In San Joaquin County, elementary and middle school students are running farmers markets at 10 after-school sites. In Yolo County, the Yolo Food Bank runs each market held at local schools, but hundreds of students get to shop weekly for fresh produce. And in Sacramento County, a hybrid approach currently serves five schools.

Bryan Barrett knows this land well.

Before much of the land was slated for development in recent years, Barrett’s grandparents David and Dolly Fiddyment owned a ranch near what is now Blue Oaks Boulevard and Orchard View Road in West Roseville. Barrett learned how to drive a tractor on this land, how to swim in a nearby creek.

Effective water conservation throughout the City of Folsom made way for the largest expansion of the city in decades. While not all residents agree with Folsom’s strategy, it is being implemented in growing cities around the state as an effective tool to meet housing demand. 

Ellen Hanak, director of the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California offers her insight into California water management.

Eight of the world’s 10 largest vegetable seed companies are located near UC Davis, a world leader in plant science and agricultural research. The Capital Region is home to a vast ecosystem at the forefront of advancing food production — here’s how all the pieces come together.

The U.S. is the largest wine market in the world, and California produces 65 percent of all the wine consumed domestically. Our industry generates $57.6 billion in annual state level economic activity, which in turn employs 325,000 Californians. It is vital that California wine remain competitive in a global market.

During the school year, 13 students from Washington Elementary School in Stockton, meet once a week at the 5.7-acre Boggs Tract Community Farm, where the children grow seedlings into vegetables in one small patch of land.

In America’s farm-to-fork capital, it’s easy to place attention on the fork side of the story – the amazing chefs and restaurants feeding us. Yet, there’s a complicated web of grassroots services, part of a larger food system, which covers everything including health, environment, economy, social justice and more. Nonprofits provide core services that keep this delicate system moving toward a better community. Comstock’s explores this side of Sacramento’s local food network.

Beyond the devastation and personal tragedy of the fires that have ravaged California in recent months,  another disaster looms: an alarming uptick in unhealthy air and the sudden release of the carbon dioxide that drives climate change.

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.​

Infrastructure improvements are costly, and with too few customers spread over too great a distance, are usually not worth the return on investment for business.

But some ISPs are finding ways.