Welcome to Our Project
Asian Americans have long contributed to California's agriculture and cuisine. They “worked the fields,” built agricultural infrastructure, had land taken away from them, organized farm worker movements, and helped shape California cuisine. However, limited public investment in archiving and advancing this rich legacy has served to disconnect them from their communities. To fill this gap, we have been working on multiple projects intersecting race, seed sovereignty, food justice, technology, and Asian crops while developing curriculum and pedagogy by creating an interdisciplinary seminar on cultural and scientific meanings of Asian crops and seeds in California and beyond. Drawing on the years-long university-community partnership between the Department of Asian American Studies, the Department of Plant Science, the Student Collaborative Organic Plant Breeding Education (SCOPE) program, the UCD Student Farm, and the Second Generation Seeds (SGS) collective of Asian American farmers, we present an interdisciplinary, collaborative, innovative, and community-engaged model for new knowledge production in the fields of Asian American studies and plant breeding.
image source: https://cityasnature.org/post/2016/building-an-ecology-of-one/