Tim Bowles, assistant professor of agroecology at the University of California, Berkeley, is working to make agriculture more sustainable and less harmful to the environment. He researches ways to reduce dependence on pesticides and to clean up runoff that contaminates groundwater in California.
Bowles highlights that agriculture plays a central role in some of humanity’s most pressing challenges. “If we look ahead to where some of the deepest challenges that we face as humanity are, we think about climate change, providing healthy and nutritious food for a growing human population, biodiversity loss,” says Bowles. “Agriculture is at the center of each of these.”
He explains his approach in a short video as part of UC Berkeley’s 101 in 101 series, which asks experts on campus to summarize their work in just over a minute and a half. According to Bowles, agroecology “draws both on the ecological sciences — how we understand how the natural world works — as well as the wisdom that farmers have accumulated over generations.”
Bowles also serves as faculty director at the Berkeley Food Institute. His interest in agroecology began during college when he balanced laboratory research with advocacy for economic justice and hands-on farming experience. “I was drawn to agroecology as a field where I could do both,” he says.
Currently, students and volunteers under Bowles’ guidance manage crops at Oxford Tract near campus with Berkeley Student Farms. There they learn practical skills like field measurement and urban crop cultivation alongside theoretical knowledge.
“Berkeley is a great place to both get that solid conceptual and theoretical foundation as well as actually go out and get your hands dirty,” says Bowles.
Further information about the Berkeley Food Institute’s efforts toward sustainable food systems can be found by visiting their website. Additional episodes from UC Berkeley’s 101 in 101 video series are available here.
