Community Environmental Council Receives Food Rescue Grant and Partners with SBCC and Allan Hancock College to Feed Hungry Students
The Community Environmental Council (CEC) received $116,000 from Cal Recycle to feed hungry students at Santa Barbara City College (SBCC) and Allan Hancock College as part of an innovative food rescue program that will also help our region reduce waste and fight climate change.
Film Screening: The Biggest Little Farm
A testament to the immense complexity of nature, The Biggest Little Farm follows two dreamers and a dog on an odyssey to bring harmony to both their lives and the land. Starting May 31 at SBIFF's Riviera Theatre For showtimes…
Good Food for Good
Bruce Cleveland and Jefferson Woeste invite you to a fun Sunday dinner benefitting the launch of the new SYV Community Kitchen at St. Mark’s-in-the-Valley. Local legend Chef Frank Ostini will be cooking at historic Rancho San Antonio on Sunday, May 19 at 6 pm.
Food Insecurity in Higher Education Public Forum
Join the Santa Barbara County community in addressing the food insecurity crisis happening at our own local colleges. Many students face some degree of food insecurity, leading us to question how we as a community can support our neighbors in…
Power to the soil!
CEC’s Food Program, in partnership with the King & King Ranch, the Ventura Resource Conservation District and the UC Cooperative Extension, are putting together a Healthy Soils demonstration project in Filmore. If successful, this project will transition ~30 acres of…
A Full Plate
Providing another option for students facing food insecurity, UC Santa Barbara has opened a food pantry at Sierra Madre Villages.
Dr Sara Goldrick-Rab: Addressing Students’ Basic Needs
Join us for an evening with scholar-activist Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab while she discusses the new economics of colleges and how they have created a crisis of basic needs insecurity on college campuses. She will review the latest evidence on prevalence…
Thank you for helping us build the Food Action Plan Network!
Last week nearly 75 people attended the Santa Barbara County Food Action Plan (SBCFAP) listening session, where businesses, schools, neighborhoods, and organizations of all types shared and connected with others engaged in making a secure food system for our county.
Carbon Farming Initiative Takes Tentative First Steps in Santa Ynez Valley
Article first appeared on Noozhawk On a recent morning in the Santa Ynez Valley, a crowd of people gathered at the Ted Chamberlin Ranch to discuss soil health and so-called carbon farming. The event –– hosted by the Community Environmental…
Environmental and Agricultural Leaders Partner to Host Healthy Soils Field Day & Compost Demonstration
Second Annual Event – Building Our Resilient Food System: Cultivating Connections
#rethinkfood #foodaction #foodjustice #foodsystem #leaf Help us continue to shape a sustainable food future for Santa Barbara County! Join us on Tuesday, November 13, 2018 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. for the second annual free community listening and activation…
Foodbank of Santa Barbara County Annual Report 2018
Thanks for taking the time to read this report! This has been an incredible year of progress for the Foodbank. We had no idea that we would be tested so profoundly by the double-blow of the Thomas fire and Montecito…
Full Hearts and Bellies: An SBC Food Rescue Story #rethinkfood
CEC’s SBC Food Rescue program has been hard at work since the launch in April 2018, and to date has saved approximately 3,625 pounds of restaurant-quality food from going to the landfill. Instead, this food has gone to feed local community members at charitable nonprofits.
Santa Barbara School District First In US To Axe Processed Meat
The Santa Barbara Unified School District (SBUSD) is the first known school district in the US to remove processed meats from its lunch menus. The change – which became official earlier this month – was motivated by health and the…
Farming for Life to use veggies as low-cost diabetes treatment
Santa Barbara County doctors are testing out a new prescription medication to treat residents struggling with type 2 diabetes: veggies. Sansum Diabetes Research Institute, a Santa Barbara-based diabetes research and health care clinic, was recently awarded a four-year U.S. Department…
Rising carbon emissions make crops less nutritious, threaten global health
Read the full text on The Hill. Around the world, food security is being threatened by man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Some of the threats to our food system are relatively clear: warmer temperatures and changing climates bring about droughts,…
Excess Food, Which Normally Gets Thrown Out, Helps To Feed Hungry In Santa Barbara County
Food that would normally be thrown out is now feeding the hungry in Santa Barbara County. Restaurants, supermarkets and caterers routinely dump their excess prepared food. But instead of filling up landfills with healthy, uneaten food, the Community Environmental Council…
Lompoc residents, Foodbank reps celebrate 1-year anniversary of food access center
With a festive atmosphere that was befitting a birthday party, Lompoc community members and civic leaders joined with officials from the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County on Wednesday to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Lompoc’s Alma Cena Sana center. The…
Scaling Up Carbon Farming on Central Coast Rangelands
The Community Environmental Council (CEC), Cachuma Resource Conservation District, and Ted Chamberlin Ranch have been awarded a major statewide grant to scale-up and expand a regenerative agriculture research pilot underway on the Chamberlin Ranch in Los Olivos.
California is turning farms into carbon-sucking factories
In a grand experiment, California switched on a fleet of high-tech greenhouse gas removal machines last month. Funded by the state’s cap-and-trade program, they’re designed to reverse climate change by sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. These wonderfully complex machines are more high-tech than anything humans have designed. They’re called plants.
Santa Barbara County Food Rescue
Community Environmental Council is coordinating SBC Food Rescue, a collaborative food recovery network for Santa Barbara County with support from private, public, and nonprofit sectors. SBC Food Rescue builds relationships between donors with excess food and charitable organizations throughout the…
The Amazing Ability of Pasture Grass to Sequester Carbon
“What really got people excited about this simple layer of compost is that it sequesters carbon now. We don’t have to wait for Elon Musk to geo-engineer something from space.” This cover story in the Santa Barbara Independent features the…
Soup’s On at Empty Bowls Fundraiser
The Foodbank of Santa Barbara County will host the 14th Annual Lompoc Empty Bowls fundraiser, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, at Dick DeWees Senior & Community Center, 1120 W. Ocean Ave., Lompoc. For a $25 donation, attendees select a…
Veggie Rescue Teams Up with Chumash Casino to Redirect Excess Food to People in Need
As national and global agencies spotlight food waste, a Santa Barbara County nonprofit organization has been working behind the scenes since November to relocate leftover food from buffet lines to hungry senior citizens. The Santa Ynez Valley Fruit & Vegetable…
Young Farmers to Help Diabetes Patients
Fairview Gardens and William Sansum Diabetes Center Merge Budding Programs If young farmers and diabetes don’t seem like a natural pairing, just ask Lacey Baldiviez and Ben York. Baldiviez, the director of Goleta’s Fairview Gardens, has teamed up with York,…
Thinking Big
Yellow cloth streamers blowing sideways in the breeze signal that you’ve arrived at the Blue Sky Center in New Cuyama. But just in case there’s any doubt, the name is discreetly spelled out over the door of the single-story industrial-looking…
Placemaking in Cuyama Valley
Cuyama. In Chumash it means to rest, to wait. The two-lane highway of Route 166 is a hidden gem, often traveled during wildflower season in late March. The gorgeous route winds along the Cuyama River, through a canyon separating the…
Free Screening of Wasted! The Story of Food Waste
Join us to #rethinkfood with a FREE screening of WASTED: The Story of Food Waste by Anthony Bourdain. Hear how you can plug into efforts to reduce and redistribute food waste with CEC and other local organizations. Light snacks provided, and bring your reusable…
Building Our Resilient Food System: Cultivating Connections
On October 25, 2017 businesses, nonprofits, and individual community members gathered to share powerful ways they are working to #rethinkfood in Santa Barbara County. The meeting provided an opportunity to share about successes and further the goals of the Santa Barbara…
SBC Food Action Plan Successes in 2017
In May 2016, CEC and its partners (the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County, the Orfalea Foundation, and the Santa Barbara Foundation) published the Santa Barbara County Food Action Plan, a community-driven strategic plan that assesses and provides recommendations for how we…
Community Invited to Take Action on Food System #rethinkfood
See original press release here. The Community Environmental Council (CEC), Foodbank of Santa Barbara County, and the Santa Barbara Foundation will hold Building Our Resilient Food System: Cultivating Connections, a free community activation session to explore the vision, progress and…
Sky’s the limit: The Blue Sky Center works to empower the residents of rural Cuyama Valley with creativity and community
Things don’t move too fast in rural communities like New Cuyama, and they especially slow down when the midday sun bears down and the heat hits the high 90s. That is, except for Louie, the pit bull/black lab mix who…
Santa Barbara County Food Waste Recovery Round Table
Multiple agencies are working together in Santa Barbara County to prevent food waste. CEC held its second Food Waste Roundtable to address the complexities of a system in which tons of untouched food and usable food scraps are sent to…
Foodbank opens new Lompoc community center
Representatives from the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County joined with Lompoc community members Wednesday afternoon to celebrate the opening of the Foodbank’s first Community Food Access Center. The new center, named Alma Cena Sana, is located at Lompoc’s El Camino…
Students Research West Side Food Quality
Three Westmont students have presented their research about the availability and quality of food in the West Side of Santa Barbara to more than two dozen community members of the Westside Impact Group and Foodbank of Santa Barbara County. Kaitlynn…
