'Occupy' Returning with Other Groups to UC Planting Field

The urban-farming advocacy group, Occupy the Farm – which made news on several past occasions by occupying portions of the UC Berkeley-owned "Gill Tract" property in Albany – said Friday it will return to the tract's planting field with other groups on Saturday, Aug. 10.

In a news release emailed late Friday afternoon, the group said it will begin a 4-month "participatory research project under the guidance of UC researcher and long-term Gill Tract farmer Miguel Altieri." 

But unlike past Occupy actions, which UC officials labeled as trespassing and took measures to stop, this one has won campus approval, said UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof.

"Over the next four months," the group's statement said, "10 teams of 4 participants each will design and sow intercropped plant systems, measure the yields produced, and then present a comparative analysis of the various crop plans."

Participants in the project are "community farmers from a variety of groups, including Transition Albany and Berkeley, Merritt College, Albany Farm Alliance, Albany Community Garden, Albany Children’s Center, and Occupy the Farm," the group said.

Altieri, a UC Berkeley professor, has been engaged for for many years in Gill Tract research on employing biodiversity for sustainable, environment-friendly methods in agriculture, particularly in pest control. He has shown sympathy for the Occupy the Farm community-farming goals.

The project will take place in the crop research field on UC property that sits directly east of Albany's Ocean View Elementary School and near the University Village student family housing complex.

It was on this same field last year that Occupy first made headlines when it staged a three-week occupation and crop-planting that ended with eviction by UC authorities. 

In May this year, the group held three weekend occupations on a different lot next to University Village. That lot, on the northwest corner of San Pablo Avenue and Monroe Street, has been slated by the university for commercial development, to be anchored by a Sprouts Farmers Market. The plan also calls for senior housing and more retail in another vacant lot on the other side of Monroe from the occupied lot. The Albany City Council in July last year approved UC-sponsored commercial and senior housing development on the two plots. 

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