Watch a Professor Explain Agroecology in 101 Seconds
Drawing both from ecological sciences and generations of farming wisdom, agroecology aims to create more sustainable ways to grow food.
Growing the crops we eat requires a massive web of infrastructure and resources, each of which can have serious downstream implications. From pesticides to groundwater contamination, the ways we make our food can damage the environment, surrounding communities and human health — and it’s Tim Bowles’ job to think about how to create more sustainable and ecological agricultural methods.
“If we look ahead to where some of the deepest challenges that we face as humanity are, we think about climate change, providing healthy and nutritious food for a growing human population, biodiversity loss,” says Bowles. “Agriculture is at the center of each of these.”
Bowles is an assistant professor of agroecology in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley, where he studies everything from ways to make agriculture less dependent on pesticides to how we can better clean up farmland runoff contaminating groundwater across the state.
As he explains in this 101 in 101 video, a series from UC Berkeley that challenges campus experts to distill their work into a mere 101 seconds, agroecology “draws both on the ecological sciences — how we understand how the natural world works — as well as the wisdom that farmers have accumulated over generations.”
To Bowles, who’s also a faculty director at Berkeley Food Institute, one of the best ways to understand food production is to plant some seeds and grow some crops. In fact, that’s how he got started.
As a college student, part of his time was spent studying molecular biology and biophysics in the lab, but he was also advocating for economic justice issues on his campus. When he started working on an urban farm he saw a way to combine his passions.
“I was drawn to agroecology as a field where I could do both,” he says.
Today, his students and other volunteers work a similar plot of land just steps from campus at Oxford Tract, co-managed with Berkeley Student Farms. There they learn to take field measurements as well as how to grow and harvest a wide variety of crops in an urban setting.
“Berkeley is a great place to both get that solid conceptual and theoretical foundation as well as actually go out and get your hands dirty,” says Bowles.
To learn more about Berkeley Food Institute and their work to create just and sustainable food and farm systems, click here.
Watch more 101 in 101 videos featuring UC Berkeley faculty and experts here.