A recent Spring 2024 issue of the California Bountiful magazine, features Nutrition Policy Institute's collaborative research with Impact Justice and ChangeLab Solutions on their Farm to Corrections California project. The article titled, “Program benefits inmates, small farms and local economies,” by Linda DuBois highlights the initiative created from the project, “Harvest of the Month.” This initiative supports local agriculture and nutrition promotion, individual well-being, and equitable access to fresh, diverse food options within the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prisons. Learn more about the program in this news story.
A new research brief developed by the Nutrition Policy Institute presents findings from an evaluation that examines how changing the maximum dollar-for-dollar match incentive levels offered to CalFresh participants at farmers markets impacted markets sales revenues. The California Nutrition Incentive Program (GusNIP in California) provides CalFresh shoppers with a dollar-for-dollar match when purchasing California-grown produce at participating markets. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the California Department of Food and Agriculture acquired funds to temporarily increase the maximum incentive from $10 to $15 at a sample of farmers markets. NPI researchers evaluated farmers market sales revenue data to compare the amounts of monthly CNIP and CalFresh dollars distributed and redeemed between markets where the CNIP maximum incentive level increased and those that didn't. The increases were temporary, occurring from September 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022, allowing researchers to examine trends when the markets increased the incentive and when the incentive returned to its original value. The evaluation found that increasing the maximum CNIP incentive level led to statistically significant increases in the dollar amounts of CNIP and CalFresh that were distributed at farmers markets. However, it did not find statistically significant effects on the amounts of CNIP or CalFresh that were redeemed at markets. Reducing the maximum CNIP incentive level led to a statistically significant reduction in the trend of amount of CNIP redeemed per month.
- Author: Danielle L. Lee
- Contributor: Ron Strochlic
- Editor: Lorrene Ritchie
Nutrition Policy Institute researcher, Ron Strochlic, received funding to partner with researchers from the University of California (UC) to identify promising practices to support the health of California agriculture workers. Strochlic, a longtime researcher of California agriculture worker health issues and former executive director of the California Institute for Rural Studies, will be conducting interviews with growers and farm labor contractors, as well as stakeholders representing different sectors–farm labor advocates, farmworker-serving nonprofits, grower organizations and health care providers–on agricultural worker health. The goal of the interviews is to identify promising practices for increasing access to and utilization of health care services among agricultural workers and their family members, as well as access to wellness services, including nutrition and physical activity. Strochlic will be working with Christy Getz, UC Berkeley Cooperative Extension Specialist in Agriculture and Food Systems, to interview stakeholders. The interviews are part of a larger project, known as the Farmworker Health Study, led by the UC Merced Community and Labor Center. Findings will be shared with the California Department of Public Health with recommendations for improving farmworker health. The two-year project, funded by UC Merced, started in March 2020. Additional project collaborators include Paul Brown, Ed Flores, and Anna Padilla of UC Merced, and Brenda Eskenazi of UC Berkeley.
- Author: Danielle L. Lee
The University of California (UC) Merced Farmworker Health Research Conference brought together researchers from across the country, UC officials, local and state leaders, and community members on April 9 for a virtual conference on farmworker health. The conference is part of a study that started in May 2020 and runs through June 2022. Researchers aim to expand on findings from the 1999 California Agricultural Health Workers Survey, conducted by the California Institute for Rural Studies, and will focus on the long-term health of farmworkers. University of California, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR), Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) researcher Ron Strochlic will be contributing to the study by conducting interviews with growers and other stakeholders to identify ways to increase farmworkers' access to health care. Strochlic also served on the conference planning committee, in collaboration with the event chair, Edward Flores, co-director of the Community and Labor Center at UC Merced, and fellow committee members Ana Padilla, executive director of the Community and Labor Center, public health Professor Paul Brown and graduate student Nimrat Sandhu of UC Merced, Christy Getz, associate cooperative extension specialist of UC Berkeley, consultant Joel Diringer and legislative advocate Noe Paramo of California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation. The conference was funded in support by the California Department of Public Health and the California Endowment. Conference presentations and discussions were uploaded to the Community and Labor Center's YouTube channel, where they will be available until June 9, 2021.
The Berkeley Food Institute (BFI) Graduate Student Council is inviting graduate student scholars, community members, and artists to submit proposal abstracts of speeches, scholarly papers, or in-progress film/mixed media works to discuss at their first annual Food Systems Conference, titled “ Biomigrations: Food Sovereignty, Security, and Justice in the Americas”. Biomigrations, as BFI graduate student fellow Jesus Nazario generally defines it, is a way to reconsider notions of Life and Movement. It is a way to explore one's community, self, and spirit(s) through Indigenous rooting, refusal, and violence. Biomigrations is premised on the idea that humans need to know where they have come from (Indigenous rooting), how they have arrived at such becoming (refusal), and how they are enacting structural pain(s) to humans and non-humans through their Being (violence). Example topics include, but are not limited to: traditional ecological knowledge, community food systems, land rematriation, food and nutrition policy, cooperatives, agroecology, feminist food justice, biotechnology, transnational foodways, sustainable development, undocumented farmworker labor, non-human centered research, food recovery, and regenerative agriculture. The virtual conference will take place on April 2-3, 2021, and is free to all participants and attendees The deadline for proposal abstract submissions is Sunday, February 21, 2021 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time).