Welcome GrizzlyCorps Fellow: Brenda Rodriguez Meza

Hi! My name is Brenda (She/Her) and I am a GrizzlyCorps Rural Climate Fellow at The Hopland Research and Extension Center. Let me tell you a little bit about myself and my interests. I grew up in Goleta, CA and from a young age, found myself gravitating to community gardens. At these urban community gardens, I discovered the importance of capacity building and mutual aid through different partnering organizations. Some of my interests include ethnobotany, photography, and multi-media collage making. I enjoy exploring various decolonial ecological theories which have helped me (re)discover and (re)define my relationship to land, institutions, and allow me to explore embodied knowing. While studying at UC Santa Cruz I concentrated my work on Global Environmental Justice and spent a lot of time familiarizing myself with the Chadwick Garden and the CAFS Farm and garden through different fieldwork. On these sites, I studied pollinators, agroforestry, and rotational crop systems. Through my studies I came to recognize the necessity for localized food systems and climate-stabilizing food production that would tackle the issue of excessive food waste. I have recently enjoyed learning about food sovereignty movements like the one led by Ghanaian agroecologist, Vandana Shiva. Her work in seed saving has been incredibly admirable as it is the basis for the stability of ecological systems. Shiva's initiative titled Navdanya began after the green revolution and has since been able to establish seed banks in various communities in India and Bhutan. The Navdanya program catalyzed the initiative to mainly liberate farmers from relying on commercial seeds. The Seeds of Vandana Shiva is a great documentary if you are interested in Indigenous seed-saving systems and the battle many farmers fought against Bayer Monsanto to generate resiliency for their communities.

Here's a link to it!

https://archive.org/details/the-seeds-of-vandana-shiva-2021-720x-480-16x-9

Brenda Rodriguez Headshot