UC President Janet Napolitano's Global Food Initiative

Cookbook author and New York Times columnist Mark Bittman has come west to explore California and the food that's grown and made here, with the University of California Global Food Initiative. Join us here every other Tuesday for a new installment of California Matters. Stay with http://kcet.org/cafoodmatters for all the project's stories.

When University of California President Janet Napolitano left her position as President Obama's U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security to head the entire UC system in 2013, she was taking on a massive beast (or lovable bear for most students and alumni) of an institution.

The University of California is made up of 10 college campuses, five medical centers, and three national laboratories. In this spring alone, there were 238,700 students enrolled in one of the universities across the state. Despite severe cuts and controversial student tuition fee hikes, one of the first things Napolitano did as president was to launch an ambitious, timely project called the Global Food Initiative. Mustering the strengths from the individual campuses, the initiative aims to "sustainably and nutritiously feed a world population expected to reach eight billion by 2025." The success of the Global Food Initiative may be Napolitano's legacy as UC President.

It's a far-reaching project, and one that requires research, policy-making, and implementation on state, national, and global levels. Public interest in issues relating to food is at a high, and the UC Food Observer blog and the California Matters videos featuring writer Mark Bittman share the initiative's progress in easily digestible terms. I spoke to Napolitano about the goals of the initiative and its progress so far.

You announced the Global Food Initiative only a few months after becoming UC president. How did the idea for the Global Food Initiative start?

Janet Napolitano: It came out of a dinner meeting with all the chancellors and we were talking how a great a public university as large and diverse as ours could use our resources to focus on the world's greatest challenge. We talked about energy and health and we came upon the subject of food. We have so much research, everything from the health aspect, agriculture, food distribution, and ecology. We run the gamut. We thought why not pick food as a system-wide global challenge and take it on.

You once said, in talking about the UC system, that the "U.S. doesn't thrive if California doesn't thrive." How do you see the issue of food apply to this idea?

Napolitano: In a larger sense, it's about the economy. That goes right to food and agriculture because California is such a dominant producer in so many different areas. You can't see the U.S. thriving if California doesn't thrive.

Berkeley professor Michael Pollan's 2006 book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" got people thinking more about eating and food systems. How is all this multi-disciplinary research coming out of the UCs shaping the conversation about food ten years later?

Napolitano: The goal of the Global Food Initiative is to put the world on a pathway to a sustainable and nutritious food future by 2025. What we mean by that date is not that we've solved all the food problems by then, but designed a framework. I think it's important but it ties into Pollan's book that it is about looking at the production side's effect on food, on the environment, what the food systems do for individuals -- their health for example.

A year in, what targets has the Initiative met?

Napolitano: We wanted to have food fellows at every campus, both undergrads and grads who are awarded food fellowships, and the food fellowship is now up and running. We designed a set of best practices that the campuses can replicate from eat other to include urban gardens and food pantries for students. We've adjusted procurement rules to make it easier to purchase food from smaller local growers as opposed to large vendors.

As President of the UC system, what are you doing to get students, minorities and young people in California engaged and interested in this initiative?

Napolitano: We're focused on students, but obviously it goes beyond UC students. One thing we're doing is expanding the communication about the knowledge of the Food Initiative. There's the blog called the UC Food Observer, we have a California Higher Education Food Summit, and [we are continuing] the Edible Education course at Berkeley.

You have big goals for the Global Food initiative and one thing to come from that is the "California Matters" series. Most people watching the videos are removed from every process of the food system besides the consumption of it. How do you hope for them to watch the videos?

Napolitano: I think one of the things we are demonstrating in the video is what role a great public research university can play to address a challenge for the state, for the country, and for the world. When you think about the world population adding another potential billion by 2025, and when you think about the number of people who go to bed unnourished in the world and those who are unhealthily obese at the end of the spectrum, you can see the impact of health and food. When you think of the role of climate change and the effects of that on our overall food production and consumption -- that's a big challenge. Studying the development of crops that are more drought resistant becomes even more important. In parts of the world where it's difficult to sustain plants, there's a direct applicability to be able to create a sustainable food system.