal Poly Pomona
• Farming the Campus: A Pedagogy toward Transformative Agroecology
  • This presentation, presented by professors Grieg Guthey and Gabriel Valle, will discuss CSUSM's Cougar Pantry, a student-led campus food panty coordinating weekly food delivery to campus from a local non-profit founded in 2017. A 2016 survey revealed over half of CSUSM students were food insecure. Since then, Dr. Guthey and Dr. Valle have been awarded two CSU Basic Needs Grants to assess the effectiveness and possibilities of using the campus garden to produce healthy, organic, fresh, and socially-just produce for the campus food pantry, and to empower students to become leaders in the local food system. For this presentation, they are particularly interested in the effectiveness of teaching agroecology as a applied science, a set a real world practices, and as social movement that has ramifications beyond the classroom. Their presentation is based on preliminary data gather from 2019-2021. With this project, their goal is two-fold. First, to assess the effectiveness of growing food on campus for the campus panty and how that may or may not empower students to engage in the local food system. Second, to assess the effectiveness of our pedagogical approach to teaching agroecology.
• Opening Speaker: Dan Saladino
  
  • Dan Saladino is a journalist and broadcaster. His book Eating to Extinction was awarded the  Jane Grigson Trust Award. He makes programs about food for BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service, and is a host of the award-winning The Food Programme. His work has been recognized by the Guild of Food Writers Awards, the Fortnum and Mason Food and Drink Awards, and in America by the James Beard Foundation.
• Project Rebound Cooking Demo- "Eating Well on the Go: How To Make The Best Food Choices for Your Busy Schedule" 
  • Project Rebound is a program that supports the higher education and successful reintegration of ​formerly incarcerated individuals wishing to enroll and succeed at California State Universites​. This workshop and cooking demo will explore the impact of our food choices on our performance and overall wellbeing. It will discuss how to make healthy food choices that are fast and cost-effective.
• U-ACRE Session
  
  • The Urban Agriculture Community-based Research Experience (U-ACRE) Project offers hands-on community-based research experience for undergraduates, as well as community outreach in areas of food security, nutritional sufficiency, environmental justice, and sustainable agriculture. This session will include presentations from U-ACRE fellows about current projects they are involved in. 
• Tour of the Arboretum with Abe Sanchez
  
  • Abe Sanchez of the Chia Café Collective will lead this guided tour around the Fullerton Arboretum. He will focus on the background and history of plants that are local to Southern California and their use in local indigenous communities. 

• Temalpakh Farm – Indigenous Agriculture in the heart of Coachella

  • Indigenous agriculture and food ways have existed in Southern California for millenia, with the region of Coachella Valley undergoing unique, and devastating changes and challenges in the past 500 years, beginning with the drying of Ancient Lake Cahuilla. Through the vision of the Augustine Band of Cahuilla Indians, Temalpakh Farm now operates an organic farm and farmer’s market on the Augustine reservation, once the location of the village site Temal Waquish, now surrounded by the city of Coachella. Where managed mesquite groves and desert food forests used to thrive, the eastern Coachella Valley is now better known as suffering from Food Apartheid. The workshop presented here will cover the traditional farming and food systems practiced by the Cahuilla people, the modern methods and techniques of organic agriculture being practiced at the farm in the present, and highlight ongoing projects to restore the natural tended food scape, towards the mission of Tribal food sovereignty, and providing fresh, organic produce for the community.

• Sustainable Seafood 

  • This session will include presentations from Emily Miller, project manager of the Fishful Futures project, and members of the Kai Ika Project based in New Zealand. Fishful Futures is an initiative launched by a Saltonstall-Kennedy Grant awarded in 2020 to a San Diego seafood processor and a working cohort of scientists, chefs, and community leaders. Fishful Future critically examined the San Diego seafood supply chain for waste of edible seafood happening upstream of consumers. Pilot projects were conducted on how to add value to these wasted products for fishers and processors, in order to incentivize them to make items of value for the local economy. A priority was placed on pilots that created opportunity for people to consume and enjoy these previously discarded cuts of fish (i.e. anything outside the fillet). Fishful Future worked with a local waterfront fish market to improve their sales of alternative cuts of fish at economical prices. Fishful Future launched a collaborative and bilingual public education effort with Olivewood Gardens and Learning Center, a National City-based nonprofit that serves a predominantly Latinx community, in order to increase the level of comfort that people feel in purchasing and preparing whole fish or non-fillet cuts of fish. And Fishful Future created an online, peer-to-peer resource for culturally relevant, zero-or-low-waste fish recipes from around the world. The key mission with these projects was - and is - to make sustainable seafood available and accessible outside of the luxury marketplace. 
  • The Kai Ika Project utilises fish heads, frames and offal which were previously going to waste. Since September 2016 previously discarded fish parts have been collected from the Outboard Boating Club of Auckland by Papatūānuku Kōkiri Marae whanau and redistributed to families and community groups in South Auckland who value these fish parts and enjoy their sweet flesh. Their mission is to minimise our impact on the marine environment through better utilisation of our natural resources. They encourage giving respect to each and every fish harvested and ensure no part of the fish is wasted.
  • In addition to these presentations, NOAA Fisheries Economist Stephen Stohs will be giving a presentation on transboundary endangered species conservation in fisheries and NOAA Fisheries Aquaculture Economist Derrick Robinson will be giving a presentation on aquaculture. 
• Composting Workshop
  
  • This workshop will be led by Miguel Macias, education manager at the Fullerton Arboretum. 
• Southern California Sustainable Agriculture Consortium hosted by Aaron Fox
• "Paya: The Water Story of the Paiute" Film Screening
  
  • "Paya for the People" documents the history of the Owens Valley Paiute who constructed and managed sixty square miles of intricate irrigation systems for millennia, long before Los Angeles diverted the Owens River through the Los Angeles Aqueduct, 220 miles across the Mojave Desert". This film screening will be accompanied with presentations and a Q&A led by Kyndall Noah and Teri Red Owl of Owens Valley.