Abstract
This case study is focused on the unique story of diverse marketing for agricultural products in the Capay Valley of Central California. Various nonprofit organizations and collaborative projects in the region are working together with local farmers and ranchers to develop marketing innovations to benefit the diverse production in the valley. Some of the challenges they have faced include finding year-round markets and jobs for workers, drought, navigating regional, state and national policy, and maintaining the ideals of the sustainable and organic agriculture movements. Some of the solutions discussed include growing a great diversity of crops, developing direct, cooperative and other innovative marketing strategies to sell those products, and educating urban consumers about the health, environmental, and taste benefits of fresh, locally produced foods.
The Setting
Yolo County, the broad setting for this case study, is located in North East Sacramento County, directly North of Solano County and North West of Napa County. Yolo County is situated within California’s Northern Sacramento Valley and the Sacramento River Delta. The county’s leading industry is agriculture, containing 550, 407 acres of farmland, which makes up 83 % of the county’s total acreage. About 12 % of growers in the county are organic, 7% of all county production. The Capay Valley, our specific location for the study, is in the North West corner of Yolo County. It is located in the eastern foothills of the Coast Range, containing an abundance of wildlife, rolling hills, creeks, vistas, and heritage oaks.
The Valley is abundant in farms and ranches growing organic and sustainable products and cultivating diverse cropping systems. A varied rural community, the Valley is home to small and medium-scale farmers and ranchers, immigrant farm workers, townspeople, and a Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians. Agricultural producers in the valley grow over 50 different types of agricultural products, including fruits and vegetables, wheat, wine, beef, lamb, walnuts, and almonds.
There has been an active movement by local farmers, ranchers and community organizers over the past thirty years to maintain the rural landscape and encourage ecologically based agriculture. The landscape of rolling hills and a narrow valley is not conducive to large-scale mono-crop farms. It has been a hub of organic and diverse crop farming since the beginning of the organic movement in the 1970s. As the popularity of sustainable and locally grown products has increased, so has the number of farms growing organically in the Capay Valley. There are still many conventional nut tree orchards, row crop and mixed farms in the Valley, but even some of these growers have started to plant hedgerows and adopt other integrated pest management strategies to attract beneficial insects and restore and conserve the local ecosystem.
Major expansion of the local tribe’s casino has been an area of conflict in the Valley community. Increasing traffic from casino visitors is an issue for farmers getting to markets as the only road through the Valley is a two-lane road. Capay Valley Vision, a nonprofit organization discussed below, has been instrumental in organizing discussions and collaboration among various Valley stakeholders with the goal of developing a mutually beneficial relationship between the agricultural community and the casino’s tribal leadership.