Sacramento, May 26, 1999
JPC Conference Highlights the Need for Science-based
Ag Policy
The first-ever conference of the Joint Policy Council
on Agriculture and Higher Education (JPC), held May 26 in Sacramento, shone a spotlight on
the need for agricultural policies to be based on sound science. Attendance of the
conference exceeded expectations. An overflow crowd attended the featured morning panel of
former CDFA secretary Ann Veneman, former Cal-EPA deputy secretary Jack Pandol, and UC
Riverside Natural and Agricultural Sciences Dean Mike Clegg. Audience members consisted of
academics and administrators from all three higher education systems, growers,
environmentalists, policy makers and interested members of the public. The conference was
held in conjunction with the Great Valley Center’s Second Annual Regional Conference.
The conference, entitled "Science and
Agricultural Policy: The Need for Knowledge," was the first public event of the JPC,
an organization created in 1995 to foster collaboration among California’s three
higher education systems in support of agriculture. It marks an important milestone for
the JPC as it seeks to identify ways that it can address important issues for California
agriculture through collaboration among the agricultural programs of the University of
California, the California State University and the California Community Colleges. To that
end, the JPC commissioned intersegmental teams of academics, along with industry
representatives, to prepare papers that identify major issues for California agriculture
in four broad areas: water (quantity and quality), food safety, tools of production
(including chemicals and labor), and the agricultural/urban interface. The four JPC issue
papers were presented at the conference by members of the teams that prepared them,
including UC Cooperative Extension Specialist Trevor Suslow, who presented the food safety
issue paper. In closing remarks at the conference, JPC Co-Chair and UC Vice President for
Agriculture and Natural Resources explained that in the coming months, the JPC intends to
select one issue from among the many issues identified in these papers as the subject for
its first collaborative project.
Besides the issue papers presentation, there were two
other afternoon sessions. One reinforced the conference theme citing specific cases and
the other wove in the value of using contemporary agricultural issues for classroom
instruction.
Audio tapes of all sessions are available for sale
from the Great Valley Center at 209-522-5103, or you may contact JPC Coordinator John
Gutierrez for more information.
Pre-conference news release, March 19, 1999
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