As many as 75 Occupy the Farm farmers and activists preempted Saturday an Albany Council invite-only harvest of crops planted by the group in April at the Gill Tract, a 5-acre plot of class 1 agricultural land owned by UC Berkeley and used for crop research, and delivered to the UC Berkeley Chancellor a barrow’s-full of bolted lettuce in a symbolic gesture.
We urge the administration and campus police to drop all charges against the farmers and protesters, and to engage in good-faith negotiations to ensure that the Gill Tract is reserved for community-based agricultural use to be governed as a form of commons in conjunction with the farmers and local community.
Without food, we cannot survive and without local farms to grow and supply food in a post-peak oil world, the costs associated with traditional long-distance, oil-reliant food production will continue to soar and become unsustainable.
With horns playing, banners flying, and traffic briefly stopping, the Earth Day march from Ohlone Park in Berkeley started off with the hallmark signs of a bay area occupy protest, but something was different. There was a bold, if cautious optimism amongst this crowd.
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