Capay Valley California Agrarian Commons

Agrarian Trust and the Capay Valley California Agrarian Commons are currently seeding relationships, collaborations, and partnerships with stakeholders, organic farm schools, immersive nature schools, community land trusts, farmer training and support organizations, and others engaged in the land and connected to the unique Capay Valley—a microregion bordered by the Blue Ridge Mountains that is known for its small farms and cooperative networks.

Update, March 2022

Here in the Capay Valley, the pandemic has driven prices for rural properties even higher than they already were. A great many of the valley’s established diversified organic farms will see their founders retire in the next decade. We must secure opportunities for new farmers to keep our rural communities alive and thriving.

The 245-acre agricultural property that brought us together in 2019 was sold to another buyer. Agrarian Trust invested over two years into the CVAC, and in 2022 is now redirecting staff capacity elsewhere until our board of directors is able to find and secure a viable new land project.

We still need your support! We are continuing to keep our ears to the ground. We welcome your ideas, capacities and energy. If a new land opportunity should give rise to a viable project, AT will provide support with deal structure, fundraising, lease development, and more. We aim to secure several farms in the coming years, as many as a dozen over time.

If you know of a landowner considering their legacy – or someone with means to help us build this foundation – please consider the Capay Valley Agrarian Commons. Your support matters, in all forms. Please be in touch!

 

Situated between Blue Ridge and the Capay Hills and bottomed by Cache Creek, this fertile rural valley has deep soils and hot summers. Its common name comes from the nineteenth-century Mexican land grant Rancho Cañada de Capay, which came, in turn, from the Patwin word kapai, or stream.

The valley is the ancestral land of the Yocha Dehe (Home by the Spring Water) Wintun Nation, an active tribe with a gaming casino, golf course, and significant farming and ranching. Their website describes their history with the land: “For thousands of years our people tended the land in Capay Valley, protecting plant and animal species, and preserving environmental balance. Yocha Dehe owns one of the most diverse farming operations in Yolo County and is one of a few tribes with expanding agriculture in California. Of the 2,200 acres currently being farmed, 250 acres are certified organic. More than 1,200 acres of the Tribe’s land are in permanent conservation easements.”

Yolo County and the Capay Valley in particular were an early destination for westward-moving white colonizers. A large number of African Americans also bought land and settled there as early as the 1850s. The valley is home to a large Mexican and Mexican-American community (about 40 percent of Capay Valley population), upon which the agriculture sector depends for the majority of its year-round and seasonal labor.

The Capay Valley California Agrarian Commons is made up of farmers and other community leaders organizing to create options for small-scale, community-stewarded farmland. Agrarian advocates and customers all over Yolo County, greater Sacramento, and the San Francisco Bay Area can have a direct role in protecting the foundation of this important food system by investing in exemplary land care and long-term, equitable access for working farmers and ranchers.

Thanks to its history of organic farming innovators and CSA farms, the Capay Valley is an ideal place to establish the first Agrarian Commons in California. Cooperative marketing efforts bolster local farm viability, and beginning farmers have shown a strong interest in working on and starting farms in the valley. However, the challenge of rising land costs due to competition with rural estate buyers and cannabis growers has made land access prohibitive for the area’s beginning farmers, many of whom have been forced to leave to find affordable land. The state’s average price per acre of farm real estate has more than tripled since 2000; from 2012 to 2017, the number of farms in the state declined by 9 percent.

The Agrarian Commons seeks to help keep local farms producing, resilient, and in the hands of diverse working farmers and ranchers while making land available to the next generation.