Sustainable Agriculture & Food Policy

Where Food Comes From Inc. (d.b.a. IMI Global, Inc.) (OTCQB: WFCF), the largest independent verifier of food production practices in North America, is acquiring SureHarvest Inc. The transaction expands and diversifies WFCF’s commodity reach with high-value specialty crops, including winegrapes, almonds, hazelnuts, strawberries, mushrooms, cut flowers, leafy greens and other fresh produce.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has appointed Asa Bradman, an associate professor of environmental health science at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, to the National Organic Standards Board. Bradman and four other appointees will serve five-year terms starting Jan. 24, 2017. The board was established under the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 and operates in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act to assist in developing standards for substances used in organic production and to advise the secretary on aspects of the National Organic Program.

Fellow Sumit Kadakia and his wife have launched a New Haven-based start-up that is turning food production refuse into nutritious, tasty, and environmentally sustainable food.

A University of Maine researcher studying the decline of soft-shell clams in Casco Bay has found an effective way to protect clam populations, but is struggling to capture the attention of diggers. Brian Beal, a professor of marine ecology at the University of Maine at Machias, is going from town to town along Casco Bay presenting research, insights and strategies into the ways that clammers can protect and restore soft-shell clam populations.

Changing dietary preferences and population growth in South Asia have resulted in increasing demand for wheat and maize, along side high and sustained demand for rice. In the highly productive northwestern Indo-Gangetic Plains of South Asia, farmers utilize groundwater irrigation to assure that at least two of these crops are sequenced on the same field within the same year. Such double cropping has had a significant and positive influence on regional agricultural productivity. But in the risk-prone and food insecure lower Eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains (EIGP), cropping is less intensive.

While “U-pick” berries, Livermore wine grapes and Brentwood sweet corn may be most people’s mental image of East Bay agriculture, Contra Costa and Alameda counties produce a wide variety of crops and livestock — and in a wide array of settings.

Fellow Marissa McMahan is working with Maine locals and Venetian fishermen to turn the invasive green crab into a gourmet dish known in Italy as moleche.

Eager to help empower youths and families through gardening, two Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) seniors led a volunteer effort this spring to grow more than 1,000 seedlings to support the Regional Environmental Council's (REC) programs. ...

Alicia Harley co-authored the agriculture section of an invited perspectives piece in PNAS written by a number of experts from different sectors (energy, water, health, agriculture) on innovation. The article distills the most important insights from the broad literature on innovation systems (economics, organizational behavior, science and technologies studies, etc) to give insights to practitioners of sustainable development on how to best reorient innovation systems to meet sustainable development goals.