Last Thursday, I spoke at UC Berkeley, at a conference on "Agriculture at the Metropolitan Edge." The conference focused on how to stop the destructive processes of urban sprawl, and to develop a "food security system" that will allow fresh produce to be grown immediately adjacent to our urban areas. Environmental, economic, and social equity issues are all involved in what has become a focused effort to change our land use patterns, and the way we grow and distribute food.

UC Santa Cruz has also been involved in these issues, and in a seminal and important way, helping to develop new techniques of food production, which can restore organic integrity to the food production process. Tomorrow evening, Dr. Paul Lee will tell the story of the formation and history of the Chadwick Garden at UCSC. I can promise that this talk will not only be educational, but also entertaining. The Chadwick Garden provides one example of how local "activist" efforts have helped change the realities not only of our local area, but have changed the world at large. From the creation of the Chadwick Garden at UCSC has come the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, as we have exported our inspiration and successes!

Dr. Lee's presentation takes place at The Attic, 931 Pacific Avenue, in Santa Cruz, at 7:00 p.m. tomorrow. There is more information on the KUSP website.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems
http://casfs.ucsc.edu/

For more information, please call Paul Lee at 831-469-3384

This week, the California Coastal Commission is meeting in Santa Barbara. If you are interested in what the Commission is doing, but can't break away to attend a meeting so far from home, modern technology has at least a partial solution. There is, of course, nothing like "being there," but the Commission is now trying to provide the next best thing, and is "webcasting" its meetings. If you have high-speed internet access, you can now keep track not only of what people are saying, but how they look when they're saying it.

The Coastal Commission supervises development along the entire California coast, and administers this responsibility through a series of district offices. San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Monterey, and San Luis Obispo counties are all part of the "Central Coast District." The Commission meets monthly, and its meetings are usually a weeklong affair, starting on a Tuesday and continuing to Friday. Each district has its items scheduled on one of the days that the Commission is meeting, instead of having these items scattered throughout the week. This means that members of the public, and public agency representatives, don't have to spend the whole week at a remote location to be able to participate in the items that concern them most. This month, items in the Central Coast District will be heard on Wednesday; that is, tomorrow. There are several important items on the Commission agenda affecting the Central Coast. If you'd like to find out more, click on the links below.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

Coastal Commission website
http://www.coastal.ca.gov/

Agenda for this week's meeting
http://www.coastal.ca.gov/mtgcurr.html

Video webstream of Coastal Commission Meeting
http://www.cal-span.org/State_Webcast/
CCC/stream_index.htm

Key Commission Items:

• Cambria and San Simeon Community Plans
  http://documents.coastal.ca.gov/
  reports/2007/4/W17a-4-2007.pdf
• Monterey County Del Monte Forest Plan
  http://documents.coastal.ca.gov/
  reports/2007/4/W17d-4-2007.pdf
• Santa Cruz County McGregor Rezoning
  http://documents.coastal.ca.gov/
  reports/2007/4/W17c-4-2007.pdf

I like to alert listeners to meetings and events relating to land use policy, to entice at least some of you to get personally involved in the land use decision making process that so profoundly affects our future. Today, let me simply list a number of upcoming events. There is more information in the links below:

• Tonight, the Annual EarthVision Environmental Film Festival opens at the Del Mar Theatre, with screenings at 4:00 and 7:00 p.m. The festival will continue throughout the week.

• Tomorrow, at 7:00 p.m., LandWatch Executive Director Chris Fitz will talk about the Monterey County General Plan ballot measures. He's speaking before the Green Party, at the Monterey Senior Center, at the corner of Lighthouse and Dickman Avenues.

• To hear the other side of this debate, attend one of the coffees given by the Salinas Valley Chamber of Commerce. They're being held each Wednesday through May 30th, from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. at 119 East Alisal Street.

• Christine Kemp, a Monterey County attorney who typically represents developers, will also speak on the General Plan ballot measures, at a Business Council breakfast this Thursday, from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Seaside.

• Finally, a "People's Water Summit" will be held this coming Saturday, April 14th, from 9:00 a.m. to noon at the Monterey Senior Center, 280 Dickman Avenue in Monterey.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

For more information on the Environmental Film Festival
http://www.earthvisionfest.org

For more information on the Chris Fitz presentation call 831-625-5577

For more information on the Salinas Chamber coffees call 831-424-7611

RSVP for the Kemp breakfast meeting to Judy Schmidt at info@mcbc.biz (Cost is $30/person)

For more information on the Water Summit, call 831-645-9914

The City of Marina is the only city in Monterey County with an officially adopted Urban Growth Boundary, or "UGB." This UGB is the result of an initiative measure sponsored by LandWatch Monterey County, and a local group called "Marina 2020." One of the citizen activists who helped guide the successful UGB effort, Ken Gray, is now a member of the Marina City Council.

The purpose of the Marina UGB initiative was to prevent further sprawl by Marina onto the agricultural lands to the north of the city, popularly known as the Armstrong Ranch. The UGB initiative put most of the Armstrong Ranch "off limits" for twenty years, and directed future growth onto lands of the former Fort Ord. In this, the initiative has been extremely successful. Marina has indeed begun developing large-scale residential and mixed-use projects on their Fort Ord lands, and there has been no sprawl to the north, or along the coast!

While most of the Armstrong Ranch was put "off limits" to development, the initiative did permit development of those portions of the Ranch already within the city. Creekbridge Homes is now proposing a 1360 unit mixed-use development, called "Marina Station," for that part of the property that is located within the city. A Draft EIR is now available for comment. If you'd like to get involved, please check the links below.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

City of Marina website
http://www.ci.marina.ca.us/

Marina Station Draft EIR
http://www.ci.marina.ca.us/documents/sdc/
MarinaStationEnvironmentalImpactReport.pdf

Some commentators would like the Marina Station to include additional recreational lands, on the part of the property nearest Highway One. For more information on how you can get involved, and on this particular suggestion, contact LandWatch Monterey County. The LandWatch website is www.landwatch.org.

One of the most unusual, and I think hopeful, nonprofit organizations operating in the Central Coast region is the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association, or ALBA. ALBA's mission is to advance economic viability, social equity, and ecological land management among limited-resource and aspiring farmers.

ALBA, in other words, is part of that effort I spoke about on Monday, an effort to reform and renew the system by which we grow and distribute food. ALBA trains farmworkers, many of whom come from economically disadvantaged Latino families, and it provides training not only on how to "farm," but on how to be successful in the "farming business." The ALBA training program instructs its students not only on agricultural techniques, including organic certification and production methods, but also on business and market planning. Those who complete the ALBA program are poised to become entrepreneurs in a new kind of agricultural economy, one that is organic, family-based, and local, not international, in focus.

Tomorrow, ALBA is holding its Small Farmer Education Program Graduation, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., at its training center at 1700 Old Stage Road, in Salinas. This will be a fun event, with live music and activities for kids. To get more information, or to RSVP, click on the link below.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

ALBA website
http://www.albafarmers.org/

To RSVP, please call 831-758-1469