President’s Speaker Series focuses on food and health

By Mark Muckenfuss

The health impacts of state-of-the-art sustainable agricultural practices will be the focus of Erin O'Dwyer’s keynote address at the next installment of the President’s Speaker Series on March 18, from 5:30-7:30 p.m.

Her presentation, which will include a question-and-answer segment, will be followed by a panel discussion with three experts in the agricultural/nutrition field.

O'Dwyer is a postdoctoral fellow with the Gardner Lab and the Plant-Based Diet Initiative at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, which is part of the university’s medical school. Her work is focused on the pressures surrounding ecologically conscious agriculture and its impacts on the quality of food and human wellbeing.

“My research sits at the intersection of agroecology and regenerative agriculture, nutrition, and public health,” said O'Dwyer, who classifies herself as an interdisciplinary food scholar. “My work, thus far, has examined agricultural transitions, particularly the social values that motivate them and the structural barriers that often constrain farmers from adopting more agroecological/regenerative practices.”

O'Dwyer said much of what she examines has to do with “how institutional food environments — such as hospitals, schools, and universities — can support both human and planetary health through changes in menus and procurement.”

Those decisions, she said, in turn influence what growers produce. Because such institutions wield significant purchasing power, as well as social influence, “shifts within them could serve as powerful levers toward healthier, more sustainable food systems,” she said.

Ultimately, those decisions end up determining much of what appears on produce shelves. O'Dwyer’s research attempts to look at the bigger picture in that process. 

“My work focuses more on the systems-level connections between agricultural practices, supply chains and co-benefits for human and planetary health,” she said. “In this particular talk, my emphasis will be on these broader food system linkages.”

A recent graduate of Harvard, where she earned her doctorate in population

health sciences, O'Dwyer said much of her research was done on the agricultural industry in Massachusetts. But the principles apply broadly, including the Salinas Valley and Monterey County. 

“The Monterey and Salinas regions are incredibly important agricultural hubs,” she said, “and many of the broader themes I’ll discuss will likely resonate and be highly relevant to growers in the region. The core questions around how we align agricultural viability, environmental sustainability, and public health are very much applicable in the Central Coast context.”

The panel discussion of industry experts following O'Dwyer’s presentation will be moderated by Dr. Patricia Santana, a pioneering voice in the Food is Medicine movement and director of Health and Wellness for the Regenerative Organic Sustainable Institute. The panel will feature Wei-ting Chen, executive director of Stanford’s Food for Health Equity Lab; Tony Serrano, CEO of JAS Family Farms Organics, as well as that company’s vice president of sales, Jarrett Strachan; and Juan Pablo “JP” Dundore-Arias, professor and director of agricultural plant and soil science at CSUMB. 

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