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The Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems Profile

"We need to create the beauty and the quality first.
The quantity will follow"
-Alan Chadwick

In the last 40 years, as global food demand steadily increased, global cereal production doubled, mainly from increased yields resulting from greater inputs of fertilizer, water and pesticides, mechanization, and new crop varieties. Today's food systems are extremely productive, but in the long run may not be sustainable. Increased global food production has contributed to environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and the emergence of pathogens. These factors threaten the long-term stability of agricultural production.

The Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS) at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) is tackling this issue and boosting the concept of long term "sustainability" as a popular theme in agriculture. With the world population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, we are compelled to consider the connections between global agriculture, food supply systems and environmental sustainability.

Considered by many as the birthplace of organic farming, CASFS has transformed the way food is grown; the Center uses crop rotation methods and utilizes organic compost instead of chemical pesticides and fertilizers to grow fruits, vegetables and flowers. These practices have pushed the agenda of sustainability beyond ecological stewardship to address issues of social justice in the food system, such as the rights of workers to fair wages, decent working conditions, and access to healthy food.

As Christof Bernau, garden manager at the CASFS Farm explains, "Because [the Center's] methods can be employed in urban spaces, on marginal soils, in the countryside, and in fact, the entire gamut of places we live, we already have in our possession a key tool to address hunger, which is, after all, a crisis not of production but of distribution. Intensive, local production of culturally relevant, nutritionally dense crops puts food where people already are, thus reducing our tenuous reliance on fossil fuel-dependent, international distribution systems, while at the same time reconnecting populations to the sources of their sustenance and enhancing biological diversity through crop diversity, the use of beneficial habitat plantings and the massive reduction of harsh chemicals that destroy the biological communities on which we all depend."

Founded on the legacy of the famous British proponent of organic farming, Alan Chadwick, the Center has been at the forefront of sustainable agriculture for over 40 years. When Chadwick came to the United States in 1967 and was hired by the UCSC to establish the student garden and training program, the agriculture industry was dominated by chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. Chadwick proved that by following his methods, known as the Biodynamic/French Intensive systems, yields of four to six times the U.S. commercial average for fruits, vegetables, and grains could be achieved, using one-eighth of the water, a quarter of the fertilizer, and one-hundredth of the energy per pound of food produced.

"Small scale, French Intensive/Biointensive production holds incredible promise in addressing the world wide crisis of food security and the reliance on increasingly expensive and scarce inputs that prop up the industrial food system," says Bernau, "French intensive methods can be adapted to virtually any location, rapidly building the productive capacity of soils, conserving precious water, promoting biological diversity, and employing human knowledge, ingenuity and labor as the primary inputs to sustain local food production."

Today, Chadwick-inspired gardens and farms spread across America, from California to Virginia. Chadwick's teachings also reach far beyond the United States into the countries of Latin America, the Caribbean, Nepal and South Africa. Indeed, the use of organic gardening to obtain high yields of food in small spaces with a minimal use of chemical inputs can make a significant difference for farmers in the developing world.

The center collaborates with non-governmental organizations, growers, community members, visiting students and researchers, and state and federal agencies, including the US Department of Agriculture to create agriculture and food systems that sustain both people and the environments in which they live. Currently, the CASFS operates the 2-acre Alan Chadwick Garden and the 25-acre Farm on the UCSC campus. Both sites are run primarily by apprentice labor using organic production methods and serve as research, teaching, and training facilities for students, staff, and faculty.

A recent graduate from the CASFS Apprenticeship Program, David Evershed says, "As a UCSC student in the Environmental Studies program, internships at the Farm and Garden helped to balance my academic education with practical, hands-on learning and provided me with the opportunity to utilize and expand upon my intellectual understanding of organic agriculture. These internships motivated me to participate in the six month long apprenticeship program offered by CASFS after graduating. The lessons I have learned here cannot be taught by any other modality. By literally digging my hands in the soil and observing the living world around me every day, these lessons have been deeply engrained in me, and they are something I will pass on to those who surround me."

For more detailed information on CASFS, click here.
For more about Alan Chadwick's biography, click here.