Dear Santa Barbara County Workshop Attendees,

We are excited that you will be participating in the workshop at UCSB: "Localizing agrifood systems-research, action and policy", hosted by the Santa Barbara County Agrifood Systems research group at UCSB, directed by David Cleveland.
Title: Workshop: Localizing Santa Barbara County agrifood systems-research, action and policy.
Workshop Website: http://es.ucsb.edu/esconf
Date: Friday, May 20, 12pm - 6:30pm
Saturday, May 21, 8am - 8:00pm.
Location:
McCune Workshop Room, 6020 HSSB, UCSB.
Sponsored by UCSB's Academic Senate Sustainability Champion Program, Environmental Studies Program, and Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
This workshop will bring together participants in the SB County agrifood system (farmers, policy makers, distributors, students, researchers, and agriculture and food advocates) to begin moving toward a future for Santa Barbara County and our region that is locally oriented, environmentally sound, socially responsible and economically viable.


ALL WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS MUST BE PREREGISTERED!

1.      Please look at the WORKSHOP SCHEDULE that is attached.
2.      Please take less than a minute to FILL OUT THIS RSVP SURVEY so we can make sure we have diverse participants in each session and enough good food to feed participants.

Session and Meal Attendance Questionnaire : http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6HYFD3L
3.      SEND US 10 WORDS that describe your involvement in the SB County agrifood system for your name tag word cloud on the survey above.
4.      More information will be sent to all participants closer to the conference. It will also be posted on the conference website: http://es.ucsb.edu/esconf
5.      If you have posters of the research or programs you are working on that support localizing the SBC agrifood system, please let us know. We will select the most appropriate ones for display during the workshop.
6.      Please call Corie Radka at (714) 600-6706 with comments, question, or suggestions, or email sbc.agrifoodworkshop@gmail.com
See the attached document for the Workshop Schedule
We aimed to cater to both farmers and people in the normal workday so both entities can be present for all discussions. We hope those working on Friday could make it a priority to take a half day and come get a free local and organic lunch before we kick off the first session of the workshop.
The workshop will be focused on produce. Our decision to focus the workshop on produce (fruits and vegetables) is based on the following : 1) fruits and vegetables dominate SBC agriculture economically, with 82% of total value in 2009; 2) produce accounts for most of the prime farmland, irrigation and other production inputs; 3) produce dominates direct sales of agricultural products in SBC (e.g. 79% of total agricultural sales at Santa Barbara Certified Farmers Markets); and 4) produce contains nutrients widely believed to be lacking in US diets (while many SBC residents have low nutritional status and food security).
Each session panel will be followed by breakout sessions in which all workshop attendees will participate. The goal of these breakout sessions is build on the panel discussions to create an agenda for the research, actions and policies needed to localize the SBC AFS
After the workshop the SBC AFS research group will edit and distribute the results with help from workshop attendees. Action items identified at this workshop that need organization to initiate will be initiated by a student group in the summer. Depending on the workshop results, this could mean organizing meetings, keeping people informed, or initiating further research.
Looking forward to seeing you on May 20-21,

David Cleveland, Professor
Corie Radka, Research Assistant
Environmental Studies Program, UCSB

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David Cleveland, Professor
Corie Radka, Research Assistant
Environmental Studies Program 4160
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4160, USA


Santa Barbara Agrifood System Workshop
May 20-21, 2011
sbc.agrifoodworkshop@gmail.com
http://www.es.ucsb.edu/faculty/cleveland/