209 DeBartolo Hall

Join us on April 25th to learn from sustainable agriculture experts from Lundberg Family Farms. Afterward, Lundberg will be visiting the South Dining Hall for dinner service, where the winners of Irish Chef will be presenting their dish featuring Lundberg brown rice. Don't miss this opportunity to engage with leaders in sustainable farming! Read about Lundberg's sustainable practices here. 

 

Distinguished for their genuine flavors, Lundberg Family Farms Rice supports its labeling and sustainable assertions with concrete actions. In their quest for biodiversity, Lundberg Family Farms embraces the role of stewardship by flooding a large portion of their fields to mimic their region’s once abundant wetlands, 95% of which have disappeared due to development. Through this process, their fields become sanctuaries for an array of species including ducks, geese, swans, sandhill cranes, shorebirds, and other waterfowl who depend on California rice fields for 60% of their nutrition as well as a place to nest as they continue to travel through the Pacific Flyway. As these birds fly away, water is returned to the rivers and streams, where zooplankton (or fish food!) that propagated on the fields nourishes endangered salmon species.
Lundberg’s fields of winter cover crops also provide nesting habitat for ducks. Therefore, before they prep the fields for rice planting in the spring, Lundberg checks to see if ducks have nested. If so, they partner with California Waterfowl Association to rescue the eggs by hand, saving them from the tractor’s path. These eggs are then taken to local hatcheries, where they are incubated, hatched, raised to about five weeks of age, and released into the wild. Since 1993, Lundberg has helped rescue more than 30,000 duck eggs, a testament to the company's unwavering commitment to caring for the land and the creatures that live on it.
This holistic approach to agriculture is an embodiment of the symbiotic relationship between humanity and nature, painting a picture of responsible land stewardship.