Cal Poly’s Initiative for Climate Leadership and Resilience is on a mission to bring a program that supports regenerative agriculture to San Luis Obispo County.
Called Zero Foodprint, the California-based nonprofit aims to help restaurants reduce their climate impacts by focusing on the root source—changing the way food itself is grown.
Erin Pearse, the Cal Poly initiative’s director, said he came across Zero Foodprint when it was known as Restore California. He remembered thinking it was a natural and easy solution.
“We’re in such an agricultural region,” he said. “Farm-to-table is such a big thing here. There’s a lot of very climate progressive people that value sustainability.”
Establishing a partnership between Zero Foodprint and Cal Poly could generate more than $100,000 each year to fund the Cal Poly Ranches Carbon Farm plan. The plan looks for different farm practices that can decrease the production of greenhouse gases and increase the rate at which the farm supports the photosynthetically driven transfer of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to plants and soil.
Together with the Carbon Cycle Institute and the Resource Conservation District of Santa Cruz County, Cal Poly hopes to carry out the carbon farm plan on its Swanton Pacific Ranch outside Davenport.
“Finding federal funding to continue the testing is going to be a big challenge, because the federal funding landscape is in such turmoil right now, but … Zero Foodprint would provide a way to potentially keep that going,” Pearse said.
The initiative began pursuing Zero Foodprint for Cal Poly in March. According to its Strategic Initiatives Coordinator Kalea Conrad, the plan is to create a partnership with Cal Poly Dining or even a local restaurant or business. Customers would then get the option to contribute an extra 1 percent as a micro donation.
Zero Foodprint would directly collect that money and allocate it to farmers who apply for its Restore Grant. Farmers and ranchers stand to receive up to $25,000 to implement climate-smart practices—compost application, cover-cropping, crop rotation, no- or low-till rotational grazing—that isolate carbon.
“I think some people might be hesitant, because it places the onus on the individual to act. They might ask, ‘Why can’t Cal Poly just directly contribute to the Restore Grant fund?'” Conrad said. “There are so many benefits to supporting agriculture, and as consumers, we’re typically pretty disconnected from agriculture, but we rely very intimately on it and the health of our soil.”
Conrad has been advocating for the partnership through presentations in Cal Poly’s lecture halls and at club meetings. She and Pearse also presented a survey signed by more than 1,400 students in favor of the partnership at the Cal Poly partners board meeting in April. The board connected them with the Commercialization Services team, which is working on building “internal support,” according to Pearse.
If Cal Poly does make an institutional commitment to partner with Zero Foodprint, Pearse envisions setting up a commission to help achieve goals like contributing to the Restore Grant and implementing the carbon farm plan.
The commission could be made up of staff, faculty, and students from Cal Poly, a Zero Foodprint representative, and an external member like someone from a resource conservation district, according to Pearse.
“We could work, for instance, with farms in our supply chain,” he said. “So, the folks in the Central Valley that are growing the tomatoes that our food services buy, they could be prioritized for funding if they’re working on regenerative ag.”
He has other ideas in mind, too, like putting Senate Bill 1383 to good use with the help of Zero Foodprint for Cal Poly. Also known as the Short-Lived Climate Pollutant Reduction Act, the bill requires cities, counties, and large-scale organizations to purchase a certain amount of compost and mulch each year to help set up a market for the diversion of organic waste.
“That’s the thing that Zero Foodprint can work with,” Pearse said. “Cal Poly, for example, would be able to take those SB 1383 credits for all of the compost that they are putting toward whatever projects they have lined up that involve compost. That takes a burden off of them.”
Other universities across the country are eyeing Zero Foodprint collaborations to advance the cause of local climate-smart agriculture. Pearse hopes Cal Poly would be the first to do so, earning innovation credit in the process.
Volunteers looking to help the initiative with the Zero Foodprint collaboration can email Conrad at khconrad@calpoly.edu or Zero Foodprint’s Outreach Coordinator Aline Kubiak at alineamento@gmail.com.
“If we can get this Zero Foodprint program really humming in our area, then the resource conservation districts can take over the job of figuring out which farms have the highest priority as far as impact and which ones should be prioritized for grant funding,” Pearse said. “Then, basically they will be directing the stream of money.”
Related Stories
Get Outside – Summer/Fall 2025
This article appears in Get Outside – Summer/Fall 2025.