Model and Strategy
On a 100-acre organic farm in the heart of the Salinas Valley, ALBA supports Mexican immigrant farmworkers and other aspiring farmers to pursue the dream of organic farm ownership. The vast majority of those entering ALBA’s program earn less than $30,000 per year doing contract field labor for industrial-scale growers, without benefits or opportunities for advancement. The words used to describe them – “unskilled”, “illegal”, “marginalized” – overlook their farming experience, entrepreneurial instincts, and work ethic. Recognizing their potential, ALBA invests in their development, lowering the barriers to farm initiation and giving them the time, space, and guidance for their organic farm enterprises to take root and grow.
In the first year of ALBA’s program, participants enroll in PEPA (Programa Educativo para Pequenos Agricultures, which translates to Educational Program for Small Farmers). The year-long bilingual course is designed to prepare participants to launch an farm enterprise in the following year. Management topics are taught in the classroom on Wednesday evenings by ALBA staff and guest speakers from the industry. Principles of regenerative agriculture are taught on Saturday afternoons on a 1-acre demonstration plot, including use of cover crop, drip tape, and crop diversity and rotation. These practices promote soil health, drought resistance, carbon sequestration while protecting topsoil and groundwater quality.
Graduates of PEPA may enter the Organic Farm Incubator, a four-year program that offers subsidized access to land, farm equipment and on-site technical assistance in production, business management, marketing, and regulatory compliance. Participants start on a 1⁄2 acre of land and scale up to as much as five acres in their fourth and final year, before transitioning from the program to independent operations.
After 21 years in operation, ALBA is, in the coming year, making some key investments in its capacity and infrastructure to better serve farmers’ needs and to extend its reach and impact. These include a 20-year impact assessment, optimizing its use of information technology, building communications capacity, and kickstarting a campus development project to create additional training and meeting space.
Impact
ALBA is one of the few places dedicated to proving out the conviction that with access to education and resources, farmworkers are capable of becoming a new generation of sustainable farmers. While small and mid-scale livelihood farms have been on a century-long decline, ALBA can report that a significant portion of its participants are leaving the program to farm independently.
Of the 181 respondents of a recent alumni survey, 43% of respondents are currently operating a farm business. Another 10% have farmed at some point since leaving ALBA and yet another 9% plan to launch a farm in the next five years. Moreover, the farms coming out of ALBA tend to be larger and better able to support a farm household than those counted in the USDA Census of Agriculture. Twenty four percent (24%) of American farms counted in the last USDA Ag Census reported sales above $50,000. In contrast, 54% of ALBA’s Latino farms have sales above this mark, and many of them are in their early years and still growing.
Whether or not its alumni are farming, they are showing upward mobility. Nearly 70% of Latino immigrants came into the program earning less than $30,000, but this portion dropped to 25% after participating in the program. Individually, participants say they appreciate the opportunity to develop their skills, learn about and pursue new opportunities and, in doing so, develop confidence about their place in the American ag economy.
ALBA regularly hosts peer organizations to observe and be trained on its model; sustainable food systems programs and researchers from universities like Stanford, UC Berkeley, and the University of Washington; and Congresspeople and USDA decision makers. Its campus expansion will enable ALBA to deepen and broaden these types of relationships.
Leadership
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Patricia Carrillo
Executive Director
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Nathan Harkleroad
Education Program Director
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Juan Garcia
Farm Manager
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Andrea Tinajero
Special Projects Coordinator
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Antonio Acosta
Compliance Manager
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Christopher Brown
Development Director