Right in California’s agricultural heart, innovative nonprofit Green Tech Education and Employment is growing something other than crops – it’s cultivating Sacramento’s next generation of skilled workers.

While California boasts some of the highest numbers of female farmers in the U.S., at 33 percent of the state’s total farmers, that’s still only one in seven farmers. Yet, the women who have chosen this profession don’t see themselves as statistics. They see themselves as hard workers feeding their communities.

Comstock’s recently spoke with three women about the joys and challenges of running small farms.

Here in America’s farm-to-fork capital, consumers tend to understand this connection through our region’s rich agricultural heritage and California’s role as the nation’s largest agricultural producer. Local chefs like Brad Cecchi showcase seasonal produce and proteins from local farmers and ranchers who respect the land they farm and animals they raise, through practices intended to keep the land productive for generations to come.

This once rural town now houses more than two dozen international companies and has become a hub of agribusiness, thanks to its progressive pro-business climate and ideal location. 

In the wine industry, families must often handle the unique dynamics of their arrangement while running several operations at once — growing grapes, producing wine, and marketing and selling the final product. It’s not always easy. But these four wine-industry families wouldn’t have it any other way.

Back in 1998, two family businesses —Holt Bros. and Tenco Tractors — merged into one, for a total of three families now under one business roof at Holt of California. Twenty years later, they rely on a long history of leadership transitions to select the next in line for succession.

Ten years into the movement, and urban farming in the Sacramento region has garnered widespread support. Agrihoods now represent the latest development in the movement — but will they strengthen or overshadow it?

In 2004, four years after launching their first farm, the founders of Soil Born Farms Urban Agriculture and Education Project incorporated their group as a nonprofit to help others see the value of growing food within cities, spreading the philosophy of “healthy food for all.”

Priscilla Enriquez, chief giving officer at Sacramento Region Community Foundation, offers her insight into urban farming in the Capital Region.

“Farm to Fork” is not just an advertising slogan: It reflects a big part of the region’s identity, and that reputation is growing. Wine has become one of California’s most recognizable crops and production has grown tremendously over the last two decades. California is home to 4,700 wineries and produces more wine than any other U.S. state.​