|

Privatized Strawberries at Davis

Byadmin
Please pay as you enter

Strawberry growers are literally being cheated out of the fruits of their labors by the University of California, according to a lawsuit filed against the Board of Regents by the California Strawberry Commission.

UC Davis is ending its strawberry breeding program and replacing it with a private company created by its two long-time strawberry researchers. The two plan to sell strawberry varieties, including those they developed over the past 30 years at UC Davis backed by annual payments of $350,000 by the strawberry commission.

Filed in Alameda County Superior Court, the commission’s eight-page lawsuit wants to block the move, saying the university “seeks to appropriate to itself and a private entity… the fruits – both literally and figuratively – of decades-long research the commission funded.” In return for the commission’s funding, strawberry growers who used the new UC-crated types of strawberries paid lower royalties and got two years of exclusivity before non-California growers could use the new varieties. That changed in 2012 when the university’s strawberry breeders, Doug Shaw and Kirk Larson, said they were going private…

Full story at http://capitolweekly.net/strawberry-growers-pick-uc-regents/

Well, nothing lasts forever.  Nothing to get hung about:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-g2ocByOYo?feature=player_detailpage]

Similar Posts

  • | | | |

    Report from the National AAUP Convention

    Byadmin

    Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA, of which UCLA-FA is the UCLA chapter) President Constance Penley attended the historic National AAUP convention on June 16-18 in Arlington, VA, as the CUCFA delegate, which meant that she had an opportunity to vote on the proposed alliance between the AAUP and the AFT (AFL-CIO) and to fill six open AAUP Council seats. Read her report from the Convention at the CUCFA website.

  • |

    Chris Newfield @ UCLA, Feb. 22

    Byadmin

    Public Universities under Trump Lessons from the Era of Privatization Wednesday, February 22, 3:30-5 PM 6275 Bunche Hall, UCLA Free and open to the public. Location Information Privatization, student debt, and over-building have led public universities to the brink of disaster. So argues UCSB professor Christopher Newfield in his new book. Only by embracing their

  • |

    Univ. of Wisconsin Faces Big Changes under Walker

    Byadmin

    Wisconsin’s Republican governor Scott Walker recently proposed a $350 million cut to the University of Wisconsin system budget, and a fundamental shift in the university’s relationship to the state. Currently, the multi-campus system is a state agency. The new law would make the UW system a “public authority.” In a lengthy analysis, UW professors explain what this change will mean and why system administrators are not fighting it: They [system leaders] recognize the cuts as a “DEAL” with the state in exchange for what they call the ‘flexibilities’ of the public authority model.  This desire explains why no UW System…

  • | |

    Another of our periodic email cautionary notes

    Byadmin

    From time to time, we have provided reminders about email problems.  One problem – which we have noted – is that at a public university, your emails may be subject to public documents requests. Another problem is that hackers may try to get into your email account through “phishing,” probably to use it to send out scam messages to your contacts.  Such an event seems to have occurred at UC-Davis: Hackers compromised the email accounts of three UC Davis doctors last month, potentially gaining access to personal or medical information on as many as 1,800 patients, the university announced Monday… …

  • | | | | | | | |

    Yesterday’s news

    Byadmin

    Christmas day tends to be a slow news day.  However, for those who didn’t see it, the LA Times carried a front page story about UC’s online offerings which allow cross-campus credits.  You can find the article at: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-me-uc-online-20131222,0,6798231.story Blog readers will be familiar with these offerings.  We noted in a prior post that UCLA seems to be a taker rather than a giver in this endeavor.  That is, other campuses’ online courses are available to UCLA students.  But UCLA is not offering courses to the other campuses.  Berkeley, Irvine, Davis, and Riverside seem to be the offerers.   Now, how…

  • |

    Unsolicited Thanksgiving Advice for Murphy Hall

    Byadmin

    Dear Murphy:  The Judge Cunningham affair is a real turkey for you.*  You might want to spend your Thanksgiving weekend finding out what happened.  A good place to start might be by asking why campus police would be bothering with a minor off-campus traffic infraction unrelated to UCLA.   Katehi apologizing It’s not a question of having jurisdiction, so let’s not get entangled with legalities of whether it was technically OK to stop the judge.  It’s a question of priorities and common sense.   Remember the Pepper Spray Cop affair at UC-Davis and how the chancellor there spent months apologizing, investigating, testifying,…