Jim Downing

Jim is currently the Executive Editor of California Agriculture, the peer-reviewed journal of the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. He has worked in natural resource management for 20 years as a consultant, researcher and journalist. Since 2010, he has been a research and communications consultant to organizations including The Nature Conservancy, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Water Education Foundation, the International Finance Corporation and the sustainability division of AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. From 2004 to 2010 Jim covered climate change, energy, agriculture, and water at the Sacramento Bee and the Seattle Times. In a series of stories in 2008 and 2009 he revealed fraud among firms supplying chemicals to organic farms; the articles prompted industry reforms, a crackdown by federal regulators and a new state law. Before becoming a full-time reporter he was a consultant to the World Bank Water and Sanitation Program's New Delhi office and the Blue Planet Run Foundation. In the 1990s he managed several ecological research projects in the Colorado Rockies and the Eastern Sierra region of California, as well as at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in Ispra, Italy. Jim attended Deep Springs College and hold a B.S. in Agricultural Engineering from Cornell University, an M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley and an M.A. in Energy and Resources from UC Berkeley. He lives in Oakland with his wife, Seema, an air quality engineer at Aclima Inc., and their 4-year-old son, Rohan.