Occupy San Fran Seizes UC Berkeley Farm (and There Are Wacky Pictures)

The UC Berkely approach to sustainable, organic farming is apparently not good enough for Occupy San Francisco.

A contingent of Bay Area Occupiers has essentially seized a communal farm -- to turn it into a communal farm. This negation of property rights and common sense, it appears, "is what democracy looks like."

The blogger Zombie reports on the takeover that happened on Earth Day. The farm is called the "Gill Tract," and Zombie explains the Occupiers' misconception of it below:

The farm they seized was not a working farm per se, but rather a “research farm” for the University of California, near its Berkeley campus. The only difference between the way the farm used to be (prior to a week ago) and the way it is now is that the Occupiers have transformed what was essentially a well-maintained and important open-air laboratory into a disheveled and ultimately purposeless pretend-farm for trustafarian dropouts.

This seems to demolish the motivations of the Occupiers, who have previously tried to justify their agrarian Occupation by stating that:

"We are reclaiming this land to grow healthy food to meet the needs of local communities. We envision a future of food sovereignty, in which our East Bay communities make use of available land – occupying it where necessary – for sustainable agriculture to meet local needs."

In response, Zombie points out that the University has distributed a press release with bullet points that poke plenty of holes in the premise of the Occupiers' land seizure and rebuts all of their conspiracy-mongering (the Occupiers justified their land-grab in part by saying the tract was in danger of being turned into a grocery store, and said the land is being used to research corn genetics):

• The Gill Site is not going to be developed into a grocery store. That's another site to the South. And that one hasn't been farmed since World War II.

• According to Berkeley U, the Gill tract is "being used as an open-air laboratory by the students and faculty of our College of Natural Resources for agricultural research. Their work encompasses basic plant biology, alternative cropping systems, plant-insect interactions and tree pests and pathogens. These endeavors are part of the larger quest to provide a hungry planet with more abundant food, and will be impeded if the protest continues."

• The Gill fields are categorically not growing genetically modified crops. We have an obligation to support their education and research, and an obligation to the American taxpayers who are funding these federally funded projects.

• The university has been actively participating in a collaborative, five-year long community engagement process about our proposed development project with hundreds of hours of meetings, hearings and dialogue. We have a great deal of respect for all those who have been involved and regret that “Occupy the Farm” appears to have little regard for the process or the people who have participated in it.

• We take issue with the protesters’ approach to property rights. By their logic they should be able to seize what they want if, in their minds, they have a better idea of how to use it."

The researchers have said they need access to the tract immediately to continue their work (it's spring planting season, after all). And they're voicing their displeasure.

“I know, from talking to a lot of people, that science means something scary, corporate and alienating, but that has nothing to do with what we do," scientist Damon Lisch explained to the local Patch. "Our work is paid for by you through your tax dollars (mostly through the National Science Foundation and the USDA), and the results of our research are available to everyone. As long as these occupiers sit on our field, we can't teach or make new discoveries, and that doesn't seem right to me.”

“I'd like to suggest that a lot of the people involved in Occupy the Farm probably had no idea of how much harm they were doing to our research, or what our research even is,” he added.

The Occupiers have now responded by saying "The University administration's position does NOT represent the position of the entire university community," and that "there are 8 faculty members within the College of Natural Resources that are actively supporting the idea of turning the Gill Tract into an urban farm."

All of this may be considered small potatoes, if you will, in comparison to to the expected protests and melees with police in cities across the country on May Day.

Nonetheless, when Occupiers have become too radical for even hyper-liberal Berkeley to defend, people sympathetic to the movement should start to really wonder what they mean by "the 99%."

For more photos of the Gill Farms Occupation in the Bay area, read Zombie's original post.