Future of Farming: Local, Organic, Home Delivered

Where are we headed in the future? The pattern among consumers points us toward an environmentally concerned America. This story of a California organic operation shows how consumer oriented businesses are sucessful while a the same time maintaining high quality products.

Future of Farming: Local, Organic, Home Delivered

An engineer by training, a capitalist by instinct, young Thaddeus Barsotti might represent the future of farming – at least for the growing segment of the population that wants its food organic, local, fresh in season and grown using sustainable methods that preserve rather than denude the land.

Barsotti, 27, runs Capay Fruits and Vegetables here in a peaceful valley, about an hour's drive west of Sacramento and 90 minutes from the Bay Area. The farm, established by two University of California, Davis, grad students in the 1970s and now owned by their four sons, is fast becoming a miniconglomerate in the world of natural foods.

"We really are building a relationship between the consumers and the farm," Barsotti told me as we bounced down the road in his dusty Toyota pickup truck one morning last week, talking produce and profits. "We have 3,000 customers who know I am there in the field on this piece of property growing their food. There's a connection there."

Read the entire story here at sacbee.com.