Laughing Onion Farm

Maria Inés Catalán

Hollister, California

“If you’re a farmworker until you’re sixty years old, either your back breaks, or your spirit does.” That’s what Patrick Troy sees around him in California’s Salinas Valley. People call the region “The Salad Bowl of the World,” but few mention that the area’s agricultural productivity relies on legions of poorly paid laborers. Monterey County’s 70,000 farmworkers and their families comprise 28% of the population, yet most never benefit from the land’s abundance beyond their hourly wages.

Troy’s organization, the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA), seeks to change that. Their six-month, classroom-based course trains farmworkers in organic farming practices and business management. Graduates can rent land at the organization’s two working farms, and there start businesses of their own. While the program caters to the needs of its minimally educated, largely Spanish-speaking students, the final goal is to prepare them for the real world’s unsympathetic marketplace. Rent, for instance, rises incrementally over three years, going from an initial subsidized fee to market value .

There is a deeper goal, as well. Most of the area’s farmworkers come from agricultural communities in Central America. ALBA seeks to return to them the value of that tradition. That is what happened with their most celebrated graduate, Maria Inés Catalán. “If you’re standing behind a broccoli machine 10 hours a day until you’re 60 years old, well, a lot of people end up hating agriculture,” Patrick says. “But Maria’s children have grown up with agriculture as a lifestyle.”

Maria Inés’ history is not uncommon: Her grandfather was a farmer in Guerrero, Mexico. Her father was a bracero, a farmworker imported seasonally by the U.S. government and treated with little respect. When Maria Inés immigrated in 1986, she worked on broccoli and carrot fields for huge California vegetable companies.

In 1994, she went through the program at the Rural Development Center (an early incarnation of ALBA). After graduation, she and five fellow students leased 60 acres in nearby Hollister and started a farm.

Then came the lessons they didn’t learn at ALBA. There were the sketchy brokers, who couldn’t sell what they consigned and dumped produce at the collective’s expense. There were the contracts written in English but signed by the members who spoke only Spanish. The farmers dumped the brokers and banded together as a cooperative that sold directly to retailers, but that wasn’t much more successful. Even after accepting six more members, their shared skills did not include proficiency in American basics such as computers and English. They found a business manager, but when he proved to be more crooked than capable, the co-op finally disbanded.

It was a blessing in disguise for Maria Inés. Now, two years later, she leases 13 acres and runs her own business, Catalán’s Laughing Onion Farm. The farm employs 11 full-and part-time workers, mainly Maria Inés’ children, siblings, and sisters-in-law. They sell at farmers markets from Salinas to Berkeley and serve a Community Supported Agriculture program (CSA) of 130 members.

It’s a story that the media love to tell: Former farmworker who speaks no English and never went to high school founds the country’s first Latina CSA! But on the ground things have not been as rosy as the articles claim.

“I would like to be very optimistic and talk about all these miracles and that I have a lot of money, but unfortunately the reality is different from that,” she said through an interpreter. “I have worked really hard and it has been very difficult. If we were saying that this has been some economic security for me, well, it hasn’t been that way for the past ten years. This is the first year that I can say I’m surviving. The truth is, if you speak to Maria Inés, you’re going to find out the truth about how difficult it is to survive as an organic farmer.”

Maria Inés is no stranger to hard work. She regularly clocks 12 hours a day in the fields, and often puts in 16 or 18 total. Still, had she sold only through the traditional wholesale system, Maria Inés might not be in business today. That’s because when sold through a broker, even organic produce becomes anonymous—and the business is pure, ruthless competition. Someone who speaks English and owns land might thrive in that marketplace, but as a woman who, in her words, was “coming from nothing,” that wasn’t Maria Inés’ best strategy. Besides, it wasn’t what she wanted to do in the first place.

Maria Inés has found success (or at least stability), by building her market around the things she cares for and the people who see value in that. There are the farmers markets, where customers come to know her directly and appreciate her for the true (if less than rosy) version of her story. And there has always been the CSA, an even more intimate setting in which people commit to her farm by paying in advance for even months at a time.

She began the CSA while at the Rural Development Center and ran it on the side during the co-op days. Over the years she has built it by connecting with churches, community centers, and other groups whose members share or at least appreciate her background. For instance, she has organized with the group P.O.D.E.R. (People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights), in San Francisco’s largely Latino Mission district, to deliver CSA shares to their members. P.O.D.E.R.’s Oscar Grande admits the system can be cost-prohibitive for many families—only 16 members have signed up so far—but that the connection to Maria Inés as a farmer is invaluable.

“We’ve done events to promote the CSA, and once people actually see her face, they say, You farm, that’s great! It’s familiar to us because that’s how it is in our countries, but over here [in the United States] it’s different. We don’t have yards to garden in. People meet Maria Inés and remember that about themselves.”

Maria Inés also sets up a farm stand outside the government office in Monterey County, on the day when women pick up their WIC (Women, Infant and Children) allowances. If they simply brought the money home, they would likely spend it at a large grocery store for convenience’s sake; but Maria Inés makes her food more convenient.

“She told me that when she started doing it, people didn’t pay her any attention,” Oscar said. “It wasn’t until a year later that she made money, but she stuck with it the whole time. She knew she could make more money focusing on middle-class white folks, but that wasn’t what she set out to do.”

Patrick credits Maria Inés for her determination. “Some people don’t want to put in the extra energy when the minimum will get you by,” he says. “But Maria had this optimism, she knew she was not finished learning. She has a very strong spirit and motivation to carry on in agriculture. And now she gets 95 to 100% of every dollar that she sells.”

Maria Inés maintains that things are hardly romantic, but still she will continue farming as long as she can. “What makes it worthwhile is the food that I’m producing for my family. To see my grandchildren eat cucumbers and watermelon and strawberries—for me, that’s better than money,” she says. “As long as my old truck works and my tractor works, that’s fine. What I want is to show my children that the dream that we’ve had for the past ten years is going to be fulfilled. We’re going to make it.”