Dr. Albie Miles and UHWO’s Sustainable Community Food Systems program invited to join INFAS

Pili Aina 2015

UH West Oʻahu faculty and staff work in a loi kalo.

The UH West Oʻahu’s Sustainable Community Food Systems (SCFS) program was invited to partner in the National Inter-institutional Network for Food, Agriculture and Sustainability (INFAS) network. Assistant Professor Albie Miles will represent UH West Oʻahu in the partnership.

Photo of Miles Albie

UH West Oʻahu Assistant Professor of Sustainable Community Food Systems Albie Miles

UH West Oahu’s participation in INFAS serves to recognize SCFS’s value in the national context of the expansion of sustainable agriculture programming at the post-secondary level; recognize SCFS as a national leader in integrating indigenous knowledge with the western science of agroecology; acknowledge Dr. Miles’s personal contributions to the academic field of agroecology; and provide Dr. Miles, UH West Oʻahu, and the UH System with new opportunities to collaborate with leaders in agroecology on research, education and policy initiatives at the national level.

INFAS

The Inter-institutional Network for Food, Agriculture and Sustainability (INFAS) is a national network of university and college educators, researchers, and activists, representing 24 institutions and spanning 20 states, who collaborate in analysis, synthesis, and problem-solving with practitioners to increase U.S. food-system resilience; to illuminate critical trends and common stewardship of public goods essential for food systems, such as water, biodiversity, ecosystem services, and public institutions; and to reduce inequity and vulnerability in the U.S. food system.

Albie Miles

Albie Miles is an assistant professor of sustainable community food systems at the University of Hawaiʻi – West Oʻahu. Dr. Miles received his Ph.D. in environmental science, policy and management from the University of California, Berkeley in 2013. His natural science research explores the synergies between farming system biodiversity and the provisioning of globally important ecosystem services from agriculture. His social science research explores the socio-economic and political obstacles to a more ecologically sustainable and socially equitable food system. Miles teaches a wide range of courses on the topics of agroecology and sustainable food systems, and developed the undergraduate concentration in sustainable community food systems at UH West Oʻahu. He has an extensive background in curriculum development and post-secondary education emphasizing experiential and hands-on learning, and held posts at the Organic Agriculture Program at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Images courtesy of Brian Miyamoto and Mellissa Lochman