Tag: Agriculture

The Urgent Need to Update the Regulation of GM Crops

by Alice Carli*

Humans have been altering plants for upwards of 10,000 years through a wide variety of techniques for genetic modification. In the 20th century, scientists developed transgenic genetic engineering, which combines DNA from two or more sources to achieve a desired trait. This discovery fundamentally altered our ability to manipulate crops and opened a Pandora’s box of commercial possibilities and political conflicts. More recently, the advent of CRISPR and other precision gene editing technologies has resurfaced tensions around the role of genetically modified (“GM”) crops in our agricultural and food systems.

Despite these longstanding tensions, the U.S. has the world’s largest production of GM crops by acreage, and it is estimated that over 75% of processed foods on our supermarket shelves contain genetically engineered ingredients.

At the same time, the country faces systemic sustainability challenges exacerbated by climate change and intensive monoculture farming. These include flooding, soil degradation, air and water pollution, and biodiversity collapse. Significant and holistic changes to U.S. agriculture are needed to tackle these problems.

If regulated effectively, GM crops have the potential to make U.S. agriculture more sustainable and climate resilient. When designed with climate-smart features, these crops can significantly enhance nutrient or photosynthesis efficiency, provide flood, drought, and disease resistance, and even improve soil carbon sequestration.

Continue reading “The Urgent Need to Update the Regulation of GM Crops” →

Discovering agricultural careers with the USDA: a summer program for teens

by Rosalie Winters*

[This is one in a series of occasional posts by Los Angeles high school students working with and studying food systems.]

This summer I attended the AgDiscovery program at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. AgDiscovery is a program for high school students, and it is run by the USDA at multiple land grant universities nationwide. It aims to help teenagers explore careers in agricultural sciences. Each program across the country is unique, specializing in animal science, plant science, agribusiness, or a combination of the three, with pieces added that may explore topics like agricultural history or urban farming. You are only allowed to apply to one school, so it is important to choose one that includes things you are passionate about. The program at Lincoln is a combination, providing students with an introduction to the many moving parts that make up the country’s agricultural systems. This appealed to me because while I was very interested in agriculture, I knew almost nothing about it. 

The program at Lincoln included four distinct components. The first of these was a lecture series on varying agricultural topics. For example, we heard an etymologist speaking about different invasive species of insects and how they can affect various crops; a speaker discussing native plants and showing us some of the different species native to Missouri; and had a lesson on scientific writing and how to put together research. These informative lectures allowed us to gain a background for the things that we were seeing and experiencing in person. 

Continue reading “Discovering agricultural careers with the USDA: a summer program for teens” →

Webinar: Impacts of COVID-19 on Food Security and Long-term Implications and Adaptations

by Diana Winters

On September 18, I attended a webinar hosted by the Center for Urban and Regional Analysis at Ohio State University on the impacts of Covid-19 on food security. The panelists included Kip Curtis, an Associate Professor in the Department of History at OSU, Mary Rodriguez, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural Communication, Education, and Leadership at OSU, Brian Snyder, the Executive Director of the Initiative for Food and Agricultural Transformation (InFACT) at OSU, and Lauren Vargo – a Program Manager at Case Western Reserve University.

The panelists discussed the enormous impact of Covid-19 on family decision-making concerning food, and the increase in the use of federal and state food assistance benefits. Rodriguez described how families had to shift their buying habits because of the pandemic. Although official advice was to acquire two weeks of food, many families had neither the financial capacity nor the infrastructure to do so, and had to shift their diets accordingly. Curtis, an environmental historian, discussed the growing importance of local food production, in the context of many crises–not just the pandemic.

Snyder analogized the food system to a river, which had reduced water flow because of the pandemic. This drop in water level exposed hazards in the system that were always there, but hidden. For example, the public became aware of shortages and surpluses in the supply chain, as well as bottlenecks and dams in production, processing, and distribution. Worker issues became visible, especially in the area of meat processing, as production slowed because of rampant disease spread amongst closely packed individuals. Moreover, the fact that approximately 50% of farmworkers are undocumented disincentivized testing and treatment, which leads to more disease spread.

Vargo pointed out how much more food is in the media now, and this webinar highlighted how food and food systems became critically important during the Covid-19 pandemic, which is by no means over. There is no more important time to address the hazards in our food supply, to prepare us not just for future crises, but for the present.

The Economist on Gleaning

Happy New Year!  Apologies for the long holiday hiatus.  More soon, but for now, enjoy this fantastically interesting Economist article on the practice of gleaning:

https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2018/12/22/the-return-of-gleaning-in-the-modern-world

“The scale of the practice may have changed out of all recognition, but the philosophy—almost a theology—of gleaning remains the same. It completes and expands the harvest, so that the greatest possible number can share in it, especially the poor.”

Resnick Alum Builds a Company After Winning UCLA Law Contest for Entrepreneurs

This article originally appeared here: https://law.ucla.edu/news-and-events/in-the-news/2018/04/beelieve-it-2017-lmi-sandler-prize-winner-makes-a-buzz-in-business/ 

Bee-lieve It: 2017 LMI-Sandler Prize Winner Makes a Buzz in Business

20180409 SmartAgTechsBeltranYuUCLA Law alumna Sofía Beltran ’17 and UCLA Engineering alum Tim Yingtian Yu build their bee business, SmartAg Technologies, at the HAX Accelerator in Shenzhen, China.

A year ago, Sofía Beltran ’17 joined forces with UCLA Engineering student Tim Yingtian Yu to launch a bee business that would help address a crisis in agriculture and allow farmers to make the most of their crops.

Their first stop was the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy and its second-annual $100,000 venture-funding contest, the LMI-Sandler Prize for New Entrepreneurs. Beltran and Yu’s team, which also included UCLA Law alum Jared Xu ’16, finished in second place and was awarded $30,000.

Buzz is now growing about their firm, SmartAg Technologies. Today, they are adding team members, are developing hives that will encourage bee health and farmer awareness of how to maintain thriving bee populations, and have attracted an additional $250,000 in venture capital.

As the April 11 final round of the third-annual LMI-Sandler Prize competition approaches, six teams prepare to make their pitches to the judges, who will decide the next winners to follow in Beltran’s footsteps and earn a piece of this year’s $100,000 prize. In the meantime, Beltran speaks about getting stung by the entrepreneurship bug.

What is happening with SmartAg Technologies right now?
SmartAg Technologies has secured $250,000 of pre-seed investments through the prestigious HAX Accelerator program. We are participating in their 111-day program in Shenzhen, China, the Silicon Valley of hardware development, where we are working with engineers, marketing specialists, seasoned entrepreneurs and other advisors to quicken the growth our technology. Things are moving at lightning speed each day, and we are working hard to develop and refine products that will help monitor and treat beehive health and, in turn, save and sustain the world’s declining bee population.

How can SmartAg make a positive impact in agriculture?
Bees are dying at the rate of 50 percent per year, and this loss will inevitably lead to a major collapse in our global food system if it is not stopped and reversed, because 80 percent of the world’s crops are pollinated by bees. Our business helps commercial beekeepers keep their hives alive and healthy by providing organic, bee-safe, sustainable methods for treating pest-ridden or diseased hives and by providing information on the appropriate amount of food and other health-related treatments for individual hives to ensure optimal survival and growth rates.

20180409 SmartAgTechsLMISandlerFinalRound

L to R: Xu, Beltran and Yu make their pitch before the judges at the 2017 LMI-Sandler Prize competition’s final round.

How did the LMI-Sandler Prize help SmartAg take off?
Tim and I would never have met without the LMI-Sandler prize competition! He was hunting for a law student in order to participate in the competition, and my reputation as “queen of food law” led to our meeting. We worked diligently for months, preparing our 100-plus-page business plan, and we invested many hours prepping for the final round. It turns out that the competition laid the groundwork for countless additional pitches, business proposals, applications, and time spent networking, revising, and spreading our vision.

At UCLA Law, you participated in the Resnick Program for Food Law and Policyand served as president of the Food Law Society. How did that experience help you prepare for this opportunity?
The Resnick Program is why I came to UCLA Law, [executive director] Michael Roberts has been my trusted mentor and friend, and being president of the FLS provided a network of top-tier contacts in food law and policy. That, plus my business and entertainment coursework, gave me wide exposure to the types of issues I have faced in starting up a company, and, more importantly, the tools to know where to look for answers, how to network effectively and how to ask for help when I needed it.

What advice do you have for students interested in entrepreneurial activity in the food space?
Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and carve your own path! Before law school, I volunteered picking and packing organic produce at Johnson’s Backyard Garden in Austin, had a cooking blog and just loved to eat. Those hobbies brought me joy and many good friendships, and, over a few years with a lot of persistence, I was able to transform that joy into making connections with the right people [in L.A. and at UCLA Law]. Eventually, I positioned myself to accept this opportunity and run with it full blast.

So how, exactly, did you get from a farm in Austin to an accelerator program in China?
During my 2L year, I was very discouraged after applying for positions in food law and coming up empty. Professor Roberts told me to never be afraid of accepting promising opportunities, even if they seemed completely unrelated to what I set out to do. That year, I took Professor Derian’s Sports Law Clinic to get some hands-on transactional experience, and that led to a summer internship at the NFL Network and a position after graduation. Fast forward to now: My work at the NFL prepared me to wrangle our start-up’s foundational agreements, finances, and negotiations. The NFL had nothing to do with food law, but it prepared me for my role at our start-up once things fell into place.

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