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Program Council visits UC ANR sites in Monterey Bay area
Every year the UC ANR Program Council visits programs for one of their monthly meetings. In June, they toured several sites in the Monterey Bay area.
Their first stop was UC Santa Cruz, where they met with Katharyne Mitchell, sociology professor, Agricultural Experiment Station faculty member and dean of the Division of Social Sciences. Joji Muramoto, UC Cooperative Extension organic production systems specialist, and three of the five new AES faculty located at UCSC – Matt Sparke, professor of politics; Greg Gilbert, professor of environmental studies; and Michael Loik, professor of environmental studies – described their research. The group walked around the UCSC Farm, learning about its 53-year history advancing small-scale, organic production and hearing from students what the experience has meant to them.
Next they headed to Marina to discuss the innovation initiatives at the UCSC Monterey Bay Education, Science and Technology Center (MBEST) and the developing collaboration with UC ANR focused on ag tech research and homebase for the new UC Cooperative Extension specialist position to work on food safety, drones and remote sensing.
They had lunch with staff at the UCCE Monterey County office in Salinas, then local farm advisors gave presentations on their research and extension. Michael Cahn discussed CropManage. Aparna Gazula and Mark Bolda described their work with non-English speaking farmers. Devii Rao talked about cattle grazing as a tool for wildfire prevention.
Their last stop was at the USDA Agricultural Research Service Lab for Crop Improvement and Protection Research in Salinas, where the recently announced UCCE specialist in coastal produce safety systems will be located, growing the cohort of UCCE specialists there.
