I grew up on a diversified dairy goat farm where work with my mom – making hay, pruning fruit trees, butchering chickens, and assisting in midnight goat births – tangibly fostered an appreciation for farmers that drives my work today. During and after college I leased five acres and ran a 60 family vegetable CSA and sold pastured meat to restaurants. As a farmer myself I began organizing other beginning farmers in the Young Farmer Network (YFN) to share resources, knowledge, and a collective policy voice. My advocacy work led me to a job at New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, a non-profit organization where I worked with primarily peri-urban immigrant farmers who faced an even longer list of challenges than the mostly college-educated farmers who made up YFN. I began to really appreciate that as difficult as farming is, for so many I worked with it was an expression of human dignity and belonging.
In the late summer of 2016 I put down my harvest knife, sold my walking tractor, and left the farmland I love.
At ESPM my research examines how rural agricultural communities in the US respond and adapt to the impacts of climate change - from water scarcity and unpredictable weather to changing demographics, policies, markets, and migrations.
Recent work:
Narrow and Brittle or Broad and Nimble? Comparing Adaptive Capacity in Simplifying and Diversifying Farming Systems. 2021. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 5:564900. (Authors: Petersen-Rockney M, Baur P, Guzman A, Bender SF, Calo A, Castillo F, De Master K, Dumont A, Esquivel K, Kremen C, LaChance J, Mooshammer M, Ory J, Price MJ, Socolar Y, Stanley P, Iles A and Bowles T). Press release here and featured in the Daily Cal here.
Cannabis farmers or criminals? Enforcement-first approaches fuel disparity and hinder regulation. 2019. California Agriculture. Vol. 73, no. 3. (co-first authors with Micheal Polson)
Farming Water. 2019. Grist Magazine feature article.
Last chance in this Farm Bill for beginning farmers and our farmland. 2018. Op-ed National Young Farmers Coalition.
What Beginning Farmers Need Most in the Next Farm Bill: Land. 2017. Policy Brief. Berkeley Food Institute.
This Farm Bill deregulates the rich and polices the poor. 2017. High Country News.
Thank you to the Berkeley Fellowship, NSF GRFP, Graduate Students in Extension Fellowship, and Annie's Homegrown for supporting my graduate research experience.
