On Earth Day, a couple of hundred protesters descended on some UC Berkeley-owned property in neighboring Albany and began planting beans, and raspberries. The protesters, along with some neighbors in the area, want to preserve the open space for an urban farm rather than let the University develop it as Little League fields as it proceeds with its University Village redevelopment project, the final phase of which is not yet complete. This morning at six a.m., UC police kicked the Occupy the Farm folks off the land after their two-week campout, and the University says that they'd like, instead, to have a "dialogue" about urban farming.

Confusingly, the university says that it has a number of researchers who were unable to do their own agriculture work on the land because of the occupation. They say they're open to having a public dialogue about urban farming uses for the land, but they nonetheless have barricaded off the property.

Protesters are tweeting and texting away to try to get more people to show up and support them today, as the barricades go up.

[CBS]