Modern agriculture is highly inefficient, with traditional growing methods wasting resources as compared to methods like hydroponics. While hydroponics significantly improves efficiency with yield and water usage, it can still be highly laborious. In the case of strawberries for example, many new roles emerge such as pollination, pruning, and continual supervision. This project aims to solve these restricting issues by integrating computer models to offload a significant chunk of work to robots -- thereby improving the proposition hydroponics can offer. VFB has...
We are proposing to run a pilot program at Crossroads Dining Commons in which post consumer food waste will be weighed using a leanpath scale, affixed with a Spark device that displays real time information on a monitor within student view. This two phase pilot will include weighing waste with no spark display to gather a baseline, and then an intervention of spark display data during the second phase of the pilot. Survey data will be gathered throughout both phases to gather insights on student perceptions and habits relating to food waste. This data,...
For the last several years, HADSA was funded directly by the RSSP department through housing contracts and meal plans. With reduced occupancy in the resident halls this year caused by the COVID pandemic, HADSA was cut from 11 funded positions to 1 funded position. Although RSSP expects to make a full recovery as the pandemic subsides, TGIF funding for five positions in the 2021- 2022 fiscal year would help HADSA continue providing much-needed outreach and sustainability initiatives for the housing & dining department. These positions are especially critical at...
Demonstrate the comfort effects of heated/cooled chairs for UCB students, and also their energy benefit, in a total of three campus buildings. The goal is to encourage campus-wide adoption of PCS. The approach is: 1) design and fabricate 10 battery-powered heating/cooling cassettes that attach to chairs on UCB’s purchase list; 2) demonstrate comfort effects for students in a library and a common room in a dorm; 3) quantify the HVAC energy savings potential in one open-plan office space.
This project seeks to maintain the functionality of Berkeley Student Farms during the upcoming summer, when we expect volunteer numbers to decrease and gardens to be left unattended; last summer we averaged 3 volunteers per workday compared to 62 in the fall. Through the support of TGIF, BSF aims to hire 5 summer Garden Managers who will continue the essential farm work needed to maintain critical garden operations: growing organic produce, leading student volunteers, coordinating food donations, and maintaining our compost systems, as well as renovating our...
Community-led greening projects can benefit through the establishment of a low-cost, accessible native plant nursery that will also serve as a demonstration site where members of the local and student community will learn how to: responsibly harvest native seeds; create plant specific soil or “soil-free” potting mixtures; propagate plants from seed; identify native plants; troubleshoot native plant care. This space will also “bridge the gap” between native ecosystem restoration projects and the local indigenous communities whose ancestors were the original...
The project has three main sections. (1) Part of the grant would go towards covering a portion of the Student Organic Garden Association’s water bill. Currently, the Department of Environmental Sciences, Policy, and Management (ESPM) covers half the bill and Professor Tim Bowles’ Berkeley Agroecology Lab covers the other portion. Having the Agroecology Lab help cover this expense has become a financial burden on them with their increasingly limited budget. Increasing SOGA’s economic self-sufficiency is the only way they can continue to distribute agroecological...
As a senior studying Conservation with a focus on agroecology and rural development, I would like to incorporate the knowledge I have acquired from the past several years of classes on environmental justice as well as conversations from within the agroecology community on campus. 1. Garden for Ohlone foods and other Bay Area/Northern California indigenous foods would be added to the North American section. 2. There are various agroecological methods that could be replicated on a smaller scale within the garden as a display, including intercropping, no...
The Collective serves over ten thousand student patrons each year with affordable, healthy, sustainable and local foods from minority vendors and farmers — including over 150 weekly student member-volunteers each semester — out of a small space never intended for food service with a highly-limited but functional grocery selection. We're returning to the Green Initiative Fund — the single most significant funder in building the Collective's skill sets and capacity over the past 12 years — to support us in fulfilling the longtime student vision for a dedicated...
The Fannie Lou Hamer Farm Project is a Black, student-led initiative organizing around Black wellness and land-based learning and healing on and around campus. We are exploring the intersections of Black liberation and ecological justice through agroecological and Afro-Indigenous land-stewardship practices. Our goals are to (1) increase access to land and food, especially for Black students (2) provide land-based education in topics such as regenerative agriculture, food systems, agroecology, and Black agrarian histories (3) promote connection between people...
