Recent attention has focused on community gardens and urban agriculture as emerging strategies for multiple health and social justice benefits, ranging from increasing healthy food access to mental health advantages to neighborhood cohesion. Urban agriculture programs can have health-related impacts on both individual and community levels. 

The Berkeley food Institute will hold a forum to discuss evidence of these kinds of health and social impacts, and the potential for urban gardens to empower individuals and communities to achieve greater social benefits. They will also consider policy approaches to support and expand these efforts, or to overcome barriers to these initiatives. Following the panel discussion, all attendees will be invited to participate in a round-table dialog in small groups. Groups will discuss health-related social impacts of urban farms, and to collectively identify research issues, policy changes, and other actions that are needed to increase the benefits of urban farms more widely.

LOCATION: TOLL ROOM, ALUMNI HOUSE, UC BERKELEY

3:00 – 3:45pm: Panel Discussion

• Jill Litt, Associate Professor, Environmental and Occupational Health, University of Colorado
• Gavin Raders, Executive Director, Planting Justice
• Doria Robinson, Executive Director, Urban Tilth
• Moderated by Jennifer Sowerwine, Research Associate, Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley

3:45 – 4:15pm: Roundtable Discussion Round 1

4:15 – 4:40pm: Roundtable Discussion Round 2

4:40 – 5:00pm: 3-minute Summaries from Roundtables

Cosponsored by the Berkeley Food Institute, University of California Cooperative Extension and College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley