- Author: Mackenzie Smith
- Editor: Julie Gipple
On the second Saturday of every month, Tuesday Simmons heads to the downtown Berkeley farmers market. Among the produce stalls and coffee stands, she sits behind a table with a sign that reads “Talk to a scientist!” She and other students spend the day fielding questions from strangers about topics that range from genetically modified foods to climate change and more.
“We never know who we'll talk to at our public events, or what kinds of questions we'll be asked,” said Simmons, a graduate student in the UC Berkeley Department of Plant and Microbial Biology (PMB). “This makes the farmers markets fun.”
Simmons' monthly visits to the farmers market are...
- Author: Aubrey White
In the information age, helpful information can be amazingly hard to find. Certainly for agriculture, the landscape is rife with expertise, experience, and knowhow. But connecting to the knowledge and linking knowledge-seekers with knowledge-holders can feel like an imperfect science. Research relevant to one crop may be irrelevant to the more than 300 crops grown in California. The unique experience of an individual farmer can be difficult to transfer to another.
As an outreach professional working with the University, I am constantly seeking new ways to engage with the agricultural community, and ways to improve how agricultural knowledge is produced and transmitted. How can solutions to agricultural and...