Much of the wide-reaching and influential change around food and food systems occurs at the policy level. Government policies regulate access to products that appear in the marketplace, who is allowed to sell food products, and in what spaces. Leaders like Rich Rominger and Desmond Jolly guided state and federal agricultural policies to focus on issues such as organic produce, sustainable agricultural practices, and small farming.
Images from UC Davis Library Archives and Special Collections
Sketch of Backyard of Alternative Resource Center (Isao Fujimoto Papers, D-601)
Winds of Change subscription coupon (Front) (Isao Fujimoto Papers, D-601)
Winds of Change subscription coupon (Back) (Isao Fujimoto Papers, D-601)
Farming: Sources for a Social & Ecologically Accountable Agriculture, 1976 Published by Dr. Fujimoto’s Alternative Agriculture Resources Project. In 1976, this resource book received broad distribution within the burgeoning Northern California Food Movement. The publication promotes more “ecological and socially accountable alternatives to the dominant technological and capital intensive approaches to food production, distribution, and use.”
Grow with Less wheel, 1976 The wheel served as a tool to connect people with resources and other individuals who advocated for alternatives to the corporate food system. (Isao Fujimoto Papers, D-601)
Handcrafted brochure for Farming: Sources for a Social and Ecologically Accountable Agriculture (Isao Fujimoto Papers, D-601)
Sketch of Backyard of Alternative Resource Center (Isao Fujimoto Papers, D-601)
“It is said that if we are going to make any sense of what we are doing, we have to know what story we are in.” – Dr. Isao Fujimoto
Handout, First National Conference on Land Reform (Earthworks Collection, D-680)
Note for the Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), 1997 Rich Rominger, who served as head of the California Department of Food and Agriculture (1977-1982) and deputy secretary for the USDA (1993-2000) advocated for national standards for organic food. In this note, Deputy Secretary Rominger recommended that the proposed regulation be subject to public comment. (Richard Rominger Papers, D-087)