UC SAREP presented a 6-part webinar series on Racial Equity in Extension, with funding from USDA's Western Sustainable Agricultural Research and Education (SARE).

Recordings of all the webinars can be accessed here: Equity in Extension YouTube Playlist

The goal of the UC SAREP Racial Equity in Extension webinar series is to provide a foundation of knowledge for extension professionals to foster relationships of trust with farmers, ranchers, and other land managers of color who have historically been underserved by extension institutions.

Webinar #1: Farm Workers are Farmers

This webinar, held on Friday, June 18, 2021, provides an introduction to the importance and value of engaging farm workers for agricultural sustainability. The webinar also offers suggestions for how extension professionals can better work to build relationships with farm worker organizations.

Panelists include: 

• Bonnie Bade, Professor, California State University San Marcos 
• Patricia Carrillo, Executive Director, Agricultural and Land-Based Training Association 
• Christy Getz, Associate Cooperative Extension Specialist, UC Berkeley

Webinar #2: Serving Farmers of Color

This webinar, held on Friday, June 25, 2021, describes how extension professionals can build constructive relationships with farmers of color and organizations that represent them.

Panelists include: 

• Victor Hernandez, Outreach Coordinator, Natural Resources Conservation Service 
• Chanowk Yisrael, Chief Seed Starter, Yisrael Family Farm 
• Kristyn Leach, Grower at Namu Farms and organizer of Second Generation Seeds

Webinar #3: Retracing the Roots of Sustainable Ag - Indigenous Perspectives

This webinar explores Indigenous approaches to growing crops and managing land, the link between Indigenous worldviews and the stewardship of the land, and how to seek knowledge from both Indigenous ways of knowing and western science while respecting Indigenous cultures.

Panelists include: 

• A-dae Romero-Briones, First Nations Development Institute 
• Carlie Domingues, Department of Native American Studies, UC Davis

#4: Retracing the Roots of Sustainable Ag - Farmers of Color Perspectives

This session will explore how farmers of color have led the way in farming a sustainable landscape, and how their worldviews and cultures contribute to the way they tend the land. 

Panelists include: 

• Genesis Martinez, Soul Fire Farm Speakers Collective 
• Samuel Sandoval-Solis, Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, UC Davis

This session will explore some of the histories which underlie current disparities in farmland ownership, highlighting different mechanisms by which racism intervened to dispossess people of land in California.

Panelists include: 

• Brittani Orona, San Diego State University
• Caroline Collins, UC San Diego; producer of the Cal Ag Roots podcast series "We Are Not Strangers Here"  
• Nikiko Masumoto, yonsei (4th generation) farmer on her family’s organic peach farm; co-founder of Yonsei Memory Project.
• Megan Horst, Ph.D., Portland State University 
   

#6: Catalyzing Land Sovereignty and Tenure...

This webinar titled Catalyzing Land Sovereignty and Tenure for Indigenous Communities and Farmers of Color highlights current initiatives for transferring land ownership and access to Indigenous communities and farmers of color. 

Panelists include: 

• Corrina Gould, Lisjan Ohlone Matriarch, Tribal Spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan, and Co-founder of Sogorea Te' Land Trust 
• Neil Thapar (he/him), Co-Founder and Co-Director of Minnow 
• Brett Melone, California FarmLink