Center for Just and Resilient Food Systems
The Center for Just and Resilient Food Systems is new to Sonoma State University. We are building curriculum, creating intersectional and collaborative programming, cultivating relationships between Sonoma State and our broader food community, and creating culture around food and agriculture on campus. The center fosters leaders in policy and advocacy who bring a transformational and holistic lens to careers in food and agriculture. We provide students and the broader community with culturally responsive education, resources, programming, experiential opportunities, mentorship and curriculum focused on social and policy-driven aspects of regenerative food systems. We employ an agroecological framework and collaborate across departments and the community to prepare students for their future in food and agriculture. It is exciting, inspiring and challenging work!
- Director of The Center for Just and Resilient Food Systems: Caiti Hachmyer
- Environmental Technology Center and Campus Agroecology Garden
We plan to formally launch the Center in the Spring 2027 semester, but things are already moving and shaking on campus! We have developed and proposed two new classes (Food Justice and Food Policy), a new Minor (Food Systems Policy, Leadership and Justice) and are awaiting approvals. We've had speakers come to talk about building bioswales and the intersections of water and agriculture - and we've engaged over thirty volunteers to actually build a bioswale in the garden, a project developed and led by an SSU student. We collaborated with the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander Association to welcome three AANHPI farmers to the garden for a community circle discussing culturally significant crops, and have taken field trips to their farms. Programs highlighting native food traditions and sessions on Food is Medicine and Nature is Medicine to the garden in collaboration with the SSU Health Center, are part of the center's offerings. We've hosted weekly meditation circles in the garden every Tuesday, and volunteer hours on Tuesdays and Saturdays. In total so far this semester more than 125 students have spent over 340 hours in the garden. Already thinking about next semester, we are in the midst of developing more events and leadership skills series, and continuing our work with Native Foodways programming in collaboration with partners across campus and the community. So much is happening!