Jennifer Sowerwine

• PhD
• Cooperative Extension Specialist at University of California, Berkeley

Upholding Tribal sovereignty in land use decision making is an ongoing challenge, in part because Tribal sacred sites, cultural heritage sites, and other cultural resources exist in areas outside of Tribal jurisdiction. In 2014, California Assembly Bill 52 (AB 52) amended the California Environmental Quality Act to mandate Tribal consultation as pa...

Regulatory regimes codify complex social objectives for agriculture, and judge producers' compliance relative to the resulting rules and standards. By combining Access Theory with Regulator-Intermediary-Target Theory, we frame farmers' compliance with agricultural rules and standards as a dynamic, relational product of social networks, rather than...

Access to healthy and appealing food is essential for individuals to be able to live a healthy and quality life. For decades, food security has been a priority issue for public health professionals. Food sovereignty expands upon the concept of food insecurity (i.e., having access to nutritious and culturally relevant food) by incorporating people’s...

Indigenous communities in the United States experience some of the highest rates of food insecurity and diet-related diseases despite an abundance of food assistance programs and other public health interventions. New approaches that center Indigenous perspectives and solutions are emerging and urgently needed to better understand and address these...

Urban farming is an important component of California agriculture, but lack of agricultural census data or common definitions makes it difficult to track and understand. In 2017–2018, a team of University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) researchers and extension professionals developed a workshop series for urban farmers in...

Indigenous People in the Klamath River Basin have cared for and utilized ecosystems and component resources since time immemorial, proactively conserving species through continuous use and stewardship. Though many culturally significant plants are still tended and used by Indigenous people, many species are also experiencing prolonged stress from c...

The COVID-19 pandemic has unveiled deep and systemic weaknesses and gross inequalities in U.S. food and farming systems, compounding the effects of an already unjust food and agricultural system. Emergent studies reveal disproportionate effects of the pandemic on minority farmers and vulnerable communities, as well as inequitable access to critical...

In the Klamath River Basin (KRB) of northern California and southern Oregon, climate-related changes, such as more intense droughts, varied and concentrated precipitation, earlier spring and later fall conditions, extreme temperatures, and decreased snowpack have contributed to increasingly unpredictable plant reproduction and harvest cycles. In th...

This paper presents findings from a survey of 34 food policy councils (FPCs) in California. The survey addressed organizational structure and functions, policy priorities and achievements, and the use of research or other information. We find that most FPCs have formed in recent years, operate with small budgets and limited or no staff, and functio...

Despite a growing civic movement to create spaces for urban agriculture (UA) in U.S. cities, public investment remains both inequitable and inadequate to support the diverse practices and practitioners growing food locally. As a result, outcomes of UA initiatives are uneven, ad hoc, and often the result of resistance and concerted advocacy. This is...

A long history of tribal disenfranchisement through government policies has contributed to a lack of trust and participation by tribal communi­ties in nontribal organizations and initiatives. This article will discuss the process through which new partnerships were forged using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach among universi...

Citizen science based on principles of community-based participatory research involves the co-creation of research among citizens and professional researchers in substantive aspects of scientific inquiry including equitable contributions to governance, research questions, data collection, analysis, application of findings, and dissemination. This a...

Native Americans make up less than 2% of the population of the USA, but suffer from some of the highest rates of food insecurity, poverty, diet-related diseases, and other socioeconomic challenges. This study examined unique attributes of food security in Native American communities in the Klamath River Basin of southern Oregon and northern Califor...

The watershed has long captured political and scientific imaginations and served as a primary sociospatial unit of water governance and ecosystem restoration. However, uncritically deploying watersheds for collaborative environmental governance in indigenous territories may inappropriately frame sociocultural, political-economic, and ecological pro...

Drawing data from comparative case studies of 10 California food policy councils (FPCs), this paper describes the nature of the relationships between local governments and FPCs and examines how these relationships support policy-related activities and food systems change. We focus our compari­sons on distinct organizational structures, resource flo...

The aim of our review is to critically analyze the urban agriculture and urban food systems literature in order to understand the impact of urban-produced foods on community food security. We examine the role of city planning, food policy, and civic engagement in creating spaces for urban agriculture in cities across the United States, and whether...

The Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) provides a monthly box of U.S. Department of Agriculture foods to low-income, rural Native Americans and is a vital component of food security for recipient households. While the origin of government food annuities dates back hundreds of years to treaties between tribes, pueblos, and nati...

In an intensifying climate of scrutiny over food safety, the food industry is turning to “food safety culture” as a one-size-fits-all solution to protect both consumers and companies. This strategy focuses on changing employee behavior from farm to fork to fit a universal model of bureaucratic control; the goal is system-wide cultural transformatio...

In this paper we highlight the racialized effects of agricultural labor laws on Southeast Asian family farmers in California’s Central Valley. We show how agricultural labor laws intended to protect farmworkers on industrial farms discriminate against and challenge small Southeast Asian refugee farmers. Hmong, Iu-Mien and Lao family farmers rely on...

Documents how racial and social inequalities are built into our food system, and how communities are creating environmentally sustainable and socially just alternatives. Popularized by such best-selling authors as Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, and Eric Schlosser, a growing food movement urges us to support sustainable agriculture by eating fr...

"This article examines the making of post-socialist forest property relations in highland Vietnam in policy, meaning and practice, and the resultant implications for patterns of resource use, local power relations, and forest biodiversity and cover. It utilises the framework of political ecology to explore how macro-level institutions and ideologie...

This research report provides a brief summary of Vietnam's Forest Policy Refor of the 1990s, with case studies of community forestry from the Da River region and Ba Vi National Park, with special reference to minority communities of Tai, Hmong, and Dzao communities.