Regional History Project Oral Histories

Mark Lipson is senior analyst and policy program director for the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF). In these interviews, conducted by Ellen Farmer at Molino Creek Farm on June 5, August 25, and December 21, 2007, Lipson describes his long and productive career working on behalf of organic farming policy at the state and federal levels.

As an environmental studies major at UC Santa Cruz in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Lipson focused on planning and public policy, addressing issues such as offshore oil drilling on the California coast. While he was a student, he helped found a student housing co-op, and served as president of Our Neighborhood Food Co-op, a natural foods store that eventually morphed into New Leaf Community Market. After graduation, this involvement with the co-op movement inspired Lipson to help organize Molino Creek, a co-operative farming community located in the hills above the ocean near Davenport, California. Molino Creek pioneered the growing of flavorful, dry-farmed tomatoes (grown without irrigation).

Seeking organic certification for Molino Creek, Lipson began attending meetings of the California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF). He soon became CCOF’s first paid staff member, working there from 1985 to 1992, steering the organization through the establishment of a statewide office as well as several key historical events that awakened the American public’s interest in organic food. The Organic Center calls Lipson “the primary midwife” of the California Organic Foods Act (COFA) of 1990, sponsored by then-State Assemblymember Sam Farr. Recalling his work with Lipson on COFA, Sam Farr remarked (in his oral history in this series), “I tell the world that the organic movement started in California, in Santa Cruz County, and the guru of that is Mark [Lipson].”

Over the past two decades with OFRF (an organization which he helped to found), Lipson shepherded several historic changes in agricultural funding through Congress, such as a 2008 Farm Bill that secures a five-fold increase in government funding for organic research (though this still represents only one percent of the USDA’s research budget). He is perhaps best known as the author of the 1997 study Searching for the ‘O-Word’, which documented the absence of publicly funded organic research at a critical political moment in the trajectory of the organic farming movement.

Lipson chaired the California Organic Foods Advisory Board from 1991 to 1998. In 1992, he received the annual Sustie (“Steward of Sustainable Agriculture”) Award, presented at the Ecological Farming Conference, and in 2009 Nutrition Business Journal gave him their Organic Excellence award.

Jerry Thomas grew up in the Los Angeles area and attended college at San Fernando Valley College (now California State University, Northridge), where he earned a master’s degree in urban/economic geography. He is a fifth-generation Californian on his mother’s side of the family. After a stint in the Peace Corps in Guyana, South America, Jerry and his wife, Jean (who also grew up in LA), wanted to leave smoggy and congested Los Angeles. They moved to the Santa Cruz area in 1970, and became back-to-the-landers on five acres of land in the foothills of Aptos.

In this oral history, conducted by Ellen Farmer on March 20 and May 7, 2007, at Thomas Farms, the Thomases describe how what began as a large garden grew into Thomas Farms, now one of the oldest organic farms in California. Jerry was invited to participate in Rodale’s organic certification program that pre-dated California Certified Organic Farmers, and was a founding member of California Certified Organic Farmers. He helped draft the first state organic legislation in 1979. Jerry has served as a County Farm Bureau director and as a member of the County Agricultural Policy Advisory Committee, and frequently speaks at the Ecological Farming Association’s Eco-Farm conference. He has served on the Monterey Bay Certified Farmers’ Market board of directors.

Jean helps run Thomas Farms, and also teaches adult education courses in writing, science and math. A watercolor and monoprint artist, Jean serves on the Pajaro Valley Arts Council; in 2007 she curated Market Motion, an art show about the farmers’ markets in the Central Coast area.

The Thomases have represented the Community Alliance of Family Farmers (CAFF) as members of the Campaign to Save Pajaro Valley Farmlands and Wetlands. They mentor younger organic farmers, and participate in many local farmers’ markets, where their booths are distinguished by a dazzling plethora of colorful sunflowers, zinnias, irises, lilies and other cut flowers.

United States Congressmember Sam Farr, one of the political heroes of the sustainable agriculture movement, was interviewed by Ellen Farmer on August 23, 2007. A fifth-generation Californian, Farr was born in 1941. He is the son of California State Senator Fred Farr, who sponsored a law requiring toilets in the fields for farm workers, as well as other landmark environmental legislation.

Sam Farr began his career in public service in 1964, in the Peace Corps in Colombia. Before his election to the House of Representatives in 1993, Farr served for twelve and a half years in the California State Assembly. In 1990, Farr authored the California Organic Standards Act, which established standards for organic food production and sales in California. This piece of legislation became one of the models for the National Organic Program’s federal organic standards. Farr now serves as co-chair of the National Organic Caucus in the House of Representatives, and worked with organic policy activists to increase support for organic farming research in the federal Farm Bill.

Recognizing the contributions of the UC Santa Cruz Agroecology Program to the field of sustainable agriculture, Farr secured a line item for the program in California’s higher education budget. Speaking before the 110th Congress on October 4, 2007 (in remarks entered into the Congressional Record), Farr said, “Since entering Congress, I have worked hard to share the story of the UC Santa Cruz Farm's important work with my colleagues. Congress has responded with a total of over $3 million in direct appropriations to the UC Santa Cruz Farm since 2000 to assist with its important research and extension work with the rapidly expanding organic farming sector. Indeed, the UC Santa Cruz Farm’s influence has been far-reaching, inspiring many sustainable agricultural programs at other universities, including UC Riverside, Cal Poly, and USDA’s Agricultural Research Service.”

Ellen Farmer had some previous contact with Sam Farr through her graduate studies in public policy at California State University, Monterey Bay—a program with which Farr has close associations. She interviewed Farr at his office in Santa Cruz.

In its March/April 2009 issue, Mother Jones magazine called Tim Galarneau “the Alice Waters of a burgeoning movement of campus foodies.” Galarneau is a co-founder of the Real Food Challenge, a national campaign promoting sustainable food sourcing in college dining halls. In his day job with UCSC’s Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS), he coordinates the Center’s Farm to College project. Since his undergraduate days at UCSC, Galarneau has helped spearhead numerous initiatives to transform the way the nation’s schools, hospitals and other institutions navigate the high-volume acquisition and preparation of food.

Galarneau and others brought about one such transformation—now a model for other institutions—on their own home ground. Students at UC Santa Cruz look out from their hillside campus over rich agricultural lands, including the 25-acre CASFS farm in their own backyard; yet until 2005, they had little access to locally grown organic food. Now, thanks to several years of collaborative effort by students, staff, and farmers, all of the UCSC dining halls daily serve certified organic produce; they also provide coffee purchased directly from farming communities that have personal relationships with UCSC students and staff, thanks to the UCSC-based Community Agroecology Network (CAN). The campus contracts for organic produce with a consortium of local farmers; carefully developed purchasing guidelines not only prioritize the direct acquisition of local, organic food, but also emphasize equitable labor relationships, environmentally friendly farming practices, humane animal husbandry, and a university food service that is as much about education as about feeding a hungry campus population.

Sarah Rabkin interviewed Tim Galarneau on March 19, 2008, in his office at UCSC’s Oakes College. He described in detail the path that led him into farm-to-institution research and advocacy; he discussed the effort to transform food sourcing at UCSC and elsewhere, the new tools and techniques for social organizing that he and others have successfully employed in service of a food revolution, and his larger vision for the future of food.

Darrie Ganzhorn is Director of Programs and Operations for the Homeless Garden Project in Santa Cruz, California. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1958, Ganzhorn studied marine biology at UC Berkeley. She worked at the Hopkins Marine Station after graduation, but when her son was born, she had an epiphany. “I didn’t want to do research anymore. I wanted to do something based on human needs. I wanted to do something that wasn’t esoteric, that was more basic and vital,” Ganzhorn said in her interview. She found meaningful work at the Homeless Garden Project, where she interned in 1991, not long after the Project was started by UCSC philosophy professor and social visionary Paul Lee. Influenced by the ideas of the radical educator Myles Horton, Ganzhorn began to edit “Voices from the Garden,” a series of newsletter profiles of homeless people who worked in the Garden. This interviewing experience infused her with an appreciation for oral history that she brought to the interview conducted by Irene Reti on February 12 and 19th, 2009, in the modest offices of the Homeless Garden Project, located in a former liquor store not far from the Pacific Ocean in Santa Cruz. Outside of Ganzhorn’s office, a team of women designed gorgeous flower wreaths for sale in the gift shop.

Ganzhorn has held various positions as the Homeless Garden Project evolved. She provides a multi-year perspective on the development of this internationally known organization and a detailed description of the various programs they offer.

Erika Perloff directs educational programs for the Life Lab Science Program, a nationally recognized, award-winning nonprofit science and environmental organization located on the UC Santa Cruz campus. Founded in 1979, Life Lab helps schools develop gardens and implement curricula to enhance students’ learning about science, math, and the natural world. The program has trained tens of thousands of educators in more than 1400 schools across the country.

Life Lab’s specialized projects include LASERS (Language Acquisition in Science Education for Rural Schools), now renamed the Monterey Bay Science Project, which trains teachers to teach language development through scientific exploration. The organization’s Waste Free Schools program helps teachers and students reduce school waste through conservation. Its model Garden Classroom, located at UCSC’s Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, is used for teacher training and school field trips and events.

Perloff’s interest in garden-based science education began with a love of natural history. As a college student, she transferred from Carlton College in Minnesota to UC Santa Cruz, where she double-majored in environmental studies and biology. Among her formative educational experiences was UCSC’s celebrated Natural History Field Quarter. After graduating in 1983, she worked in outdoor education jobs for the National Park Service, the Yosemite Institute, and the Headlands Institute in Marin County. Eventually, desiring more sustained contact with students, she earned a teaching credential at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education.

While working as an elementary science specialist in Watsonville and Santa Cruz, Perloff took a Life Lab teacher training, which inspired her to revive an old garden patch at her school. “There was nothing as exciting,” she said in this interview, “as walking into the classroom and the kids would see my keys for the garden, and they would just jump up and down and say, “El jardín! El jardín!”

Perloff began leading Life Lab teacher workshops herself on weekends, and soon was flying around the U.S., funded by a Department of Education program called the National Diffusion Network, to train Life Lab teachers in other states. She joined the Life Lab board of directors, and in 1990 accepted the job of education coordinator.

In this interview, conducted by Sarah Rabkin at the UCSC Science and Engineering Library on July 9th, 2008, Erika Perloff described the colorful variety of projects and initiatives that have occupied her attention at Life Lab. She also reflected on the national impact of the program, and its possibilities for the future.

Roberta (Robbie) Jaffe grew up in New York in the 1950s, and moved to Florida when she was sixteen. She attended the University of Florida and University of South Florida, and graduated with a degree in sociology. During and after college she was deeply involved in the United Farm Workers (UFW) movement as a field organizer and boycott organizer for the state of Florida. Jaffe first came to the Santa Cruz area with her then-husband, Jerry Kay, who was also active in the sustainable agriculture movement. They farmed ten acres near Elkhorn Slough, and in 1976, Jaffe helped start the first farmers’ market in Santa Cruz County, at Live Oak School.

After that marriage ended, Jaffe studied horticulture at Cabrillo College with Richard Merrill, and took a position with a CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) program called Project Blossom. As part of that program, she co-founded a school garden at Green Acres School in Live Oak, a semi-rural area near Santa Cruz, California. This was the genesis of the Life Lab Science Program, which grew into a groundbreaking nonprofit organization that works with schools throughout the United States to develop school gardens and curriculum for teaching science and nutrition. Jaffe served as founding executive director of the program for many years.

Jaffe earned a second master’s degree in education from UC Santa Cruz, with an emphasis in agroecology. She met and married Steve Gliessman (also the subject of an oral history in this series). In 2001, they co-founded the Community Agroecology Network (CAN). CAN defines its goals as, “to help a network of rural, primarily coffee-growing communities in Mexico and Central America develop self-sufficiency and sustainable growing practices, and direct market coffee to consumers in the United States.”

Jaffe is the co-author of “From Differentiated Coffee Markets Towards Alternative Trade and Knowledge Networks,” in Confronting the Coffee Crisis: Sustaining Livelihoods and Ecosystems in Mexico and Central America, and many Life Lab publications, including The Growing Classroom.

Ellen Farmer interviewed Robbie Jaffe on May 5, 2007, at Jaffe's house in Santa Cruz, California. Farmer’s MA thesis (in public policy) at California State University at Monterey Bay focused on the coffee crisis. As a graduate student, she worked with Jaffe at CAN, and brought her knowledge of the economics and politics of coffee growing in Latin America to the interview.

Richard Merrill is perhaps best known for editing the 1976 anthology Radical Agriculture, a formative text in the sustainable agriculture movement, along with the 1978 Energy Primer: Solar, Water, Wind, and Biofuels. Merrill was born in San Mateo, California, in 1941, and earned his MS in population biology at UCLA, studying with ecologist Monte Lloyd just as the modern ecology movement gathered power. He went on to study ecology at the Ph.D. level with another eminent ecologist, Joe Connell, at UC Santa Barbara, but left the academy to dedicate his life to the community-based teaching and activism that he considered more relevant during that time of tumultuous social change. He was profoundly inspired by the writings of the anarchist social ecologist Murray Bookchin.

Merrill helped start the El Mirasol urban organic farm in Santa Barbara, California. In 1975, he founded the Environmental Horticulture Department at Cabrillo College, which he directed until retiring in 2005. While at Cabrillo, Merrill mentored and inspired several generations of students, who went on to become organic farmers, gardeners, and activists in the Central Coast region and beyond.

Currently Merrill runs his own environmental consulting service, Merrill Associates. He recently co-authored (with Joe Ortiz) The Gardener’s Table: A Guide to Natural Vegetable Growing and Cooking. He is now editing an anthology called The Greening of Agriculture: Creating a More Sustainable Future for our Food and Farms. Merrill spoke at The Organic Summit conference’s plenary session in Washington state in 2009.

Ellen Farmer conducted this oral history with Richard Merrill at her house in Santa Cruz, California, on April 18 and June 20, 2007.

Andy Griffin runs Mariquita (“Ladybug”) Farm on twenty-five acres in Watsonville and Hollister. In collaboration with Steven Pedersen and Jeanne Byrne’s High Ground Organics in Watsonville, Griffin and his wife, Julia Wiley, sell much of their produce through a community supported agriculture venture called Two Small Farms.

Possessed of a quick mind and a powerful command of language, a wry and robust sense of humor, and strong opinions gleaned through extensive experience in the farming and marketing of organic produce, Griffin is also a prolific writer, blogger, and radio commentator. With farming roots reaching into California’s 1970s organic-farming renaissance, he has plenty of stories to tell.

The great-grandson of California farmers and son of a plant ecologist, Griffin took agriculture classes through the Future Farmers of America program at Carmel High School, then went on to UC Davis to study range management. Disillusioned by the pesticide-heavy focus of that program, he eventually completed a bachelor’s degree in philosophy.

Griffin’s practical education took place in a series of jobs on farms—including Cargill-owned sunflower fields in Davis, an organic garden that supplied produce to Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse, the Straus family dairy and Warren Weber’s Star Route Farms in Marin County, and a ranch in Santa Barbara County. After stints as a produce distributor, he eventually established Riverside Farm with partner Greg Beccio. The proceeds from that successful salad-greens business funded the creation of Happy Boy Farms, now run by Beccio—and eventually helped Griffin establish Mariquita Farm.

Sarah Rabkin interviewed Andy Griffin at her Soquel home on November 6th and December 16th, 2008. In addition to rollicking anecdotes, Griffin’s extensive transcript provides trenchant insights into the evolving economics of organic production, distribution, and marketing on both small and large scales.

Born in Pacific Grove, the descendent of pioneers who came to California with the De Anza party in 1774, Russel Wolter has been farming “organically” since he was fourteen, when his mother forbade him to use chemical fertilizers and sprays on their ranch in the Carmel Valley. That was in 1947, decades before organic certification, but Wolter’s expertise in organic farming methods became a valuable resource to a newer generation of farmers who began farming organically in the 1970s. After his mother’s death, Russel and his wife, Karen, farmed forty-five acres of the family ranch as Down to Earth Farm, growing a variety of crops, including sweet corn, tomatoes, squash, red and white chard, kale, collards, cucumbers, apricots, plums, winter squash, pumpkins, and fava beans. They distributed their produce through Bud Capurro’s distribution company based in Moss Landing, California, and also sold directly at farmers’ markets in the area. Down to Earth Farm was part of the original organic certification program initiated by Rodale Press’s Organic Farming and Gardening Magazine in 1971. Russel was a founding member of California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) and received a Stewards of Sustainable Agriculture (Sustie) Award in 1994. Russel and Karen are now retired from farming, and lease their land to Earthbound Farms. Ellen Farmer conducted this interview with Russel and Karen at their home in Carmel Valley on March 28, 2007.